Scientists say replacing just 10 percent of global vegetable intake with seaweed-derived products could free up large portions of land. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Aug 13 2025 (IPS)

Current rates of land degradation pose a major environmental and socioeconomic threat, driving climate change, biodiversity loss, and social crises. Food production to feed more than 8 billion people is the dominant land use on Earth. Yet, this industrial-scale enterprise comes with a heavy environmental toll.
Preventing and reversing land degradation are key objectives of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and are also fundamental for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

These three conventions emerged from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to address the interconnected crises of biodiversity loss, climate change and land degradation. A paper published today in Nature by 21 leading scientists argues that the targets of “these conventions can only be met by ‘bending the curve’ of land degradation and that transforming food systems is fundamental for doing so.”

Lead author Fernando T. Maestre of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, says the paper presents “a bold, integrated set of actions to tackle land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change together, as well as a clear pathway for implementing them by 2050.”

“By transforming food systems, restoring degraded land, harnessing the potential of sustainable seafood, and fostering cooperation across nations and sectors, we can ‘bend the curve’ and reverse land degradation while advancing towards goals of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and other global agreements.”

Co-author Barron J. Orr, UNCCD’s Chief Scientist, says, “Once soils lose fertility, water tables deplete, and biodiversity is lost, restoring the land becomes exponentially more expensive. Ongoing rates of land degradation contribute to a cascade of mounting global challenges, including food and water insecurity, forced relocation and population migration, social unrest, and economic inequality.”

“Land degradation isn’t just a rural issue; it affects the food on all our plates, the air we breathe, and the stability of the world we live in. This isn’t about saving the environment; it’s about securing our shared future.”

The authors suggest an ambitious but achievable target of 50 percent land restoration for 2050—currently, 30 percent by 2030—with enormous co-benefits for climate, biodiversity and global health. Titled ‘Bending the curve of land degradation to achieve global environmental goals,’ the paper argues that it is imperative to ‘bend the curve’ of land degradation by halting land conversion while restoring half of degraded lands by 2050.

“Food systems have not yet been fully incorporated into intergovernmental agreements, nor do they receive sufficient focus in current strategies to address land degradation. Rapid, integrated reforms focused on global food systems, however, can move land health from crisis to recovery and secure a healthier, more stable planet for all,” reads parts of the paper.

Against this backdrop, the authors break new ground by quantifying the impact of reducing food waste by 75 percent by 2050 and maximizing sustainable ocean-based food production—measures that alone could spare an area larger than Africa. They say restoring 50 percent of degraded land through sustainable land management practices would correspond to the restoration of 3 Mkm² of cropland and 10 Mkm² of non-cropland, a total of 13 Mkm².

Stressing that land restoration must involve the people who live on and manage the land—especially Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers, women, and other vulnerable people and communities. Co-author Dolors Armenteras, Professor of Landscape Ecology at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, says land degradation is “a key factor in forced migration and conflict over resources.”

“Regions that rely heavily on agriculture for livelihoods, especially smallholder farmers, who feed much of the world, are particularly vulnerable. These pressures could destabilize entire regions and amplify global risks.”

To support these vulnerable segments of the population, the paper calls for interventions such as shifting agricultural subsidies from large-scale industrial farms toward sustainable smallholders, incentivizing good land stewardship among the world’s 608 million farms, and fostering their access to technology, secure land rights, and fair markets.

“Land is more than soil and space. It harbors biodiversity, cycles water, stores carbon, and regulates climate. It gives us food, sustains life, and holds deep roots of ancestry and knowledge. Today, over one-third of Earth’s land is used to grow food – feeding a global population of more than 8 billion people,” says Co-author Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald, Professor, the Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

“Yet today,” she continues, “Modern farming practices, deforestation, and overuse are degrading soil, polluting water, and destroying vital ecosystems. Food production alone drives nearly 20 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases. We need to act. To secure a thriving future – and protect land – we must reimagine how we farm, how we live, and how we relate to nature – and to each other.”

With an estimated 56.5 Mkm² of agricultural land, cropland, and rangelands being used to produce food, and roughly 33 percent of all food produced being wasted, of which 14 percent is lost post-harvest at farms and 19 percent at the retail, food service and household stages, reducing food waste by 75 percent, therefore, could spare roughly 13.4 Mkm² of land.

The authors’ proposed remedies include policies to prevent overproduction and spoilage, banning food industry rules that reject “ugly” produce, encouraging food donations and discounted sales of near-expiry products, education campaigns to reduce household waste and supporting small farmers in developing countries to improve storage and transport.

Other proposed solutions include integrating land and marine food systems, as red meat produced in unsustainable ways consumes large amounts of land, water, and feed and emits significant greenhouse gases. Seafood and seaweed are sustainable, nutritious alternatives. Seaweed, for example, needs no freshwater and absorbs atmospheric carbon.

The authors recommend measures such as replacing 70 percent of unsustainably produced red meat with seafood, such as wild or farmed fish and mollusks. Replacing just 10 percent of global vegetable intake with seaweed-derived products could free up over 0.4 Mkm² of cropland.

They nonetheless note that these changes are especially relevant for wealthier countries with high meat consumption. In some poorer regions, animal products remain crucial for nutrition. The combination of food waste reduction, land restoration, and dietary shifts, therefore, would spare or restore roughly 43.8 Mkm² in 30 years (2020-2050).

The proposed measures combined would also contribute to emission reduction efforts by mitigating roughly 13.24 Gt of CO₂-equivalent per year through 2050 and help the world community achieve its commitments in several international agreements, including the three Rio Conventions and UN SDGs.

Overall, the authors call for the UN’s three Rio conventions—CBD, UNCCD and UNFCCC—to unite around shared land and food system goals and encourage the exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge, track progress and streamline science into more effective policies, all to accelerate action on the ground.

