Robust criteria must be applied to identify areas of importance for biodiversity under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), as the lack of a clear definition could undermine nature recovery efforts, a study has warned.
The final GBF text “left the way forward unclear because it did not include a definition of these places”, said Andrew Plumptre, head of the Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) Secretariat, who co-authored the paper “Targeting site conservation to increase the effectiveness of new global biodiversity targets”, published in journal One Earth.
“This lack of clear direction could lead to a substantial increase in protected areas worldwide that at the same time fails to safeguard the most significant places for nature,” Plumptre said, calling for an agreement on a more precise definition for countries to use.
Under the GBF, agreed in 2022 at COP15, countries committed to protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030, with a specific focus on areas of particular importance for biodiversity.
CROSS-MAPPING DIFFERENT APPROACHES
Plumptre worked with a group of 19 scientists to draw up a more comprehensive method for determining areas that require urgent action.
The paper proposed a definition for these areas harnessing the criteria set out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in its Global KBA Standard, which is:
“Sites that contain significant populations/extents of threatened or geographically restricted species or ecosystems, or that have significant ecological integrity or irreplaceability, are significant for the maintenance of biological processes, or provide significant ecological connectivity to maintain the broader viability of KBAs.”
The IUCN KBA Standard incorporates a wide array of biodiversity features to identify globally significant sites for nature, such as:
- Globally threatened species and ecosystems
- Geographically restricted species
- Species assemblages and ecosystems
- Sites of outstanding ecological integrity
- Biological processes
- Irreplaceability
The authors of the paper cross-mapped 11 approaches for identifying biodiversity sensitive areas, finding that “KBA criteria not only encompass all the biodiversity elements targeted by other approaches but also fill important gaps”.
A CRITICAL CONTRIBUTION
After the publication of the KBA Standard in 2016, a KBA Partnership was established to enhance the definition of a “comprehensive, science-based, and robust set of criteria” to identify such areas, under the coordination of the Secretariat.
Identified KBAs cover around 8% of land and 2.5% of oceans worldwide.
“Targeting site-based conservation efforts at the species and ecosystems in KBAs should make much greater contributions toward halting global biodiversity loss than those resulting from the past 10 years of unguided protected areas expansion,” the paper said.
“In the absence of adequate guidance, countries tended to protect sites with low opportunity costs, rather than those that are important for biodiversity conservation, and focused on sites of national rather than global or regional importance,” Plumptre added.
KBAs are determined at a national level by individuals or by KBA coordination groups, established in 25 countries worldwide.
The KBAs identification process requires a budget ranging from $300,000 to $500,000 per country in the Global South and can take up to three years, the paper estimated.
“There are only seven years remaining for the implementation of the GBF, and it is critical that countries start identifying where they will conserve to achieve their contribution to protecting and conserving 30% of the world by 2030,” Plumptre concluded.
By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com
** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter **
