031 - Seascapes working for biodiversity conservation

031 - Seascapes working for biodiversity conservation

Latest version in this language: Version for electronic vote | Published on: 01 Sep 2020

RECOGNISING that oceans harbour substantial biodiversity that is threatened by pollution and other anthropogenic impacts, such as climate change and unsustainable fishing practices;

NOTING that waters outside protected areas represent substantial biodiversity conservation potential in their own right, interact ecologically with protected areas, and therefore are equally important for conservation, hence emphasis on “mainstreaming biodiversity” in the 2016 UN Biodiversity Conference in Cancun;

CONCERNED that failure to address socio-economic needs in management will compromise food security and livelihoods, exacerbate resistance to conservation, and perpetuate ecological degradation;

ALSO CONCERNED that climate change creates new challenges for oceans, raising the imperative for immediate, decisive and comprehensive responses;

AWARE that fishing is reliant on ocean productivity to support livelihoods, food security, nutrition and heritage, but can have significant ecological impacts and is especially vulnerable to climate change;

MINDFUL that many fisheries lack sufficient management attention or management capacity, making it harder to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing;

NOTING that small-scale fisheries (SSF) have special socio-economic importance and need community-based approaches;

ALSO MINDFUL that management of many fisheries, other uses of the marine environment, and protected areas are not well coordinated for supporting a holistic and integrated management approach accounting for all impacts on biodiversity and human needs;

EQUALLY MINDFUL that well-managed sustainable fishing practices, with regulations adapted to the possibilities of each area and with the necessary scientific knowledge and control, allow, as has been demonstrated, the sustainability of fishery resources and the environment in which they develop, while simultaneously benefiting coastal communities;

WELCOMING the highlighting of sustainable use in development of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) post-2020 global biodiversity framework, and the recognition that other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM) can promote biodiversity conservation;

ALSO WELCOMING the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021–2030 as a response to the need for knowledge and scientific capacity for biodiversity conservation; and

NOTING that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 recognises the importance of ocean ecosystems, and that other SDGs highlight the socio-economic needs to be met through ocean conservation;

The IUCN World Conservation Congress, at its session in Marseille, France:

1. ENCOURAGES the establishment of a Working Seascapes Initiative under the auspices of the Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM) Fisheries Expert Group to support technical analysis, stakeholder engagement, convening of practitioners, capacity building and information sharing to achieve the objectives set out below;

2. SUPPORTS collaboration among IUCN Members and components, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other stakeholders and governance bodies in development and implementation of the recommendations of the Working Seascapes Initiative; and

3. ENCOURAGES states to support targets and strategies for ocean conservation in the CBD post-2020 global biodiversity framework that:

a. recognise fishing as a substantial impact on marine biodiversity, affecting large numbers of people and facing important governance challenges, while also emphasising its contribution to supporting livelihoods, food security, nutrition and heritage;

b. seek innovative scientific, technological and governance approaches to balance trade-offs among fishing and other uses of the marine environment, and to benefit biodiversity conservation;

c. recognise sustainable use as a key element in biodiversity conservation, such that human use supports both environmental and socio-economic needs;

d. strengthen capacity for implementation, enforcement, monitoring and reporting on targets;

e. define clear principles for achieving climate resilience in marine ecosystems and human communities; and

f. result in comprehensive biodiversity conservation plans that are consistent with the SDGs, aligned with relevant policy instruments, and cover all of the world ocean by 2030.

The 2019 IPBES report presents a bleak picture of the state of global biodiversity and ecosystems, our progress toward protecting those natural assets, and the acceleration of adverse impacts. Furthermore, climate change exacerbates all of those distressing trends. The report concludes, somberly, that most of the 2020 Aichi Targets will be missed. The IPBES report also attempts to evaluate progress toward the SDGs through the lens of biodiversity conservation, but notes that this assessment is complicated by a lack of explicit linkages with nature in many of the SDGs. A compelling case is then made for the vital contributions that nature makes toward many SDGs.

A parallel case can be made about the linkages, or lack thereof, between social and economic issues and the Aichi Targets. With only a few notable exceptions, the Aichi Targets focus strongly on non-human elements. Humanity is present in the Aichi Targets largely as an impact on nature, rather than as a resource worth protecting and cultivating in its own right. As the SDGs are not sufficiently explicit in the importance of promoting nature in their achievement, so the Aichi Targets are not sufficiently explicit in the importance of promoting humanity.

It was therefore a critical development in the history of the CBD that its parties agreed midway through the 2011-2020 Decade on Biodiversity that the SDGs should be embraced alongside the Aichi Targets. This union has the potential to counterbalance the deficiency of nature in the SDGs and of humanity in the Aichi Targets. That this union has not yet borne fruit, per the findings of the IPBES report, is likely due in part to the fact that the SDGs were not influencing the CBD across the full Decade on Biodiversity. Their presence for the entirety of the Post-2020 Framework might yield a different result.

However, strategies executed in the Post-2020 Framework must embrace the spirit of these combined targets. In other words, sustainable use of natural resources to meet social and economic needs must rise to a place of prominence alongside the strong, and necessary, focus on preservation of nature. This motion aims to do just that, pulling together important directives established through previous WCC Resolutions and Recommendations, UN FAO policy instruments, and others toward an integrated and scaled set of targets and activities for ocean conservation and sustainable use to be included in the CBD Post-2020 Framework and executed by the IUCN community.

Notably, CBD COP15 will be hosted by China, a nation undergoing a fundamental shift in its approach to environmental stewardship. High level policy mandates for sustainability are permeating numerous sectors, including fisheries, aquaculture, and other ocean uses. EDF is working with partners in China to support this momentum, which increasingly is becoming focused on COP15. This motion aims to build international momentum to parallel, influence, and support that in the COP15 host nation and through the 2020-2030 decade ahead.

Implementation of comprehensive sustainable use plans at a global scale will ultimately be a resource-intensive endeavor, costing on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars or more over the next decade. This motion does not aim to execute the actual implementation, but rather to enhance the supporting architecture to connect, educate, and empower the practitioners putting conservation and sustainable use into practice. 
  • Coral Triangle Center [Indonesia]
  • European Bureau for Conservation and Development [Belgium]
  • Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre [Cuba]
  • The Nature Conservancy [United States of America]
  • WWF - New Zealand [New Zealand]

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