Susan Price of the Green Left talks with Canadian ecosocialist Marc Bonhomme about the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP15), held in Montreal from 7 to 19 December 2022.
By Susan Price
(S. P.): COP15 in Montreal has received much less media attention than the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt. Why is this?
Marc Bonhomme (M. B.): COP15 was much less publicised than the climate one despite the fact that the looming catastrophe it is supposed to combat, the sixth great extinction, is of the same magnitude. Of course, there are many people who already notice and deplore the disappearance of insects, especially honey bees, or the extinction of some large mammals, especially in Africa, or the destruction of habitats, in particular the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and forests in Indonesia as a result of palm oil plantations, but they do not consider their own impact to be as decisive as the various climate extremes that make the news on a daily basis.
Heads of state were not even invited to COP15. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is not legally binding, not to mention that although the catch-all term sustainable appears 15 times in the declaration, what was agreed was a voluntary monitoring mechanism similar to the one in Paris.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), equivalent to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, produced a startling report on the subject. Of the estimated 8 million plant and animal species on Earth (including 5.5 million insect species), the current rate of global species extinction is higher than the average over the past 10 million years by tens or even hundreds of times, and this rate is accelerating.
Up to one million species are threatened with extinction, many of them within the next few decades. According to a Guardian report on COP15, the international community failed entirely to achieve any of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets agreed in Japan in 2010 to halt the loss of the natural world. Carbon Brief reported in a study published in February [2022] that governments around the world spend at least $1.8 trillion each year on subsidies that worsen biodiversity loss and climate change. This is equivalent to 2% of global GDP. The GBF agreed to eliminate and/or redirect – for what purpose and to where, we don’t know – just over a quarter of that amount ($500 billion).
S. P.: What do you think of the rich countries’ refusal to allocate the necessary funds to preserve biodiversity?
M. B.: The main objective of the Montreal COP was to reach an agreement to preserve 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030 (known as 30×30) – an objective mainly supported by the rich countries of the old imperialism – rather than trying to reach an agreement on how this objective should be financed, which was the main preoccupation of the dependent countries of the global South.
The strategic habitats, the rainforests and mangroves, are in the South but the money is in the North, which is the main culprit because of the way it consumes. The South demanded that $100 billion be allocated to a specific fund, a fraction of what is needed to implement the framework. Neither target was achieved.
The climate change mitigation fund for dependent countries agreed at the climate COPs has not yet reached the level of $100 billion per year from 2020. The new fund for loss and damage established at COP27 has not yet been made available, and the one for biodiversity is not even being discussed.
What has changed the situation was not the anti-diplomatic blow of the abrupt departure from the meeting room of some 60 delegations from countries of the South. In addition to that, the countries of the old imperialism sowed discord among the countries of the South themselves by differentiating, not without reason, between the emerging and the non-emerging countries. They argue that China, Brazil and other big economies that have grown substantially in the last 30 years since the UN environmental treaties were agreed should contribute much more.
The countries of old imperialism in collusion with the emerging countries – an alliance symbolised by the China-Canada co-presidency provisionally reconciled by circumstances – managed to impose on the countries of the non-emerging South (in particular African countries) the consensus under a halo of victory to save the planet’s biodiversity. Three African countries explicitly and forcefully rejected the so-called consensus on the GBF.
The frustration of countries in the non-emerging South is understandable. According to the final agreement – which is supposedly equivalent to the Paris Climate Agreement – rich countries will put no more than a ridiculous $20 billion in the pot by 2025, rising to $30 billion by 2030. While the $200 billion needed annually to implement national biodiversity strategies will come from public and private resources, the limited North-South subsidy will include official development assistance. But that is not all. The private sector will also benefit from $500 billion in redirected annual subsidies.
S. P.: As an ecosocialist, why is it so important to preserve biodiversity and how does it relate to the fight against climate change?
M. B.: Given the close link between the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis – hence the double priority of the 1992 Earth Summit – it is alarming that the latter is so marginalised when nature absorbs more than 50% of man-made CO2 annually. According to The Econosmist, […] Humans emit some 37 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases [GHGs] every year. By absorbing carbon, plants sequester 11 billion tonnes a year and release oxygen. Another 10 billion tonnes of carbon are dissolved in the oceans. Science does not guarantee that this absorption can be sustained at the rate of deforestation, forest fires, acidification and ocean warming.
On the emissions side, according to the UN Emissions Gap Report 2022, […] the food system is currently responsible for almost a third of total GHG emissions […] The largest contribution comes from agricultural production (7.1 GtCO2e [gigatonnes of CO2], 39%), including the production of inputs such as fertilisers, followed by land-use change (5.7 GtCO2e, 32%).
As The Guardian points out, […] One of the biggest problems with the 30×30 target is its implications for the rights of indigenous peoples, who are the custodians of around 80% of the world’s biodiversity and only 20% of its land. Throughout history, conservation has forced indigenous peoples off their lands and has led to countless human rights violations. The current text of the framework recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and their essential role in conservation but questions remain as to how this part of the goal will be implemented.
The indigenous presence had representation in all ambits of COP15 except the decision-making bodies. The word indigenous appears 20 times in the GBF. Their knowledge of nature and its services, combined with their material and political deprivations make them – in the eyes of the banks – easy and useful prey to enhance and protect natural capital which, according to a former vice-president of Friends of the Earth, is supposed to provide benefits worth an estimated $125-140 trillion a year, equivalent to more than 1.5 times global GDP, according to Le Devoir (Montreal).
S. P.: Were there any positive results from the summit? I read, for example, that the final agreement makes no reference to stopping deep seabed mining. Did fossil fuel and mining interests prevail?
M. B.: Seabed mining (as well as the plastic reduction target) is not mentioned in the GBF, although the International Seabed Authority, a UN agency, has already granted around 30 deep sea mining exploration permits worldwide covering several hundred thousand square kilometres.
The overall risk from pesticides – but not pesticides directly – must be halved, not reduced by three quarters. The same goes for food waste. But the meat diet remains unmentioned despite being a key cause of habitat destruction which, after climate change, mainly explains the loss of biodiversity.
All in all, the 30×30 issue remains central but is far from having satisfied everyone. According to The Guardian, given that the IPCC noted that safeguarding biodiversity requires 30-50 per cent of the planet’s land and sea, some environmentalists think that countries should aim for the top figure of 50 per cent, which would be equivalent to the Paris Agreement’s ultimate aspiration of limiting global warming to 1.5⁰C, as opposed to 30 per cent at 2⁰C.
For other environmentalists the goal should be to protect nature everywhere: We need 100%, we have already lost too much nature.
But it will not be the greedy neoliberal states that will support the management of protected areas by indigenous peoples, except for a down payment. According to consultancy McKinsey & Co, the carbon offset market is already set to grow to more than $50 billion by 2030, according to The Toronto Star.
The World Bank recently lent Brazil $500 million to meet its climate targets, which has strengthened the private sector’s ability to access carbon credit markets, according to Carbon Brief (Reuters). We can be sure that this protection will tolerate exceptions at least for open-pit mining and hydropower for the benefit of the new all-electric economy of green capitalism.
Of course, we cannot forget the resistance and struggle of the indigenous peoples but they can only win if the white peoples overcome their racism to ally with them on the streets and support them at the ballot box. The small demonstrations at COP15 do not bode well. Do we wait until we are on the ropes to mobilise?
Green Left
Translation for South Wind: Loles Oliván Hijós
Taken from: vientosur.info