A step in the right direction, UNCCD’s 197 Parties, at their most recent Conference of Parties (COP16) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, have already adopted a decision on avoiding, reducing and reversing land and soil degradation of agricultural lands.

The Findings By Numbers

• 56%: Projected increase in food production needed by 2050 if we stay on our current path
• 34%: Portion of Earth’s ice-free land already used for food production, headed to 42% by 2050
• 21%: Share of global greenhouse gas emissions produced by food systems
• 80%: Proportion of deforestation driven by food production
• 70%: Amount of freshwater consumption that goes to agriculture
• 33%: Fraction of global food that currently goes to waste
• USD 1 trillion: Estimated annual value of food lost or wasted globally
• 75%: Ambitious target for global food waste reduction by 2050
• 50%: Proposed portion of degraded land to be restored by 2050 using sustainable land management
• USD 278 billion: Annual funding gap to achieve UNCCD land restoration goals
• 608 million: Number of farms on the planet
• 90%: Percentage of all farms under 2 hectares
• 35%: Share of the world’s food produced by small farms
• 6.5 billion tons: Potential biomass yield using 650 million hectares of ocean for seaweed farming
• 17.5 million km²: Estimated cropland area saved if humanity adopts the proposed Rio+ diet (less unsustainably produced red meat and more sustainably sourced seafood and seaweed-derived food products)
• 166 million: Number of people who could avoid micronutrient deficiencies with more aquatic foods in their diet

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Dr. Palitha Kohona
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2014 (IPS)

Sri Lanka will host the World Biodiversity Congress (WBC) Nov. 24-27. Given its long and active history of preserving biodiversity, it would be most appropriate for Sri Lanka to be the next host of this global event, which also marks the U.N.’s Decade on Biodiversity.

The world is confronting massive threats to its biological resources due to climate change, pollution, agricultural chemical usage and pest control, land degradation, deforestation, unbridled development, indiscriminate harvesting of wild stocks, uncontrolled slaughter, accumulating waste, in particular, slow degrading waste, etc.Protecting its biodiversity at a national level has been a key challenge and a series of measures have been taken to protect elephants, a prized national asset.

Sri Lanka, while sharing many of the problems of other countries, remains strongly committed to the environment. It is no surprise that it is a party to many of the major international agreements that address environmental issues, especially biodiversity.

Sri Lanka ratified the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1994. In 1979, it became a party to the 1973 Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (commonly known as the Bonn Convention) and the 1973 Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The decision adopted by CITES in 1989, in Lausanne, banning the trade in ivory is strictly adhered to by Sri Lanka.

These international agreements have been implemented in Sri Lanka through its own domestic efforts to protect its extensive biodiversity, which is considered to be a unique national asset. Sri Lanka boasts of many endemic species and diverse ecosystems in both its terrestrial and marine environments.

Sri Lanka’s uniquely diverse range of ecosystems range from the wet and semi-dry highlands to the low-lying coast. There are grasslands, wetlands, many types of forests, including wet-zone, dry-zone and mangrove forests, lagoons, and coral reefs.

Furthermore, Sri Lanka, a country of only 65,000 square kilometres, is home to a staggering number of species of animals – some of which are endemic.

Amb. Palitha Kohona. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

There are 91 known species of mammals, 171 species of reptiles and over 106 species of amphibians, 90 of which are endemic. Sri Lanka may be the only country in which you can see both the Earth’s largest land mammal (the elephant, close to 6,000 remain in the wild according to the last count) as well as its largest marine mammal (blue and humpback whales) within a few hours of each other.

From the Sri Lankan leopard to the delicate Ceylon Rose butterfly, Sri Lanka possesses a larger percentage of endemic species than almost any other country of similar or larger land mass and is listed as a global biodiversity hotspot by the IUCN.

Protecting its biodiversity at a national level has been a key challenge and a series of measures have been taken to protect elephants, a prized national asset, including through providing two refuges for orphaned calves and facilitating captive breeding.

The country boasts a long history of training elephants for religious, commercial and domestic purposes. Elephants play a key role in Peraheras (Buddhist religious processions) where they carry the sacred relics of the Buddha with great dignity.

The annual Kandy Perahera could feature over one hundred caparisoned elephants regally parading through the streets of the ancient city of Kandy by torchlight.

The most serious threat to Sri Lankan elephants is human. There are approximately 200 human-caused elephant deaths annually, mostly through gunshots fired by rural farmers acting in self-defence or in retaliation.

The Sri Lankan government has, over the years, enacted legislation that has criminalised the killing of elephants.

The government has also worked closely with conservationists and rural farmers to encourage crops that are not attractive to elephants but are marketable. Ecotourism is fast catching on and will be a major component of the tourism industry.

Sri Lanka is committed to the implementation of the action plans to conserve biological diversity. A National Biodiversity Conservation Action Plan (BCAP), prepared in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, including the private sector, the IUCN and NGOs, has been adopted.

The BCAP identifies the key challenges facing Sri Lanka which include, deforestation in the wet zones, development of wetlands, overfishing, the destruction of mangroves and coral reefs, the over use of agricultural chemicals and the impact of agriculture on plant diversity.

The BCAP also includes multiple recommendations for action, some of which are quite specific.

For example, on plant diversity, the BCAP has recommended that the government, in partnership with the Bandaranaike Memorial Ayurvedic Research Institute, establish five medicinal plant reserves.

The national medicine system (ayurveda) relies extensively on native plant species. A government policy paper, Haritha Lanka (Green Lanka), seeks to accelerate the greening of Sri Lanka, including by increasing the forest cover to embrace 35 percent of the country.

Sri Lanka has also enacted detailed national legislation to protect its fauna and flora. Central to these efforts are the 2009 amendments to the Flora and Fauna Protection Ordinance (FFPO) and the 1937 Forest Ordinance (FO).

