After the UN climate conference COP27, which had a rather disappointing ending almost two weeks ago, on November 20 in Egypt, the world community will meet again next week in Canada. Starting Wednesday, Montreal is all about preserving biological diversity. The expectation of the UN Conference for the Protection of Species is great: the result must be a global pact for biodiversity.
How bad are the habitats and species? The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports that animal and plant species on the International Red List are bad: of the 147,500 species recorded, nearly 41,500 are in endangered categories. And therefore more species than ever before. Along with the climate crisis, species extinction is considered the greatest threat to our planet and our very lives.
This means nothing less than that we are now in the midst of the greatest species extinction since the end of the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Science has long called this the “sixth great mass extinction” and, according to many experts, it’s happening right now before our very eyes. In May 2019, the World Biodiversity Council IPBES published its global report, according to which one million species will be under acute threat in the coming decades:
A quarter of mammal species, one in eight bird species, over 30% of sharks and rays, and 40% of amphibian species are threatened.
Austria is not an environmental model country
According to the Federal Environment Agency, about half of the approximately 500 types of biotopes that occur in Austria are threatened with total destruction, are endangered or endangered. Thus, the overall picture that emerges from the Red Lists of threatened plants is worrisome: in the best-studied group of plants, the ferns and flowering plants, over 60% of species appear on the Red Lists. A similar picture emerges for mosses and lichens.
In terms of plants, the completely revised third edition of the “Red List of Ferns and Flowering Plants in Austria” was published in 2022. The updated list shows that species decline in ferns and flowering plants continues unabated. 1,274 ferns and flowering plants are on Austria’s new “Red List”. 66 species are extinct or have disappeared from across Austria, 235 species are endangered, and there are another 973 species that are threatened to a lesser or unknown degree.
Furthermore, more than half of all amphibians and reptiles in Austria are endangered, as are nearly half of all fish and a third of all birds and mammals.
World Environment Conference
“The species protection conference should bring about a Paris-like agreement,” said Karim Ben Romdhane, an expert on international species protection at WWF Austria. Negotiations for this have been taking place since 2018, the year in which the CBD COP 14 was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, that is, the headquarters of this year’s COP27. The abbreviation CBD stands for “Convention on Biological Diversity”.
The reason the follow-up conference is in the spotlight this year is the call for an agreement modeled on the Paris Climate Agreement, which was adopted in 2015. Although the Paris Agreement was needed as a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, which expired by 2020, Montreal is now poised to deliver a follow-up agreement to the Nagoya Protocol agreed at the 2010 United Nations Conference on Endangered Species in Japan. At the time, this was hailed by many environmental NGOs as a “landmark result”.
“To reverse this trend, we need an ambitious agreement on biodiversity, like the Paris Agreement on climate change. A global nature conservation pact with binding and measurable targets by 2030”, asked the WWF expert. One of the main requirements for CBD COP 15 is that, when At least 30% of land and sea under protection by 2030 should be provided – the WWF also supports this concern.
Julia Balasch, from WWF’s Generation Earth youth network, emphasized that the climate and species protection crises are linked and that these “twin crises” cannot be resolved on their own. In the last decade, nature has absorbed 54% of man-made greenhouse gases, Balash also referred to another WWF study.
Arno Aschauer, WWF’s Head of Species and Habitats, finally referred to the role of Austria, the “EU latecomer in nature conservation”, which, according to an assessment by the EU Environment Agency, occupies only the penultimate place in the comparison of the EU in terms of biodiversity. With 15% of the country’s area covered by Natura 2000 protected areas, Austria is also well below the EU average (19%). “Management of protected areas is inadequate, which is why the EU is again suing for infringement,” warned Aschauer.
After several postponements, the 15th United Nations Conference on Endangered Species takes place under the presidency of China. It builds on the 1992 World Conference on Nature and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) with currently 196 contracting parties. The aim is to create a world that “lives in harmony with nature” by 2050. More than 10,000 people are expected at COP15, concludes the WWF.