World leaders failing own targets to protect nature – crunch
meeting to demand ‘urgent and effective action’
World governments are failing their own 2010 pledges to protect and restore nature and
ecosystems by 2020. They will be urged to take ‘urgent and effective action’ at a meeting in
October in Pyeongchang, South Korea to review the lack of progress on their pledges1.
The meeting is close to the halfway mark to the 2020 target date but it will reveal that
individual nations and trade blocs are not on course to meet their own commitments to
reverse nature’s decline. Without concerted effort in the next few years, governments’
targets will be missed by their own 2020 deadline.2
Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) and Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE) will be in
Pyeongchang to comment on the seriousness with which our governments, individually and
internationally, are responding to the crisis facing nature and ecosystems.
Friends of the Earth is concerned that instead of acting on commitments by protecting and
restoring nature and ecosystems governments and trading blocs are spending time and
money adopting and promoting unproven initiatives like biodiversity offsetting and
mechanisms such as the pricing, financialisation and commodification of nature.3
The first day of the meeting (6 October) will see publication of the 4th Global Biodiversity
Outlook - a mid-term review of progress towards the goals of the Strategic Plan for
Biodiversity 2011-2020, and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and further actions to enhance
progress. The Outlook will show that:
“…progress will not be sufficient to achieve the targets unless further urgent
and effective action is taken to reduce the pressures on biodiversity and to
prevent its continued decline.” 4
As a result of inadequate progress, the meeting is likely to demand renewed effort to catch
up and put nations on course for 2020. This will take the form of a new ‘Pyeongchang
Roadmap for the enhanced implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020
and the achievement of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets’.
The meeting will also lay ground for integrating nature, biodiversity and ecosystems into the
post-2015 UN Development Agenda including the new Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG’s, as successor to the Millennium Development Goals) and biodiversity for poverty
eradication and sustainable development.
Contacts
Friedrich Wulf
Nicola Udhe
Sandra Bell
1
Friends of the Earth Europe
Friends of the Earth Europe
Friends of the Earth England Wales and Northern Ireland
Friedrich.Wulf@pronatura.ch
nicola.uhde@bund.net
sandra.bell@foe.co.uk
6-17 October 2014, 12th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea.
In 2010 world governments met in Nagoya, Japan to agree a new set of aims and targets to reduce and reverse the loss of
nature, biodiversity and natural ecosystems by 2020. The new commitments and 20 ‘Aichi targets’ reflect nations’ individual and
collective failure to meet their previously agreed aims to reverse nature’s decline by 2010. http://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/
3
Friends of the Earth Europe biodiversity position paper https://www.foeeurope.org/biodiversity-position-paper
Friends of the Earth International Nature is not for sale paper http://www.foei.org/resources/publications/publications-bysubject/climate-justice-energy-publications/nature-is-not-for-sale/
4
Paragraph 4a, page 4, UNEP/CBD/COP/12/1/Add.2, 1 August 2014 – draft decisions for the meeting. See the summary of the
general conclusions of the Global Biodiversity Outlook in this briefing.
2
General conclusions of the Global Biodiversity Outlook include (our emphasis):
There has been encouraging progress towards meeting some elements of most Aichi Biodiversity
Targets but, in most cases, this progress will not be sufficient to achieve the targets unless
further urgent and effective action is taken to reduce the pressures on biodiversity and to
prevent its continued decline;
Meeting the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will contribute significantly to fighting hunger and poverty,
improving human health, ensuring a sustainable supply of energy, food and clean water,
facilitating climate-change mitigation and adaptation, combating desertification and land
degradation, and reducing vulnerability to disasters and they will contribute to the post-2015
United Nations development agenda and the sustainable development goals;
Actions to achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets should be undertaken in a coherent and coordinated
manner; Actions towards certain targets, notably those that address the underlying causes of
biodiversity loss, the development and implementation of national biodiversity strategies and action
plans, the further development and sharing of information, and the mobilization of resources, will have
an especially strong influence on the achievement of the other targets;
Attaining the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will require a suite of actions at the national level, typically
including: legal or policy frameworks; socioeconomic incentives aligned with such frameworks;
public and stakeholder engagement, including the effective participation of indigenous and
local communities; monitoring; and compliance. Coherence of policies across sectors and the
corresponding government ministries, is necessary to deliver an effective package of actions;
It is necessary to broaden political and general support for the implementation of the Strategic
Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and to achieve the objectives of the Convention. This will require
working to ensure that all levels of government and stakeholders across society are aware of the
multiple values of biodiversity and related ecosystem services;
Partnerships at all levels are required for the effective implementation of the Strategic Plan for
Biodiversity 2011-2020, to leverage broad-scale actions, to mainstream biodiversity across sectors
of government, society and the economy and to enable synergies in the implementation of the
various multilateral environmental agreements;
There are opportunities to support the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020
through enhanced technical and scientific cooperation among Parties. Further capacity-building
support and technology transfer will also be needed, especially for developing countries, in
particular the least developed countries and small island developing States, as well as countries
with economies in transition;
A substantial increase in the mobilization of financial resources from all sources, in accordance
with Aichi Biodiversity Target 20, is needed for the implementation of the Strategic Plan for
Biodiversity 2011–2020.