The FFPO established six categories of wildlife reserves in which wildlife is protected by curtailing human activities. These protected areas, reflected in the policy paper, Green Lanka, constitute around 25 percent of the total land mass of Sri Lanka. The government has proposed to enlarge this area to 35 percent of the national land mass.

The FFPO also includes protection for endangered species and requires a permit for the export of any wild animal, plant or their parts from the country.

The FO created a system of reserve forests. These forests, usually in biologically diverse zones, are protected from felling, trespassing by cattle and other similarly disruptive activities.

Sri Lanka has also enacted legislation to address other issues, including the conservation of coastal areas, the regulation of fisheries, the establishment of national heritage wilderness sites (the Sinharaja Forest, a UNESCO listed preserve, is a unique tropical rain forest), and control over invasive species of plants and animals. A major turtle reserve provides protection to a beach where turtles have come to lay eggs for centuries.

Sri Lanka has actively participated in the work of the U.N. Open Working Group developing the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Included among the 17 goals identified is a goal on biodiversity, which the country supported throughout the negotiations.

It also supported the goal on the oceans, which contains targets aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of ocean, sea and other marine resources. Sri Lanka is the co-chair of the UN Ad Hoc Working Group on Marine Biological Diversity Beyond National Jurisdiction.

Incidentally, the WBC in Colombo, November 2014, will also coincide with the whale watching season in Sri Lanka.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Coral reef ecosystem at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

By Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias
MONTREAL, Canada, Sep 30 2014 (IPS)

In Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, the international community made a commitment to future generations by adopting the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

In doing this, governments recognised that biodiversity is not just a problem to be solved, but rather the source of solutions to 21st century challenges such as climate change, food and water security, health, disaster risk reduction, and poverty alleviation.  In taking this action, countries affirmatively recognised that biodiversity is essential for sustainable development and the foundation for human well-being.We now know that real change does not come from ‘silver bullet’ solutions, but from those strategies that simultaneously address the multiple underlying causes of biodiversity loss.

The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets are a framework for the world to achieve the vision of human beings living in harmony with nature.  If achieved, by the middle of the 21st century, we will enjoy economic and social well-being while conserving and sustainably using the biodiversity that sustains our healthy planet and delivers the benefits essential to us all.

This is within our reach. And if we succeed, we will ensure that by the end of this decade, the ecosystems of the world are resilient and continue to provide for our well-being and contribute to eradication of the poverty that holds back human aspirations.  The Aichi Biodiversity Targets are about taking action now for the benefit of our collective future.

We are now approaching the mid-way mark of the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity.  Governments of the world will meet in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea in early October at the 12^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-12) where they will launch and review the Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO4), the latest global assessment of the state of biodiversity. As they review GBO4, they will see how we are all doing in achieving this vision.

The good news is that countries and civil society are making progress, and concrete commitments to implement the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are being taken.  Our current efforts are taking us in the right direction.

However, achieving many targets will require substantial additional efforts.

Additional pressures are being placed on the life-support systems of our planet by a greater population, by climate change, land degradation, over exploitation of species and spread of alien invasive species as a consequence of economic decisions that neglect to fully take into account the value of environmental assets and of biodiversity.  Extra efforts will be needed to overcome these human-made challenges.

What kind of actions need to be taken?  We now know that real change does not come from ‘silver bullet’ solutions, but from those strategies that simultaneously address the multiple underlying causes of biodiversity loss – subsidies that lead to overexploitation, habitat loss, climate change, inefficiencies in agriculture among others – while addressing the direct pressures on our natural systems.

There is an increasing need to develop strategic and sustained actions to address both the underlying and immediate causes of biodiversity loss in a coordinated way.  There is a need to mainstream biodiversity into policies and actions well beyond the sectors that focus on conservation.

At the Pyeongchang meeting governments will need to make additional commitments to ensure that their actions are effective and achieve the desired results.  They will need to agree to mobilise sufficient financial and human resources in support of such actions – increasing significantly current efforts.

The actions that are needed to overcome the loss of biodiversity and the ongoing erosion of our natural life support systems are varied: integrating the values of biodiversity into national accounts and policy, changes in economic incentives, enforcing rules and regulations, the full and active participation of indigenous and local communities and stakeholders and engagement by the business sector. Partnerships at all levels will need to be agreed and vigorously pursued.

At COP-12, events such as a Business Forum and a Summit of Cities and Subnational Governments, and meetings of Biodiversity Champions, will help to build the networks and partnerships needed to realise this.

These actions for long-term work take time to lead to measureable outcomes.  Direct action is needed now to conserve the most threatened species and ecosystems.  So, we will need to continue our work in establishing protected areas and expanding networks for terrestrial and marine areas.  We will need to work with partners to save the most endangered species.  We will need an urgent push for the protection of coral reefs.

Our immediate and our long-term efforts can and must be strengthened by understanding the critical links between biodiversity and sustainable development. Measures required to achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will also support the post-2015 development agenda, and the proposed Sustainable Development Goals currently under discussion at the United Nations General Assembly.

In this way achieving the Targets will assist in achieving the goals of greater food security, healthier populations and improved access to clean water and sustainable energy for all. Implementing the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 means already implementing our strategy for sustainable development.

The theme of the High Level Segment of the Pyeongchang meeting reflects this. For two days in October, over 100 ministers and high level representatives will discuss “Biodiversity for sustainable development.”

In choosing this theme, the government of Korea has made it clear we must continue our efforts to not only achieve the mission of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, but the social, economic and environmental goals of sustainable development, and to achieve human well-being in harmony with nature.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

The spoon-billed sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus), seen here in Phetchaburi, Thailand, could be extinct within a decade. Credit: J.J. Harrison/cc by 3.0

By Silvia Romanelli
UNITED NATIONS, May 17 2013 (IPS)

Migratory birds, which play an important role in the complex web of life known as ecosystem services, are under threat as never before, with some species facing extinction within the next decade.

