Abstract
The United Nations’ discussions on defining a new set of post-2015 development goals focus on poverty eradication and sustainable development. Biodiversity and ecosystem services are essential for poverty eradication, which is also one of the foundations of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Based on an assessment of current proposals of goals and targets, and a quantitative pathway analysis to meet long term biodiversity and food security goals, this paper discusses how biodiversity and ecosystem services can be integrated into a broad set of goals and targets, and concludes with relevant target areas and means of implementation for which specific targets need to be defined. Furthermore, it responds to the call of the CBD to consider the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and the related Aichi biodiversity targets in the post-2015 development agenda. The paper’s analysis identifies three overlapping but also supplemental ways to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem services in the post-2015 agenda: integrated goals, goals addressing earth system functioning and goals addressing environmental limits. It further concludes seven target areas to be included under the goals to address biodiversity and ecosystem services in the context of food and agriculture: access to food, demand for agricultural products, sustainable intensification, ecosystem fragmentation, protected areas, essential ecosystem services and genetic diversity. The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity provides a good basis for integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services in the post-2015 development agenda. Many Aichi targets address the proposed target areas and the means of implementation discussed, while they need to be complemented with targets that specifically address human well-being, as well as institutions and governance.
Highlights
Discussions on how to define, design and implement long-term sustainability goals have taken centre stage in the United Nations with the initiation of the process to prepare for a post-2015 development agenda as a follow-up of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) [1], and the process to agree upon a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [2]
This paper explores whether and how the post-2015 development agenda can draw from what is already agreed in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
It is widely acknowledged that biodiversity underpins ecosystem functioning and that the provisioning of ecosystem services is essential for human well-being [4,16]
Summary
Discussions on how to define, design and implement long-term sustainability goals have taken centre stage in the United Nations with the initiation of the process to prepare for a post-2015 development agenda as a follow-up of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) [1], and the process to agree upon a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [2]. While this target was not met [9], it became clear that MDG 7 was fragmented, lacked political voice, and lacked an overarching framework and means to integrate different components of environmental sustainability into the broader development agenda [10] This last issue is addressed by the CBD’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity. We assess pathways towards eradicating hunger and meeting the 2050 Biodiversity Vision within a broad set of sustainable development goals (Section 4) Based on this analysis, we identify possible target areas and explore means of implementation and the possible contribution the Aichi targets can make (Section 5). We conclude with outlining some relevant choices that lay ahead for including biodiversity and ecosystems in the post-2015 development agenda (Section 6)
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