The fight to tackle the biodiversity crisis on farms in countries across the EU faces significant obstacles despite the setting of national plans on the topic, the EU executive’s environmental department has said.
The common agricultural policies (CAP) of EU countries could help to reverse biodiversity loss, but they need “greater coverage” and “more promising schemes”, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment said in an article.
“Major challenges remain in terms of the status of farmland biodiversity,” it said.
“Effective implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) requires the active engagement of all government, society, and economy, mobilisation of resources from all sources, and continued effort and leadership.”
The EU is analysing whether it needs to strengthen its policy to effectively implement the GBF, as this week marks one year since the GBF, the final agreement from COP15, was agreed in Montreal.
Agricultural activities are difficult to make more nature positive, despite the incentive of their vast nature and climate impact, with the food sector conspicuously absent from the EU’s list of sustainable activities so far.
However, the CAP 2023-27 strategy aims to enhance biodiversity while shoring up farmers’ income and food security with 28 national plans across the EU.
The EU will communicate its biodiversity targets in general to the Convention on Biological Diversity in early 2024, including an assessment of whether its goals are aligned with the GBF, it said.
“This should allow to assess at COP16 whether the sum of all national targets suffice for achieving the global goals and targets.”
At the UN COP16 biodiversity conference in Colombia next year, governments and stakeholders should demonstrate “significant progress on all fronts” towards achieving their nature goals, the article added.
Advancements should include strategies, action plans, resource mobilisation, capacity building, benefit-sharing, and monitoring.
“I was happy to see at COP28 a clear recognition that we cannot keep the 1.5C goal within reach without nature. But time is running out,” said EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevicius.
“We need to accelerate technological, nature-based, and societal solutions within this decade. The EU is leading by example, but there’s still a long road ahead of us.”
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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