Ahead of the International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22, focused this year on water resources, experts are calling for greater international cooperation to find sustainable and cost-effective solutions to the problem of species loss and environmental degradation."Half of the world’s wetlands - natural water storage systems - have been lost over the past century." -- Nick Nuttall of UNEP

“Both water management boundaries and ecosystems rarely conveniently align with geopolitical boundaries,” notes the report Natural Solutions for Water Security, published by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

According to Francisco Rilla, information and capacity building officer at the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), an intergovernmental treaty signed in 1979 in Bonn, Germany, “The ‘Big Five’ primary causes of biodiversity loss … are habitat destruction, overharvesting and poaching, pollution, climate change and introduction of invasive species.”

Migratory species are especially vulnerable “as they depend entirely on a network of well-functioning ecosystems to refuel, reproduce and survive in every ‘station’ they visit and upon unrestricted travel,” Rilla told IPS.

The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) notes that many migrating birds, such as cranes, storks, shorebirds and eagles, travel thousands of kilometres across flyways that span countries, continents and even the entire globe.

These birds use wetlands to rest, feed and breed along their migration routes.

However, “half of the world’s wetlands – natural water storage systems – have been lost over the past century,” Nick Nuttall, UNEP spokesperson, told IPS.

Because of the degradation of their habitats, some migratory bird species could lose up to nine percent of their populations, while others, like the spoon-billed sandpiper, could become extinct within a decade, leading to further ecosystem changes and ultimately impacting on human development.

Putting a price on biodiversity loss

In a statement ahead of World Migratory Bird Day on May 11-12, UNEP executive director Achim Steiner underlined that migratory birds “are part of the web of life that underpins nature’s multi-trillion-dollar ecosystem services,” which are the benefits and resources that nature offers to humankind. 

“[Migratory birds’] contribution to ecosystem services is increasingly starting to be measured in monetary terms,” Rilla told IPS.

In March 2007, at the request of the Group of Eight largest economies along with several developing countries, UNEP started an initiative called ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB), aiming at studying the economic benefits of biodiversity and incorporating them into policy-making.

As an example of TEEB’s implementation, Nuttall explained how UNEP assisted Kenya in 2012 to calculate the economic value of the ecosystem services generated by the Mau forest northwest of the capital Nairobi.

The overall value was assessed at 1.5 billion dollars a year, a consideration that led to the restoration of the forest, as well as of other ecosystems supplying water to Kenyan cities.

The advantages of using natural infrastructure like forests and wetlands instead of human-built infrastructure, such as dams, pipelines, water treatment plants and drainage systems, are highlighted in CBD’s report.

For example, strengthened coastal ecosystems can function as buffer zones that protect coastal communities from storms; rehabilitating soil biodiversity and functions can enhance water availability to crops and hence improve food security; restoring forests can reduce erosion risks and help deliver better quality water.

This approach, known as “Ecosystem-based Adaptation” (EbA), which integrates biodiversity and ecosystem services in climate change adaptation strategies – though cheaper and more sustainable than building new artificial infrastructure – is still under-utilised, says the report.

Agricultural activities, which alone account for approximately 70 percent of global water use, could apply a similar approach.

“More sustainable forms of farming can … address water issues while enhancing biodiversity,” Nuttall told IPS. “A survey of thousands of small scale farmers in Africa by UNEP and the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development found that those who had switched to organic or near organic production had seen yields on average climb by 100 percent, in part because returning organic matter to the soils had increased water retention of the soil – like a sponge – and prolonged the growing season.”

Governance matters

“We live in an increasingly water-insecure world,” stresses the CBD report.

Although there is no global water scarcity as such, there is an imbalance in its regional distribution, with only 12 percent of the world’s population consuming 85 percent of the available water.

Sound governance and equity in the distribution of water-derived benefits seem therefore important questions in the debate.

Asked by IPS about sustainable water management strategies in South Asia, one of the most water-scarce regions of the world, Michael Kugelman, senior programme associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, cited resource mismanagement as a root cause of problems.

He stressed the lack of interregional cooperation in the area, as well as of understanding of the connections between ecosystem protection and water resources.

“I think that at a government level that linkage is not made at all,” he said, “There are a lot of environmental NGOs that are bringing attention to these issues. … In some ways governments will take the lead from the NGO community.”

Water cooperation in South Asia is limited to some bilateral initiatives, such as the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan.

At a global level, the main mechanisms dealing with biodiversity and water management are the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (signed in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran) and the above-mentioned CBD, which was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and in 2010 adopted its Strategic Plan for Biodiversity for the period 2011-2020.

The United Nations declared 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation.

Small farmers are returning to organic fertilisers. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 23 2012 (IPS)

Worms and termites are not likely to win hearts and minds, but they, along with lichens and microbes, are vital to food security, say biodiversity specialists who attended this month’s United Nations conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in this south Indian city.  

“Worms, termites, lichens and soil microbes may well be the heroes of food production as without these species land-based biodiversity would collapse and food production cease,” Julia Marton-Lefevre, director-general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told IPS.

“In this day’s fierce competition for political attention and funds, (preventing) land degradation is a tough sell,” said Marton-Lefevre. “It may be one of the most serious threats to global food production and biodiversity over the next few decades, affecting an estimated 1.5 billion (poor) people.

“Soil biodiversity may not be the most glamorous of our biodiversity, but it is nevertheless highly important,” she added.

Safeguarding the underlying ecological foundations that support food production, including biodiversity, will be central to feeding seven billion inhabitants, climbing to over nine billion by 2050, says the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) study ‘Avoiding Future Famines: Strengthening the Ecological Basis of Food Security through Sustainable Food System’ released in Hyderabad.

