TY - JOUR

T1 - Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability

AU - Díaz, Sandra

AU - Zafra-Calvo, Noelia

AU - Purvis, Andy

AU - Verburg, Peter H.

AU - Obura, David

AU - Leadley, Paul

AU - Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca

AU - De Meester, Luc

AU - Dulloo, Ehsan

AU - Martín-López, Berta

AU - Shaw, M. Rebecca

AU - Visconti, Piero

AU - Broadgate, Wendy

AU - Bruford, Michael W.

AU - Burgess, Neil D.

AU - Cavender-Bares, Jeannine

AU - DeClerck, Fabrice

AU - Fernández-Palacios, José María

AU - Garibaldi, Lucas A

AU - Hill, Samantha L. L.

AU - Isbell, Forest

AU - Khoury, Colin K.

AU - Krug, Cornelia B.

AU - Liu, Jianguo

AU - Maron, Martine

AU - McGowan, Philip J. K.

AU - Pereira, Henrique M.

AU - Reyes-García, Victoria

AU - Rocha, Juan

AU - Rondinini, Carlo

AU - Shannon, Lynne

AU - Shin, Yunne-Jai

AU - Snelgrove, Paul V. R.

AU - Spehn, Eva M.

AU - Strassburg, Bernardo

AU - Subramanian, Suneetha M.

AU - Tewksbury, Joshua J.

AU - Watson, James E. M.

AU - Zanne, Amy E.

PY - 2020/10/23

Y1 - 2020/10/23

N2 - Global biodiversity policy is at a crossroads. Recent global assessments of living nature (1, 2) and climate (3) show worsening trends and a rapidly narrowing window for action. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently announced that none of the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity it set in 2010 has been reached and only six have been partially achieved (4). Against this backdrop, nations are now negotiating the next generation of the CBD's global goals [see supplementary materials (SM)], due for adoption in 2021, which will frame actions of governments and other actors for decades to come. In response to the goals proposed in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) made public by the CBD (5), we urge negotiators to consider three points that are critical if the agreed goals are to stabilize or reverse nature's decline. First, multiple goals are required because of nature's complexity, with different facets—genes, populations, species, deep evolutionary history, ecosystems, and their contributions to people—having markedly different geographic distributions and responses to human drivers. Second, interlinkages among these facets mean that goals must be defined and developed holistically rather than in isolation, with potential to advance multiple goals simultaneously and minimize trade-offs between them. Third, only the highest level of ambition in setting each goal, and implementing all goals in an integrated manner, will give a realistic chance of stopping—and beginning to reverse—biodiversity loss by 2050.

AB - Global biodiversity policy is at a crossroads. Recent global assessments of living nature (1, 2) and climate (3) show worsening trends and a rapidly narrowing window for action. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently announced that none of the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity it set in 2010 has been reached and only six have been partially achieved (4). Against this backdrop, nations are now negotiating the next generation of the CBD's global goals [see supplementary materials (SM)], due for adoption in 2021, which will frame actions of governments and other actors for decades to come. In response to the goals proposed in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) made public by the CBD (5), we urge negotiators to consider three points that are critical if the agreed goals are to stabilize or reverse nature's decline. First, multiple goals are required because of nature's complexity, with different facets—genes, populations, species, deep evolutionary history, ecosystems, and their contributions to people—having markedly different geographic distributions and responses to human drivers. Second, interlinkages among these facets mean that goals must be defined and developed holistically rather than in isolation, with potential to advance multiple goals simultaneously and minimize trade-offs between them. Third, only the highest level of ambition in setting each goal, and implementing all goals in an integrated manner, will give a realistic chance of stopping—and beginning to reverse—biodiversity loss by 2050.

KW - Sustainability Science

UR - https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6515/411

U2 - 10.1126/science.abe1530

DO - 10.1126/science.abe1530

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 33093100

VL - 370

SP - 411

EP - 413

JO - Science

JF - Science

SN - 0036-8075

IS - 6515

ER -