COP17 Biodiversity: France wishes to accelerate biodiversity protection

COP17 Biodiversity: what are France’s priorities?

COP17 will be a decisive step in assessing progress that has been made since the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted in 2022 and accelerate the necessary actions to achieve the goals set for 2030.

France’s priorities at COP17:

• Accelerate implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework with a global stocktake of progress that has been accomplished and commitments that still need to be delivered and scaled up.
• Better incorporate biodiversity into public policies and environmental planning.
• Mobilize more funds for biodiversity, particularly by involving the private sector and enlarging the base of countries contributing funds to developing countries.
• Strengthen synergies between protecting biodiversity, tackling climate change and preventing land degradation.
• Make science a focus of international decisions, to ensure policies based on the best available knowledge.
   

Why is biodiversity crucial and threatened?

Biodiversity is crucial to our food, our health and our economy. It also helps us deal with the effects of climate change.

In France, about 70% of species grown for food depend on animal pollination. More than 31,000 wild species are directly used by people for food, medicine and material worldwide.

Biodiversity is also a major economic issue: more than half of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) depends directly on nature and the services it renders, while hundreds of millions of jobs depend on healthy ecosystems.

Yet, ecosystems are under growing pressure from the artificialization of land and sea environments, the overexploitation of natural resources, climate change, pollution and the introduction of invasive alien species.

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), close to one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

Biodiversity: why protect forests, wetlands and coral reefs?

Biodiversity protection and the fight against climate change are closely linked. Healthy ecosystems help regulate the climate, store carbon and protect people from the consequences of global warming.

Although wetlands only cover around 6% of the Earth’s land surface, 40% of plant and animal species live or breed there. They play a vital role in water regulation and carbon storage, especially in their soil.

Forests are home to most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and play a vital role in carbon dioxide absorption. Yet they are extremely threatened: between 1990 and 2020, 420 million hectares of forests was deforested, equivalent to the area of the European Union.

For more information about France’s action to protect forests

Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the seafloor but are home to at least 25% of marine species. They are particularly vulnerable to ocean warming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), tropical coral reefs are expected to decline by 70 to 90% at 1.5°C of global warming and by more than 99% at 2°C.

It is therefore vital to conserve these ecosystems in order to curb biodiversity loss and strengthen societies’ resilience to climate change.

What are the goals of the global biodiversity framework for 2030?

Created in 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity is based on three main objectives:

• Conservation of biological diversity;
• Sustainable use of its components;
• Fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.

In 2022, at COP15, States adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which defines four key goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030.

In addition to ecosystem conservation and restoration, the Framework aims to reduce pressures on biodiversity and strengthen funds for its conservation.

It aims to gradually reduce the biodiversity funding shortfall estimated at $700 billion a year, by pledging to mobilize at least $200 billion annually by 2030 from private and public sources, and to reduce incentives and subsidies that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion by 2030.

For more information about the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at COP15 in 2022

COP17 in Yerevan will mark a major step in the implementation of this agreement. For the first time since its adoption, States will assess the progress accomplished worldwide and efforts that still need to be made.

For France, the success of COP17 hinges upon the international community’s ability to translate existing commitments into concrete, measurable and financed action, in order to curb biodiversity loss by 2030.

Crédit photo : Philémon Henry/MEAE