“Soil is not an empty container, as is thought by modern agriculturists; land is a living organism and has to be valued as such,” emphasised internationally known Indian environmentalist and activist Vandana Shiva. 

Borrowing from Charles Darwin, Shiva said, earthworms create dams without concrete, increase air volume within soil by 30 percent and improve water retention capacity by 40 percent, increasing the life of soil. 

“Unfortunately, we are valuing inefficient systems like chemical intensive monoculture, forgetting that value and benefit lie in securing the soil that provides everything for humanity; discarding natural farming that simultaneously provides grains, firewood and also fodder for cattle,” Shiva told IPS.

Shiva hit out at Indian policy saying it gave “billions of dollars as subsidy for chemical fertilisers, completely ignoring the fact that the solution to hunger and poverty lay in biodiversity promotion – that is being destroyed by chemical farming.”

“Land degradation has been caused by misplaced investment; now we need to change the way we view land,” said Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, told IPS. 

At the Oct. 8- 19 CBD meet developed countries agreed to double funding by 2015 to support developing states meet the internationally agreed biodiversity targets set for 2020. Governments also agreed to increase country funding in support of action to cut the rate of biodiversity loss.

While key decisions taken at the conference mandate better investments in marine and coastal biodiversity, proponents of soil and agricultural biodiversity say more needs to be done on land, given that global food security is at risk.

“In the last century as much as 70 to 80 percent forests in many countries have been cleared for farming. We now need to reverse the trend, ensure that that we focus on revitalising agriculture in a way that it will give back the land its health,” said Gnacadja.

“The era of seemingly everlasting production based upon maximising inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, mining supplies of freshwater and fertile arable land and advancements linked to mechanisation are hitting their limits, if indeed they have not already hit them,” said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

“What the world needs is a green revolution with a capital G – one that better understands how food is actually grown and produced in terms of the nature-based inputs provided by forests, freshwaters and biodiversity,” said Steiner.

According to experts, the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels are necessary to sustain key functions of the ecosystem. For example, a diverse range of soil organisms interacts with the roots of plants and trees and ensures nutrient cycling. 

“The environment has been more of an afterthought in the debate about food security,” said UNEP chief scientist Joseph Alcamo, adding that, “only now the scientific community is giving the complete picture of how the ecological basis for food system is not only shaky but being really undermined.”

“At the moment, 12 million hectares of land where 20 million tonnes of grain could have been grown disappear every year,” said Marton-Leferve. “It is no coincidence that all three critical planetary boundaries that are today exceeded by human activities – biodiversity loss, climate change and global nitrogen and phosphorous run-offs that create dead zones in once fertile areas – are directly related to our land use practices.”

“The endeavour to build a land-degradation neutral world is a paradigm shift. It means avoiding the degradation of new areas. But where this is inevitable, we have to offset land degradation by restoring at least an equal amount of land which is degraded, ideally in the same landscape, in the same community, in the same ecosystem,” said Gnacadja. 

“Mobilising and employing financial resources may not be so much about hard currency but about our learning – through policy and practice – to account for the natural capital called soil without commodifying it and without taking shortcuts for profit with nature.” Gnacadja said. “When support is forthcoming, in whichever form, developing countries must start walking the talk.”

UNEP's Achim Steiner and Pawan Sukhdev at COP 11. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 19 2012 (IPS)

 “With more than 60 percent of the world projected to be urban by 2030 why not prepare for it and build cities that include biodiversity preservation into planning?” asks Kobie Brand of ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability in Cape Town, South Africa.

The existence of ICLEI, an association of  the world’s cities that are committed to sustainable development, suggests that the value of greening urban centres is gaining ground. ICLEI’s  Cities Biodiversity Centre in Cape Town works closely with the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Global urbanisation will have implications for biodiversity and ecosystems if current trends continue, with knockout effects on human health and development, according to a new report by the CBD that concluded its 11th Conference of Parties (COP 11) in this south Indian city on Friday.

‘The Cities and Biodiversity Outlook’ report released at COP 11 is the world’s first global analysis of how projected patterns of urban expansion would impact biodiversity and crucial ecosystems.

The report, drawing on contributions from 123 scientists worldwide, says that over 60 percent of land that is projected to become urban by 2030 is yet to be built. This, according to Prof. Thomas Elmqvist of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and scientific editor of the report, offers an opportunity for low-carbon, resource-efficient urban development.

“Cities need to learn how to better protect and enhance biodiversity, because rich biodiversity can exist in cities and is extremely critical to people’s health,” said Elmqvist.

Even backyard gardens harbour significant biodiversity. A study of 61 gardens in the city of Sheffield, Britain, found 4,000 species of invertebrates, 80 species of lichen and more than a thousand species of plants.

“City folks love nature but just take it for granted; they do not understand the importance of biodiversity; so in towns and cities we are encouraging and awarding people who are protecting biodiversity, including frogs,” Julia Hennlein, 21, told IPS. Hennlein, a student from Germany, attended COP 11 as part of a youth delegation.

“Cities are where innovation and governance tools are generated, so urban centres are in a better position to take the lead in biodiversity preservation,” said Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the CBD. “The way our cities are designed, the way people live in them and the policy decisions of local authorities will define, to a large extent, future global sustainability.”

Not everyone has a positive outlook on urbanisation and there are misgivings in India, host of COP 11.   

“Unless fundamental changes are made to the current development paradigm, urban areas will continue to see huge migration and India is an example,” Ashish Kothari, an internationally known Indian environmental activist, told IPS. “Very little is being done to regenerate villages and where this is done, migrants have returned home from the cities.”

