What can be done?
Parties to the CBD must agree to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to achieve a nature-positive world by 2030 for the benefit of the planet and people. Transformational change to humanity’s current way of living is vital, requiring decisive local and global action from all countries and all sectors of society. IUCN is helping create the tools to guide, monitor and measure such action.
Global targets must be measurable, underpinned by science, and have explicit outcomes. These should include action to tackle threats to biodiversity (specifically genes, species and ecosystems), and to protect and restore the benefits nature provides to people. The Global Species Action Plan highlights the importance of species conservation and supports implementation of the framework by setting out the actions required to achieve the species outcomes in the framework’s mission, goals, and targets.
Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures should be expanded to cover at least 30% of the planet by 2030, while recognising the rights and roles of Indigenous peoples and local communities (“30 x 30”). The 30% must incorporate all areas of particular importance for biodiversity, including key biodiversity areas (KBAs), with steps taken to ensure habitat connectivity. As the global standard for effective area-based conservation, the IUCN Green List can both support the achievement of “30 x 30” and act as a simple indicator of progress.
Given the links between the climate and nature crises, Parties should view targets within the framework as aligned to existing climate commitments. Two-thirds of governments supporting the Paris Agreement include Nature-based Solutions in their national climate plans, for example. The IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions will help Parties ensure such projects are as effective as possible.
Monitoring the framework’s implementation is essential and IUCN supports the programme of monitoring through indicators proposed in the draft framework. Parties should particularly consider the IUCN Red List of Threatened Speciesas the world’s most comprehensive information source on global extinction risk.
The framework must engage countries, cities, sub-national governments, Indigenous peoples and local communities, industry, women, youth, farmers, civil society and the private sector. It should be inclusive, understanding of gender roles and inequalities, and reflect links between nature and culture.
To facilitate such engagement all elements of the framework should be scalable, from local to global levels, and allow anyone to determine their contributions towards global targets. The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric, co-created by IUCN, can be used to quantify the impact of specific actions in specific places towards halting global species extinctions.
