UN official commends nation's green transformation

A senior United Nations official has called for more involvement from non-environmental sectors at next year's UN biodiversity conference in China to help address rapid species loss amid worsening global warming.

Commending China's green transformation and reiterating her faith in multilateralism, Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said she was optimistic the conference could help find solutions under the Chinese presidency of the COP.

The 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP 15, will be held in Kunming, Yunnan province, in October. It will elaborate on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and identify global biodiversity protection goals for the next 10 years.

"We are losing species at around a thousand times the natural extinction rate," Andersen said in Beijing on Nov 1. She added that we are in danger of losing around 1 million of the world's 8.7 million species, without providing a time frame. "Losing 1 million is something unimaginable."

The Danish economist and environmentalist said COP 15 will be held against the backdrop that the agreements made at COP 10 will expire by 2020 with its goals "unfortunately" not reached.

"So, now it's time to roll up our sleeves and to see how we can do this under China's leadership with a strong multilateral setting," Andersen said.

COP 10, held in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, passed the Aichi Biodiversity Targets that included 20 ambitious conservation goals to safeguard global biodiversity until 2020, ranging from preventing the extinction of threatened species to halving the rate of forest loss.

Andersen said she drew two lessons from the failure to reach the goals set in 2010: the targets lacked specific numerical targets and there was insufficient involvement from non-environmental sectors.

"We didn't have clarity," she said. "We have learned from the sustainable development goals that if we have targets that have numbers, it becomes easier for countries, for companies, for cities, for anyone, for me and you to measure how we're doing."

Success also depended on the involvement of non-environmental sectors, such as transportation and agriculture. "And if we do that, then yes, we can strike this agreement and make it work," Andersen said.

The COP 10 targets aimed to have at least 17 percent of the world's terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 percent of its coastal and marine areas protected by 2020.

In addition to extending those goals in the next targets, Andersen said the world could still do a lot more to enhance biodiversity protection. For example, it could promote biodiversity in urban areas and integrate biodiversity protection in transportation infrastructure development.

She said enhanced communication between city planners and transportation and biodiversity specialists was needed if urban areas were to achieve "healthier living" and "cooler temperatures".

"Biodiversity specialists are not planners of cities and transport," she said. "We need to talk to each other, because when we do that we can actually find biodiversity on roofs, in backyards, on balconies, farms and in our transport infrastructure. And that becomes part of the solution," she said.

Andersen added that China's experience in land restoration could be instructive for the rest of the world in promoting biodiversity protection.

"China has made massive restoration efforts, bringing back degraded land to forest land. This is very valuable," she said.

Andersen said she is also optimistic about COP 15 because of her belief in the "human spirit" and "multilateralism".

"I have a hope that in Kunming, under the Chinese presidency of the COP, we will find a solution and the degree of ambition and the means of implementation to ensure that when we meet 10 years after that, we have done that job and done it well."