Aarati Khosla, leading the World Wildlife Fund-India’s ‘Earth Hour City Challenge’ campaign in six Indian cities to promote energy efficient technology and renewable, told IPS: “Even small things, like efficient vehicle parking, need to be better managed to make urban centres sustainable.”

New Delhi, India’s capital, and Mumbai, the country’s main business hub, have been ranked 58 and 52 respectively among 95 cities worldwide by a U.N. Habitat report released this week. Poor environmental conditions and pollution are some of the major reasons for their low ranking.

India, experiencing massive urbanisation currently, expects its urban population to jump from the present 30 percent to 50 percent by 2044. India currently accounts for 11 percent of the world urban population, but this will grow to 15 percent by 2031 when 600 million Indians will be living in cities.

“Urbanisation in the present unsustainable avatar also has a major impact on rural areas, reshaping livelihoods, lifestyles, patterns of consumption and waste generation,” says Helene Roumani, coordinator for Local Action for Biodiversity  from Jerusalem attending the two-day Cities for Life Summit running parallel to the COP.

Urging local governments to understand better the role of ecosystem services in urban planning, Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, emphasises that large and small urban groups depend on ecosystem services for their food, water and health.

“With environment and development traded off against each other, one-third of the population could soon be living in water-stressed areas,” said Steiner at the release of ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Water and Wetlands’ report, an initiative of the Ramsar Convention Secretariat.

According to the report, the world lost half of its wetlands in the 20^th century.

“People, cities and blue space are closely connected,” Nick Davidson, deputy director-general of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, told IPS.

“Wetlands do not just manage pollution but promote better health in many ways and coastal cities in Asia are particularly under great pressure from livelihood demands,” Davidson said. “The marine coastal areas are being seen as a waste area and encroached into for various livelihood sources.

“Decision makers have a really hard choice to balance development and livelihood priorities with wetland health,” Davidson said.

Stall at the COP 11 of the CBD in Hyderabad. Credit: Keya Acharya/IPS

By Keya Acharya
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 17 2012 (IPS)

India’s National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) is actively promoting decentralised grassroots livelihoods as the best way to  conserve biodiversity as mandated by the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing (ABS).

On Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced at the 11^th Conference of Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) India’s ratification of the Nagoya Protocol, and pledged 50 million dollars for national biodiversity conservation efforts.

At the 2010 meeting of the CBD in Nagoya, Japan, the parties had agreed to halve by 2020 the rate of habitat loss, restore degraded ecosystems and  work to prevent the extinction of threatened species.

But, finding the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to achieve the 20 ‘Aichi Targets’ of the protocol has proved problematic and so far dominated the COP 11 deliberations running in this south Indian city from Oct. 8 to 19, with over 174 countries participating.

“We are discussing the issue of where to garner resources without taking into account local communities, unaware that they have the full answer,”  said the chairman of the NBA, Balakrishna Pisupati.

The NBA has initiated countrywide documentation of biodiversity conservation efforts as a means of better understanding that could lead to  policy-making.

Invited to seek out efforts in this list is the Centre for Forest and Natural Resources Management Studies (CEFNARM) of the forest department of Andhra Pradesh, the southern state playing host to COP 11.

CEFNARM has identified 80 potential sites in the state where biodiversity conservation has encompassed livelihoods that use flora, fauna and traditional knowledge of local communities. Some 25 case studies are now being promoted for replication.

Livelihoods in these case studies entail the sustainable use of bamboo for handicrafts, harvesting of non-timber forest produce such as honey and gum, conservation of medicinal plants, mangroves and community-based ecotourism activities.

CEFNARM’s director-general P. Raghuveer gives credit to non-government organisations for doing ‘significant’ work in the field in Andhra Pradesh.

Mangrove conservation by Kobbari Chettupeta village, near the seacoast in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, is now being helped by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), an organisation which has helped put coastal and marine biodiversity back on the area’s map.

MSSRF came in after 1996 when a severe cyclonic storm destroyed several villages in the area, and a seasoned 60-year-old villager, Mythu Sathya Rao, realised that villages without mangroves suffered the most damage.

Mythu Rao then got his village interested in mangrove conservation. The MSSRF has been helping conservation efforts by providing smokeless cook stoves so that mangrove twigs and branches are not used.

In the interior areas of East Godavari district, protection of the Akuru range of the Kakinada forests by surrounding villages through forest committees set up with the help of the forest department has revived native bamboo groves.

Bamboo, harvested judiciously to allow re-growth, is now providing an excellent source of livelihood for tribal communities in the region.

In 2010, bamboo sales netted nearly 200,000 Indian rupees (approximately 4,000 dollars), divided equally between the forest department and the village committee.

The money was enough to meet the needs of 14 tribal households. Araghati Sanyasi, a widow, used her share of income from bamboo to build a house, educate her three children and pay for the weddings of a daughter and a son.

“These are examples of what The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) actually means,” Pisupati said. India has an ambitious plan under TEEB to value its natural resource wealth with the objective of efficient and sustainable use by 2015.

Other South Asian nations, such as Nepal and Bangladesh, have also shown interest in pursuing TEEB.

Developed by the G8 and developing country ministers to study the economics of biodiversity loss and thereby provide solutions to environmental degradation, TEEB also aims to connect policy makers, conservationists and private business.

Prime Minister Singh told his COP 11 audience that India had unique biodiversity conservation efforts, such as a traditional knowledge digital library which has documented over 34 million pages of local knowledge systems.

The library, said Singh, was a response to biopiracy of Indian systems, most notably the patenting of extracts of the ‘neem’ tree (Azadirachta indica) and also of turmeric as healing agents. Both have been known and used in India’s traditional medicine for centuries.

At a local level, TEEB has been raising angst among non-government organisations and experts who feel that private corporate interests will appropriate biodiversity  for profits, leaving local communities out in the cold.

