UN Biodiversity Targets
The UK’s wildlife is vanishing, and the government is not being honest about its own performance, according to the RSPB.
A Lost Decade for Nature
In 2010, the UK government signed up to 20 biodiversity targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity. They are known as ‘the Aichi biodiversity targets’.
The UK government’s self-assessment is that it failed on 14 of the 20 targets, but the RSPB says it’s performance was even worse. The government has failed on 17 out of 20 targets, and the UK has gone backwards on six of them.
According to State of Nature 2019, 41% of UK species are in decline, and 15% are threatened with extinction.
The government says that 28% of land is protected, but in reality only 5% is well-managed for nature. 24% of UK seas are theoretically protected, but only 10% of those areas are actively managed.
Funding for nature conservation has dropped by 30% between 2012/3 and 2017/8.
Beccy Speight of the RSPB said, ‘The UK is not alone in failing to meet the ambitious targets set out ten years ago, but it is now time that the high ambitions set by successive Governments becomes action at home…’
The RSPB is running a campaign to put the UK back on track, Revive Our World.
Global failure to stop the destruction of nature
Meanwhile, the world failed to meet a single target to stop the destruction of wildlife and ecosystems.
There has been some progress on increasing protected areas and combatting invasive species, but the natural world is still deteriorating. A target to halve the loss of natural habitats including forests has not been met.
There is particular concern about $500bn of harmful government subsidies for agriculture, fossil fuels and fishing, and more public money is invested in things that harm biodiversity than things that support it.
Plastic waste and excess nutrients have not been brought under control. More than 60% of the world’s coral reefs are under threat.
Extinction: the facts
Sir David Attenborough presented a BBC programme aired on Sunday 13th September, Extinction: the facts. He explained how the collapse of biodiversity has negative impacts for us, particularly relating to food production, climate and pandemics.
One million out of 8 million species are threatened with extinction – species loss at a rate 100 times faster than the natural one.
The loss of species is caused by poaching and the wildlife trade, over-fishing, pollution from the production of consumer products, climate change, and destruction of habitat. We have enough land for agricultural production, but we are still clearing more. Beef production is the biggest driver of habitat loss, and soy is another major factor.
If we keep destroying habitat at this rate, we’ll have 5 new emerging viruses like Covid every year.