Sustainability: What the new Global Biodiversity Framework for 2030 means for business

Shivin Kohli rounds up the top takeaways from COP15 and the newly agreed post-2020 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

LONDON, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, March 27, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ —
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) was held from 7-19 December 2022 in Montreal, Canada. In this article, Shivin Kohli, Senior Manager for Economics Strategy at Access Partnership, rounds up the top takeaways from COP15 and the newly agreed post-2020 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, while discussing what they mean for businesses.

What is biodiversity and why does it matter

Our research with the World Economic Forum estimated that over half of global GDP is at risk from biodiversity and nature loss – a figure that rises to 63% in the Asia Pacific region. By any estimate, we are losing nature at an unprecedented rate – experiencing the “sixth mass extinction event” in the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year-history, with this predicament caused directly by humans.

Businesses in three socioeconomic systems precipitate much of the major threats to biodiversity:

– Food, land and ocean use;
– Infrastructure and the built environment;
– Energy and extractives.

The good news is that, by acting on 16 ambitious, systemic, but achievable transitions, they could also unlock a US$10.1 trillion “nature-positive” economy by 2030. Businesses in all sectors and of all sizes need to pay attention to these considerations and do their part for sustainability.

While the climate COP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt gathered much of the headlines in November of last year, countries party to UNCBD COP15 were preparing to agree an ambitious, landmark deal for nature and biodiversity in Montreal, Canada the following month. This would be the culmination of many years of negotiations, working groups, and agreements, ably chaired by China and hosted by Canada, resulting in the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) being adopted on 19 December 2022.

Ambitious but achievable goals

Four goals and 23 targets for achievement by 2030 – ambitious, but specific, and achievable. Signatories are obligated to monitor and report at most every five years on progress against these goals and targets, with global trend and progress reports expected. Governments and businesses must take responsibility for these targets with varying but equally important sub-goals and sub-targets.

A truly landmark overall goal is to make sure we halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, described in simple and clearly understandable terms much like the “1.5 degrees Celsius pathway” for climate. In essence, we must add more back to nature than we take from it, and we have seven years to get our act together to do so. Quite like the climate and global SDGs – what better window to overcome all systemic challenges?

What’s even more pertinent is that climate change and biodiversity loss are inextricably interlinked. Climate change is responsible for 11-16% of biodiversity loss (depending on the ecosystem) while loss of forests, critical marine flora, and other carbon sinks worsens temperature rise. We must carefully and intentionally solve both, without missing double-wins and crucially without creating new risks. For instance, nature-based solutions such as reforestation and agroforestry can provide up to a third of cost-effective emissions reduction that we need for net-zero – a key win-win. On the other hand, soaring demand for rare earth minerals like nickel and neodymium in renewables technology will likely create pressure for commercialised ocean mining – a risk with consequences we are not even scientifically equipped to understand.

Near-zero

The loss of areas of high biodiversity importance, including ecosystems of high ecological integrity, must be brought to near-zero by 2030. With nearly all of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots falling within large urban areas, including Brussels, Cape Town, Chicago, Jakarta, and Singapore, the onus will very much fall on all of us to achieve this target where we live, not in some remote location thousands of kilometres away. A third of the decarbonisation needed by 2050 comes from nature solutions and green infrastructure. For this reason, companies that invest in green technologies (both internally and as a service offering) are central to achieving the near-zero goal.

“30 by 30” – restoration and conservation

One of the key goals for 2030 is that 30% of the world’s degraded terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine ecosystems must have restoration completed or underway by 2030. We lag far behind these targets, but promising action on forests and wetlands in recent years offer hope – and the good news is that once protected, we can save millions on converting new land and building new infrastructure to combat increasingly destructive weather patterns.

Additionally, 30% of the world’s lands, inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans must be officially under national protection and conservation efforts by 2030. We are halfway there in terrestrial ecosystems – 17% – but are lagging in marine areas – 10%. This indicates strong will, but it needs to be met by decisive action.

Mandatory reporting for large transnational businesses

The GBF proved a wake-up call for the private sector – governments will require assessments and disclosure on biodiversity from all large transnational businesses and financial institutions by 2030 at the latest. This is the first time a multilateral agreement has explicitly outlined expectations from business, built with strong business support – more than 330 businesses representing combined revenues of over US$1.5 trillion signed the #MakeItMandatory Campaign pledge prior to COP15.