India is one of eight worldwide centres of intense biodiversity, holding eight percent of the world’s total species and home to three of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.

The United Nations 11^th Conference of the Parties  to the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (COP 11 CBD), underway in this southern Indian city, is lost on where to garner the billions of dollars needed to implement the ‘Aichi targets,’ due to be met by 2020.

“Decisions made here will lay the foundation for achieving the Aichi targets,” said India’s minister for environment and president of COP 11,  Jayanthi Natarajan. “Expenditure on biodiversity needs to be looked at as investments that will reap benefits for us and our future generations,” she cajoled delegates at the start of the 11-day (Oct. 8-19) conference.

But the executive secretary of the CBD, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, admitted to IPS, prior to the opening on Monday, that finding the money to keep biodiversity issues at the centre of development was not going to be easy.

“All CBD nations, however, have agreed that to meet Aichi targets. We need to change existing structures,” Dias told IPS. “There is a need for other sectors, such as health, to be linked to the financing process. I don’t expect only environmental agencies to pay this bill.”

The Aichi targets, now standing at a steep and seemingly impossible gradient,  range from tackling awareness of biodiversity, loss of habitats, alien invasive species, sustainable use of fisheries, ecosystems and agriculture to access and benefit-sharing with indigenous and local communities.

More than 170 countries are represented at the Hyderabad deliberations on the CBD, begun at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and now with  193 parties ratifying.

CBD seeks to address all threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including threats to climate change, through scientific assessments, development of tools and transfer of technologies amongst other clauses.

The CBD’s Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety is a subsidiary agreement to protect biological diversity from potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology. To date, 163 nations have ratified the Cartegena Protocol.

But the CBD’s Nagoya Protocol ­– that asked for commitments on access and benefit-sharing amongst local communities, and is principal to achieving the Aichi targets –  has only 17 ratifications against the 50 needed to make the protocol a legal commitment.

Disagreements over how genetic resources and traditional knowledge should be shared led to the 2010 Nagoya Protocol, which CBD members are pledged to incorporate into their national laws that govern biodiversity.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goals separately call for “significant reduction” in biodiversity loss – but even these are likely to be missed.

Dias says new financial mechanisms will look at changing current funding that has destructive trade-offs for biodiversity, make efforts to make business more responsible and engage with the private sector. They will involve state and local governments in all nations.

Pavan Sukhdev, who chairs CBD’s new ‘High Level Panel on Global Assessment of Resources for implementing the Strategic Plan’ till 2020, says at least 70 percent of all finances required are investments rather than expenditure.

An amount of 130 billion dollars in 2013 will stretch to 430 billion dollars as resources needed by 2020 to achieve these targets, but over two-thirds of this will be investments while a third will be recurring maintenance expenditure, according to Sukhdev.

“Achieving one target will invariably have an impact on other targets as well. For instance, financing forest conservation will have a natural impact on the Aichi targets in water,” Sukhdev said.

The ‘Working Group 2’ here at the COP11 has had over 70 interventions from various countries, discussing ways and means to finance biodiversity conservation.

“We have inherited, from COP 10, the need for resource mobilisation as the most imperative of needs,” said Indian official delegate Hem Pande at the meeting. “We have to agree on some targets and commitments, or else we will be faced with collective failure.”

The European Union, while outlining its proactive stance on biodiversity conservation financing, reiterated the imperative to look at new sources of funding, not least from the ‘green economy’ sector.

The green economy, commonly associated with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), established by the G8 and developing country environment ministers, looks to take natural capital into account.

India is one of the first countries to start a TEEB programme within its environmental policies.

TEEB, however has been controversial among civil society sectors which say corporatisation of natural resources cannot be condoned, especially at the cost of local communities that conserve these resources.

The chairman of India’s National Biodiversity Authority, Balakrishna Pisupati, told IPS that  local communities should be involved in the TEEB process since most have innovative ways of earning livelihoods while conserving biodiversity.

This past Tuesday, May 22, marked World Biodiversity Day, but it came and went without too much public interest.

The loss of biodiversity has not received the same amount of attention as other environmental problems such as climate change, in part because there is less scientific knowledge and consensus on the subject, but not because it is a less urgent threat to life on Earth.

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), the rate at which species are becoming extinct is estimated to be up to 1,000 times higher today than pre-industrial times. Scientists have called this the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history – and the only one caused by a single living creature: humans.

Over the last few decades humans have changed ecosystems to a degree that has not previously been seen. To sustain economic growth and the increasing demand for food, resources, and space, large parts of the planet’s natural areas have been transformed into cultivated systems such as agriculture and plantations and into built environment.

But what is biodiversity and why should we care about it? According to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), it is the “variability among living organisms from all sources”. To understand the importance of biodiversity in a given habitat or ecosystem, think of biodiversity as a gigantic house of cards, with each card representing a single species or ecosystem function.

A few cards can be removed without any significant change to the house. But if the wrong card is pulled out, the whole house can collapse.

In the same way, biodiversity is a complex system of literally millions of different species – from tiny microorganisms to the top predators – interlinked through food webs, pollination, predation, and many other chemical and biological interactions, many of which we don’t even know about. Damaging part of the system – wiping out a few key species, for instance – may lead to the collapse of the whole system.

The world’s oceans and forests are particularly threatened. Industrial fishing, with trawls from large vessels, causes extensive damage to both marine health and species biodiversity. Strong global policies, such as the phasing out of existing industrial fishing subsidies, are needed to bring fishing yields to a sustainable level and protect marine biodiversity.

Deforestation is another major cause of biodiversity loss. Between 1990 and 2010, the global forest area shrank by 3.4 percent, or 1.4 million square kilometere – an area roughly the size of Mexico. Deforestation continues at a high rate in many countries, mainly in the form of conversions of forests to agricultural land, much of which is done illegally.

