Anne Larigauderie : Spokesperson for One Million Threatened Species

Sustainability MAG: What is your overall assessment of the situation?

Anne Larigauderie: The results are not good. As the global assessment of the IPBES in 2019 showed, biodiversity is not doing well at all. Experts indicate there that nature has been degraded at an unprecedented rate and scale. The report talks about one million species of plants and animals threatened with extinction out of an estimated total of 8 million.     

The number is staggering...

Yes, it strikes the mind. It shows the extent of the loss of biodiversity, the consequences for nature itself and, more selfishly, for us as human beings, since, over the last 50 years, most of the contributions people derive from nature have been declining. This includes, for example, the capacity of ecosystems to pollinate our crops or regulate the quality of our air, water, soils... This also includes non-material contributions, which are also very important and sometimes forgotten, such as the sense of identity that a particular place gives us or recreational experiences in forests or mountains.

There is a certain disillusionment following the Aichi or even Paris agreements on climate. Commitments, no matter how strong they may be, are not followed by facts. What is missing to achieve a real political shift in Kunming?

To be honest, governments rarely take the lead on these issues, but often follow the public opinion. In this regard, I believe that a real movement is underway, and that awareness is increasing among civil society actors. They are taking up environmental issues and are now calling upon governments to be more ambitious, in particular regarding the upcoming COP 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, to be held in Kunming, China. This is a cause for optimism.

Is the private sector one of these actors?

Absolutely. More and more enterprises are getting involved in biodiversity related issues. I see this as a fundamental movement and not just as what some still portray as greenwashing. The World Economic Forum, ahead of its Davos meeting in 2020, identified for the first time biodiversity loss as one of top five risks to businesses in its Global Risks Report 2020, and confirmed this ranking in its 2021 report. This is a significant first in terms of awareness regarding the deterioration of nature and its consequences on business, and an important step forward. Enterprises are starting to assemble in networks to think together about what biodiversity means for their activities and about setting up tools and indicators to measure their impacts. What is interesting – almost a bit of an upside-down world – is that today, these companies are the ones that expect governments to take concrete and ambitious measures.

Is the IPBES investigating the impacts and dependence of companies on biodiversity?

Yes, we have recently started to work on a future expert assessment on this topic. The aim is to help business actors to understand how their activities depend upon and impact biodiversity, and to assess the tools that exist in different sectors to monitor these impacts. It will be focused on methodologies, concrete, and applied, in order to help companies play their role fully.

You say that awareness is growing. In your opinion, is there a pre- and post-pandemic on the subject of biodiversity?

I think there is. At the beginning of the health crisis, biodiversity stakeholders feared that the subject would be overshadowed when it was supposed to be an important year for public attention. Instead, the world has come to realise the strong links between nature degradation, in particular, large scale deforestation in tropical areas, and the emergence of new diseases. We are now trying to better understand how diseases emerge from the environment, in order to become able to control these emergences before microbes spread widely and turn into a pandemic. Society has a better understanding of the risks to our health from deforestation, wildlife trade and consumption, some forms of tourism and trade... all of which increase contact between infected animals in natural environments and people at large scales.The pandemic may have allowed to highlight the importance of biodiversity and why it is crucial to conserve it in a logic of prevention.

So, where should the ambitions for the next decade lie?

COP 15 in Kunming meeting will decide on new targets for biodiversity for 2030. It will be important to avoid repeating the mistakes made in the past. It would be key to have aroadmapthatisbothambitiousand,importantly,asquantified as possible, with tools that allow governments and all actors to know what is important to measure and how to measure it. Then, regular meetings are needed, every two or three years, to monitor progress against these targets. Finally, the financial aspect must also be considered, especially to meet the challenges of developing countries that do not have the necessary means to protect their biodiversity.

We are talking about a 30% target of the Earth's surface under protected area by 2030. What are your thoughts?

It is excellent since protecting natural areas remains the best way to protect biodiversity. It is, however, very ambitious compared to the 16% of the Aichi target, and reaching 30% will require equally ambitious actions. This implies implementing effective protections both in developed countries and, above all, in developing countries. It is absolutely key to avoid "paper parks", that is, protected areas that exist only on paper and do not correspond to any reality on the ground! To reach this target, and all others, monitoring is essential. For this, a global biodiversity observation system is needed, comparable in scale and ambition to what exist to monitor climate change, including remote-sensing satellite capacity and in situ monitoring field stations. Biodiversity does not have adequate monitoring capacity to follow progress against the future 2030 targets, and building and maintaining such a system represents an important priority for the immediate future.

Let's talk about biodiversity and climate. The two subjects are intrinsically linked, and yet they seem to be treatedin a totally separate way: different reports, different agreements and commitments... Don't you see a problem in this approach?

There are risks in considering these two issues in silos. Some solutions seem to be suitable for mitigating climate change but involve a huge danger for biodiversity. The cultivation of large areas of bioenergy to limit the use of fossil fuels is an example, as this could lead to the destruction of natural habitats and to the loss of biodiversity. " par " The cultivation of large areas for bioenergy to limit fossil fuels use is an example, as this could lead to natural habitats destruction and biodiverisity loss. It is important to bring the two issues together and create a joint roadmap. In fact, a major part of the solution to climate change could come from an increased protection of forests which could absorb even more carbon from the atmosphere and limit climate warming. Forests currently absorb about one third of our annual emissions of carbon dioxide every year. This is what is referred to as “nature-based solutions”. By letting them expand further, we could benefit even more from their multiple ecosystem services, including their capacity to control climate change.