Food wastage

30% of food produced is wasted today – whether in the supply chain or at the point of consumption – and up to 50% in high-income countries. Meanwhile, millions go hungry as the food system is a direct threat to over 72% of threatened or near-threatened species globally. The GBF mandates that this be halved by 2030 – implying that each of us must service our needs but not bow to our greed.

Phasing out subsidies that harm the environment

The GBF also mandates that US$500 billion of harmful subsidies that harm biodiversity – including for chemical fertilisers and fossil fuels – be phased out by 2030, while incentives that encourage sustainable land and water usage be scaled up. Harming nature is harming ourselves, so why should we continue to make it cheaper, of all things?

The world must mobilise at least US$200 billion per year in domestic and international biodiversity-related funding from both public and private sources by 2030 – twice the 2020 baseline but a fraction of the estimated US$2.7 trillion we estimate is needed to unlock a nature-positive economy. All, however, an even smaller fraction of the trillions that were mobilised to mitigate the impact of COVID in just the last three years. Again – if we want to think big, we do.

Strength in numbers

196 countries are party to the UNCBD, of which 188 governments attended COP15 to agree the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, with two non-Parties also attending (the US and the Vatican). This is an unprecedented level of global consensus, similar to the Paris Agreement signed at the Climate COP21 in 2015, and demonstrates a global appetite for change.

Tech companies and biodiversity

While the COPs and their frameworks create the right policy momentum for climate and biodiversity action, the reality is that policy cannot keep pace with the urgency of these twin crises. Businesses, however, are nimble and innovative enough to drive the change faster and more decisively. It is also entirely in their self-interest – not only do they face numerous transitional and physical risks from climate change and biodiversity loss, they could also gain a first-mover advantage from switching to net-zero and nature-positive business models that will create trillions of dollars in value over the coming decade.

In fewer sectors is this be true than the tech sector. In addition to being among the most globalised and consolidated sectors in the world economy, meaning collective action from just a few companies can create tipping points for the entire industry, it is also a critical enabler for net-zero and nature-positive. Our work with WEF found that over 80% of the nature-positive economy – over USD8.5 trillion – will depend on Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, from AI and big data analytics to additive manufacturing. Satellite data will be essential in applications ranging from remote sensing and understanding ecosystem health to disaster management and identifying mineral deposits without destroying ecosystems.

So what can tech leaders do to solve these challenges? The first step is to recognise that data is the currency of sustainable outcomes. tcomes. For instance, at what point do organisations begin their sustainability journey? The answer is by measuring their impact, which is no easy feat and requires masses of complex data from various parts of the organisation (for instance, on land or water usage) to be standardised, consistently collected, and securely stored. Many of the tools that help businesses do so – Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability platform, for instance – also require such data. This data is then used to set targets, measure progress, and support decision-making on how to implement better business practices.

IT operations can do their bit to support their company’s ESG strategy. To do so, they must first find out what data frameworks and architecture can provide the data required for making ESG decisions, as well as new products and services that are more sustainable but rely on data. In an ideal world, a company’s IT operations and capabilities should help support sectoral decarbonisation. In other words, can you improve the energy efficiency and carbon impact of your operations and work with industry players to do the same, perhaps by building a roadmap? Can we do something even newer, such as comparing the energy efficiency of using satcomms versus terrestrial comms? The sky is clearly not the limit in this instance.

The second is to recognise that the use of technology and data is a major energy drain. IT leaders must recognise this and find ways to improve the energy efficiency of their data infrastructure. Moving computing workloads from on-premises data centres to hyperscale cloud facilities is a good option. For instance, our research with AWS in Singapore highlighted that HDCs could reduce the carbon footprint of businesses and organisations by an average of over 78%. The elephant in the room is the source of energy for data centres, which simply must become renewable. Tech companies have an important role to play in the renewable energy transition by enabling renewable deployments, grid flexibility, and consumer solutions to manage new energy sources.

Steward leadership is critical across every part of an organisation, and one thing we have noticed in many large tech companies that have successfully reoriented themselves to sustainable growth is strong leadership and organisational change to embed sustainability in all decision-making processes. These include tech titans like Microsoft, telcos like SingTel, and broad-based IT hubs like Tata Consultancy Services. Our advice for tech businesses is to follow their lead and implement meaningful climate protection policies.

Oana Baetica
AP
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