Preserving the world’s forests and natural habitats requires actions at the local, national, and global levels, but so far there has been a lack of political success. In 2002, the CBD committed to achieve “a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss” by 2010. But when delegates met in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, they concluded that the target had not been met, whether measured globally, regionally, or nationally.

The target was renewed with the adoption of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020, with 20 new targets, known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. In early 2011, an intergovernmental panel agreed to create the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) with the aim of making 2020 biodiversity targets reachable.

On a national level, stronger policies need to be adapted and subsidies that drive deforestation must be phased out. Workers in the often illegal logging industry should be assigned jobs that help protect the forest ecosystems rather than destroying them.

Such an approach can be replicated in other areas. In Brazil, for example, the TAMAR sea turtle programme hires ex-turtle poachers and pays them wages to protect rather than exploit the turtle population.

Cooperation between governments is also necessary to raise global awareness of biodiversity loss and to create targets to reverse this loss. The upcoming Rio+20 conference presents a great opportunity to renew and fortify global and national commitments to halt biodiversity loss.

Combating the sixth mass extinction will require a number of concrete measures to protect the world’s common biological wealth, and it is important that international leaders stand up and start making real decisions that can help protect nature.

*Bo Normander is Director of Worldwatch Institute Europe and author of “Biodiversity: Combatting the Sixth Mass Extinction” in the Worldwtach Institute’s annual flagship report State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity. Supriya Kumar is the Interim Communications Manager at Worldwatch.

(END)

By Stephen Leahy
VANCOUVER, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

The Earth’s life support system, which generates the planet’s air, water and food, is powered by 8.7 million living species, according to the latest best estimate. We know little about 99 percent of those unique species, except that far too many are rapidly going extinct.

Rio+20 is not a major conference on biodiversity, but everything discussed there will relate to biodiversity, said Braulio Ferreira de Souza. Credit: Courtesy of CDB

What can be done to slow down this process, which could eventually lead to the extinction of the human species?

“The challenge is to find the middle ground between economic interests, livelihoods and conservation,” says Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, the newly appointed head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the international agency charged with helping countries slow and reverse the loss of plants, animals and other species.

A native of Brazil, Dias holds a doctorate in zoology from the University of Edinburgh, and worked for many years at the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, where his last position prior to joining the CBD was as Secretary of Biodiversity and Forests.

In this interview with Tierramérica*, Dias called for biodiversity to be mainstreamed into all government policies and sectors.

Q: Why are species going extinct and why does it matter? 

A: I’ll give you an example. Agriculture has a lot of impact on biodiversity. Conversion of natural lands results in losses of services that natural ecosystems provide, like reducing flooding and cleaning and retaining water. We also lose genetic diversity, which means the loss of options for the future to combat diseases, and many other potentially useful things for humanity. Once a species goes extinct, it’s gone forever.

Q: How do you hope to slow the accelerating loss of species as the new executive secretary of CBD? 

A: One major goal is to mainstream biodiversity, which means involving all government departments at all national governments. We want them to understand and consider the impacts on biodiversity when they create rules and policies. Studies such as TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) provide the data about the importance of biodiversity to all countries’ economies.

It’s not easy to do and there are no magic solutions.

Q: Does the controversy over Brazil’s Forest Code illustrate the challenge of mainstreaming biodiversity? (Changes to the Forest Code may allow increased logging and clearance of the Amazon rainforest.) 

A: It is a concrete example of the challenge. Governments have to deal with competing interests. In this case, farmers and environmentalists, agricultural interests and the general public. The challenge is to find the middle ground between economic interests, livelihoods and conservation.

In 2011 Brazil’s lower house adopted a version of the Code that seemed to favor the interests of agriculture. In December, the Brazilian senate made changes that offer a more balanced approach. That version will now go before the lower house in March.

Brazil has been successful in reducing deforestation over the last decade due to better education about the real value of conservation and natural ecosystems. The public has definitely increased pressure on the governments.

Q: How important is education? 

A: Information is key, but so are financial instruments. For example, I would like to see an agreement at our next Convention of the Parties meeting (COP 11 in Hyderabad, India) for governments to use sustainability criteria for any of their purchases.

Q: COP 10 in 2010 resulted in the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation. What are countries now obligated to do as a result of the agreement? 

A: Nations made a strong commitment to reduce biodiversity losses at COP 10 in Nagoya. It was a major achievement. Each country now has a national strategy and an action plan to protect biodiversity in their countries. That commitment needs to be brought to sub-national levels and across all sectors so that there will be results on the ground. This is not easy for most countries to do and will require funding and technical assistance.

Q: The experts and diplomats who negotiated the Nagoya Protocol need to get their national governments to agree. When do you hope to have the Protocol ratified (and thus legally binding)? 

A: More than 90 countries have submitted a letter of agreement saying they intend to ratify the Protocol. However, it takes time to go through the various legislatures of every country. We do have some ratifications, but we will not get to the 50 required for the Protocol to be in force by COP 11 in October.

Q: What else will be on the agenda at COP 11 in Hyderabad? 

A: We will work on establishing a new funding mechanism and setting up a work program – that’s the “how to” part of meeting global biodiversity targets.

Conservation in the open oceans will be a special topic. No country has jurisdiction over these areas and so they are not part of any national plans. The open oceans are extremely important areas of biodiversity and ecological processes. (Ocean plankton provide much of the oxygen we breathe.)

Q: What about the Rio+20 conference this June? It is the 20th anniversary of the historic Earth Summit that gave birth to the CBD. 

A: There is a broad agenda about how to move to a green economy. This is not a major conference on biodiversity, but all of that will relate to biodiversity. If Rio+20 moves the agenda forward it will help with biodiversity.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank. (END)

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