On Tuesday the fifth edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook report noted that the world has missed all of its biodiversity targets. Published by the Convention on Biological Diversity as part of the United Nations, the report looked back over the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and a Decade on Biodiversity inaugurated in Nagoya in 2010.
In Nagoya, 18,000 participants representing 193 national parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed strategic goals and targets meant to address the causes and impacts of biodiversity loss. The twenty targets, to be implemented over a ten-year period, included raised funding and awareness alongside specific goals covering pollution, sustainable fishing, and the conservation of natural habitats.
This year’s Global Biodiversity Outlook report therefore served as a final reckoning for the Aichi targets, concluding that none have been fully met while only six have been partially achieved. Stressing the importance of biodiversity for long-term food security and the prevention of future pandemics, the report noted some successes, including falling rates of deforestation, fewer invasive species in island habitats, and improved conservation of inland water and coastal and marine areas.
Yet some of these positive measures continue to be undermined as countries spend heavily to subsidise overfishing and the extraction of fossil fuels. Overconsumption, changing land-use patterns, and climate change threaten to hasten biodiversity losses in the years to come. The Global Biodiversity Outlook report arrives one week after the World Wildlife Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London released the biennial Living Planet Report, warning of an unprecedented decline in global biodiversity.
