COP15 in China: businesses role in protecting biodiversity

This summer, a family of wild Asian elephants in Yunnan Province of China left their original habitat and ventured 500 kilometres north towards the provincial capital Kunming. This event illustrates the severity of the crisis the biosphere is facing. For some, it is an irony that wildlife is even more eager than the world leaders to gather in Kunming to talk about biodiversity conservation.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 will draw on its 196 parties to negotiate and settle the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) which will guide the pathway from now until 2030 and reinforce the 2050 vision. Although some progress has been achieved, the severe loss of ecosystem services and the trajectory of 1 million species extinction have not been fully stemmed. According to GBO-5, none of the 20 Aichi targets have been fully met.

The already twice delayed Kunming CBD COP15 meeting is split into two phases: October 2021 and April/May 2022. The real negotiations around the GBF will only be concluded in-person in 2022. In September this year, multiple events bolstered anticipations leading up to the major global gathering. At the recently concluded IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, over 1,500 government and civil society members called for a post-pandemic nature-based recovery. The CBD NGO Parallel Forum, held on 27-28 September this year, highlighted the non-state actors’ contributions to biodiversity including foundations, indigenous communities and transborder initiatives.

It is the GBF that will guide humanity to make a new deal for nature, and launch an all-of-society effort for a transformative change. After 18 months of gruelling negotiations and extensive consultancy, GBF’s first draft has been formalized, and it’s been widely praised for its improvements by the CBD parties during the OEWG-3.1, including among other things recognition on the role of business in co-leading the transformation towards an equitable, nature-positive net zero future.

All in all, there are four goals, 10 milestones, 21 action targets and 38 headline indicators. One significant change is that a fourth goal has been raised to explicitly state the requirement for financial and other means of implementation by 2050. Furthermore, a financial gap of $700 billion per year is requested to be closed by 2030. But unlike climate change’s well below 2C goal, there is not yet a refined and easy to communicate statement for biodiversity conservation. GBF’s goals, milestones and targets are so discrete and entangled with wide-ranging economic and social issues – it poses great challenges for implementation.

While a timely finalization of GBF is crucial to avoid failure – like the world performing poorly towards the Aichi targets – philanthropists, responsible businesses and national initiatives can spearhead the transformative change the world needs.

To encourage the private sector to play their part, the first draft nailed a clause in Target 15: “All businesses assess and report on their dependencies and impacts on biodiversity, … progressively reduce negative impacts, by at least half and increase positive impacts”. If this requirement is enforced as such, it will require the business sector to internalize their negative externalities against nature and ecosystems. Similarly, the Taskforce on the Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has triggered more than 30 financial institutions to strengthen reporting on biodiversity. These enhanced disclosure and assessment initiatives should result in an uptake of nature-friendly practices and mainstream the concept of biodiversity in business sectors.

But there are great gaps and inadequacies in biodiversity awareness, assessment and planning techniques and implementation capacities among business. “So far 37 companies in the Greater China region have set climate targets and there are not yet any companies who have signed up to develop and implement science-based targets for nature.” To address these issues and provide an enabling environment, NGOs and business sectors need to work collectively.

For instance, Business for Nature, a global coalition, have mobilized over 1,000 companies worldwide to sign up to the call to action “Nature is Everyone’s Business" ​urging governments to adopt policies now to reverse nature loss in this decade. The Global Joint Initiative on the Partnership of Biodiversity and Finance (PBF) – recently launched by 13 institutions and 32 banks, investors and NGOs – supports joint efforts between financing and biodiversity. Since forward looking business also need tools and solutions to get started, Society of Entrepreneurs & Ecology works with partners like IUCN and The Capitals Coalition, to translate and facilitate the adoption of Guidelines for Planning and Monitoring Biodiversity Performance, and Natural Capital Protocol. These tools will support Chinese businesses to assess their impacts on biodiversity and make the green transition in due cause.

China is experienced at hosting UN environment conferences – the UNCCD COP13 was held in Erdos, Inner Mongolia, China in 2017. Despite China’s current COVID-19 restrictions, the organizational team is determined to make CBD COP15 a success. But the real success will reside on the negotiation table, where China can exert great influence.

As the world’s second largest economy, China possesses four of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots, and is considered one of the planet’s most “biologically wealthy” countries. China champions the use of “Nature-based Solutions” in tackling both climate and biodiversity crises.

China’s domestic conservation policies, such as its Ecological Redline and its achievements – about a quarter of land is covered by the red line by the end of 2020 – provide an opportunity for China to lead by example. It’s approaching the global biodiversity governance with the view that the GBF should strike a balance between ambition and reality. As the largest developing country, China supports other developing countries to the best of its ability under the framework of South-South Cooperation.

Historically, China has been an earnest contributor to the Paris Agreement in 2015, but it may need a forceful commitment as strong as the 2060 carbon neutral target announced last year to signal to the world its intent and ambition.

One day before the release of the most alarming Assessment Report 6 on climate change by IPCC on 9 Aug, the Asian elephant family finally returned to their habitat, safe and sound. Maybe one day humans can live in harmony with nature, but to achieve that we must take action now.