Klement Tockner is Director General of the Senckenberg Nature Research Society and Professor of Ecosystem Sciences at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Stefan B. Wintels is CEO of KfW Bankengruppe.
(Photo: Imago, PR)
At the UN World Summit on Nature in Montreal, 196 participating countries made a breakthrough to secure the future of our planet. Everything now depends on making the decisions a reality. It is about the extremely endangered preservation of biological diversity, i.e. the protection of ecosystems, species and genetic variations.
The information from around 3.5 billion years of natural evolution is stored in their unique diversity. Diversity secures our nutrition, promotes natural climate protection and provides natural substances from which we obtain medicinal active ingredients.
According to calculations by the World Economic Forum, nature’s services amount to 40 trillion euros per year – this corresponds to almost 40 percent of global economic power. However, nature’s contribution to our prosperity is acutely endangered. Why?
Our prosperity and our quality of life depend on intact ecosystems. However, the ecological balance is getting more and more out of joint because we are destroying our “natural capital” at breakneck speed. The greatest threat comes from the loss of biodiversity.
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Never before in human history have we lost so many species in such a short period of time. Losses today are up to a hundred times higher than the average over the past ten million years. Once lost usually means: lost forever. Because we cannot estimate exactly what the loss of 20 or even 50 percent of biodiversity would mean for mankind, we are obliged to take special precautions and care.
Species protection is overshadowed by the climate crisis
Since the topic of biodiversity has so far been overshadowed by the climate crisis, it does not yet have the priority in business and society that would be necessary given the extent of the crisis. With the global framework agreement on the conservation of biological diversity agreed in Montreal, there is now an opportunity to finally initiate a turnaround.
Global Challenges – idea and regular authors
A key conference decision is to designate at least 30 percent of land and sea as nature conservation zones by 2030. So far it is only 17 or seven percent.
Area protection is considered one of the most effective instruments of species protection – and also of climate protection – because this protection starts with the greatest threat to biodiversity: the loss of habitat. However, sustainable protection does not mean “no entry” in all cases. The key also lies in the sustainable use of part of these areas, whereby the indigenous peoples and people living there are to be included in all measures from the outset and their rights are to be fully respected.
So what to do now? We need a fundamental transformation of our way of life and an economic order in which nature has a real price. Protection of biodiversity must become an elementary part of every corporate strategy. “Business as usual” – understood as a gradual development, combined with a self-commitment of a few pioneering companies – is praiseworthy, but does not even begin to meet the challenge.
Price external effects into the goods
Instead, we must now take a big step forward: We must understand the protection of biodiversity as a task for society as a whole and plant biodiversity in the DNA of our economic system. Ultimately, it is about the question of what living conditions we want to leave behind for our children and grandchildren. Politics, business, science and civil society must now pull together. In order to curb the decline in biodiversity by 2030 and still achieve the 1.5-degree target in climate protection, it is necessary to consider both challenges together.
We have to calculate the external effects that our economic activities entail and price them into the goods. This not only helps nature, it also creates justice for the global South and future generations. We need convincing and clear indicators to measure our current actions against nature. Clear rules are just as indispensable as convincing monitoring and binding reporting.
In addition, we have to check the effect of government subsidies and subsidies and, if necessary, improve or change course. A big step has already been taken: by 2030, environmentally harmful subsidies of at least 470 billion euros per year are to be phased out worldwide.
Montreal sends an encouraging signal: We must accelerate the much-needed transformations – in transport, in the energy sector, in industry, in agriculture and also in each and every one of us. This requires all social forces to work together in order to give the topic of biodiversity the right place: in the middle of society.
The authors:
Klement Tockner is Director General of the Senckenberg Nature Research Society and Professor of Ecosystem Sciences at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Stefan B. Wintels is CEO of KfW Bankengruppe.
More: Biodiversity and its price