Biodiversity Basics
Safeguarding an animal’s welfare has often been regarded as something radical rather than something necessary, at least when compared to protecting species or ecosystems. But respecting an animal’s physical and Continue Reading →
Tag: ecosystem
Biodiversity protections throughout the supply chain
It was through the consultation of both private sector and civil society, as part of our current work with the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership, that ANIMONDIAL identified an urgent need to integrate biodiversity safeguards through the Travel & Tourism value and supply chains.
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Evidence indicates that the operation of both value and supply chains, largely integrated in the destination, are particularly harmful to nature. Just imagine all the raw materials that Travel & Tourism businesses need to operate. There’s food and freshwater, of course, but then there are the natural materials used for energy and fuel, furniture and furnishings, and all the guest activities that happen in the destination. Travel & Tourism business ultimately need to make sure that the sourcing of materials and their activities on the ground are sustainable and not detrimental to the locations concerned. Flying in millions more people a year into urban and rural locations can take its toll, and on occasion, this causes restricted availability of those resources to local communities. This has generated ill feeling towards tourists and even unrest as local people raise concern about the impact. In some locations, numbers of tourists have been restricted as a result.
Seeking reassurance that the sourcing of raw materials and tourism activities do not have a negative impact can be complex. It requires a need for each business to assess their dependencies and impacts on nature but to also consider the needs of local people. This will need to include an assessment of the business’ direct operations but also their indirect operations, through their respective suppliers.
Working with WTTC and its partners, detailed implementation guidance is now available for T&T businesses (referred to as Nature Positive Tourism), to specifically assess direct business operations. However, unless a tourism business monopolises the activities of its suppliers, ensuring full integration of its Nature Positive commitments, it far more difficult. The assessment of the dependencies and impacts of supply and demand to the destination activities or excursions will largely be reliant on the approachability and interest of the supplier. Another approach may therefore be required to ensure suppliers are mindful of their impacts and are actively seeking to reduce them.
ANIMONDIAL advocates supplier auditing as a guaranteed option to ensuring the right measures are in place and activities are aligned with the business client policies. This is a process, usually undertaken by a third party, that assesses the supplier against the operational requirements of the tour operator, measuring compliance, and providing remedial guidance to encourage improvement. This action has already been deployed to improve animal welfare in global attraction suppliers, and I believe a similar approach is possible using Nature Positive Tourism criteria.
Working with our Partners, the Preverisk Group, ANIMONDIAL is building on its animal welfare auditing criteria to incorporate nature positive objectives and actions. A robust and comprehensive Nature Positive supplier auditing service will soon be available to tourism businesses that are keen to apply their nature positive commitments across the supply chain in their destinations. Combining ANIMONDIAL expertise with global supplier auditing services!
Will you join us?
Preverisk and ANIMONDIAL would welcome collaboration with a travel business partner to help develop this new Nature Positive auditing service and ensure its utmost practical relevance. If you would be interested in playing a leading part in the creation of this new, ground-breaking service to support our sector, please find out more about our partnership with Preverisk, and partnership with Preverisk so we can tell you all about it. Thank you!
Beyond Sustainable Tourism: Embracing Nature Positive
Explores how tourism players can mitigate their impacts and embrace opportunities, to transition to a nature positive world.
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Creating a sustainability plan can be a daunting prospect. With so many ‘sustainability’ measures to consider, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. From ending poverty and single-use plastics, to managing energy consumption and animal interactions, or halting biodiversity loss and carbon emissions, the expectation on tourism businesses to understand and adopt measures to protect ‘people and planet’ can often result in gridlock.
How to BREAK the gridlock
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a good place to start, in that they provide clarity on the outputs required to minimise economic, social and environmental risk. However, with most resources displaying the SDGs in numerical order, there is a tendency to select individual Goals without considering their context or recognising the ‘trade-offs’ between them.
The Stockholm Resilience Institute, on the other hand, presents the SDGs as a tiered ‘wedding cake’ (see below). This helpfully illustrates how the economic goals are reliant on the fulfilment of the social goals, which are in turn dependent on the environmental, or biosphere goals (SDGs 6, 13, 14 & 15). This not only demonstrates our reliance on biodiversity and nature for our wellbeing and prosperity but highlights the reasons we must protect it.
One challenge of the SDGs is that they don’t help to define which targets are most relevant for your business and its operational impacts. All too often, we approach sustainability through generic, mainstream actions, rather than considering sector-specific impacts alongside our individual business’ sustainability strategy and which actions are most relevant to achieving it.
SECTOR-specific guidance
Sector-specific guidance provides a clearer understanding of where a business-type has the greatest impact. For instance, the World Travel & Tourism Council’s Nature Positive Travel & Tourism report provides an overall industry perspective, indicating how travel and tourism is both dependent on and impacts nature, together with more specific advice for each sector. The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality advises hotels and hospitality businesses, specifically, how to mitigate their impacts on nature – from freshwater usage and food sourcing to GHG emissions and waste disposal.
The more your sustainability planning focuses on sector-specific and individual business operations, and quantifiable impact, the easier it will be to prioritise, and the more effective your actions will be.
ACT for Nature
What is clear from the SDG ‘wedding cake’ model is that businesses must prioritise identifying their dependencies and impacts on nature. Fundamentally, nature provides the resources on which tourism, and the communities tourism operates in, all rely, including our food, water, air, and energy. In fact, most of Hospitality’s goods and services rely on nature. Nature can also be harnessed to create solutions to the challenges set out in the SDGs such as preventing disease, reducing carbon emissions, or providing the ability to adapt to climate change – solutions that are positive for social, economic, governance and environmental outcomes. The threat of nature loss is therefore a threat to business, our economies and societies. Preserving and enhancing nature is, after all, one of the underlying principles of sustainability.
To address this, we need to think about which issues are most relevant to our operations and supply chain, and what actions are needed to address them. This should be the starting point for your sustainability strategy, it is the focus of the Alliance’s Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality, and it is exactly the starting point of Nature Positive Tourism.
EMBRACING Nature Positive Tourism
Nature conservation must be a priority for all businesses, no matter the sector. A Nature Positive approach ensures each business not only identifies and mitigates its specific negative impacts but seeks opportunities to restore and enhance biodiversity. While there will be common themes between businesses, such as reducing plastic use or avoiding deforestation, there will be differences in the range of identified impacts and their severity, and what “regenerative” solutions are available.
We now understand that it is not enough just to consider how we use natural resources; all business efforts must ensure an overall Net Positive impact by conserving and regenerating nature. This can be effectively delivered by understanding the nature around you, investing in nature conservation in your destinations, and seeking opportunities to support and inspire governments, business, and society to help transform humanity’s relationship with the natural world, to become a “Guardian of Nature”.
How to START your Nature Positive approach
- UNDERSTAND travel & tourism’s dependencies and impacts on nature
- ASSESS your business dependencies & impacts on biodiversity and nature
- DEFINE your sustainability plan
- REDUCE your negative impacts on nature and identify opportunities to RESTORE biodiversity
- MONITOR and REPORT on the effectiveness of your Nature Positive approach
- COLLABORATE through Nature Positive partnerships in your destinations and COMMUNICATE about the Nature Positive work you are doing!
Act for Nature
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA) have established the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership to help transform the sector to meet its obligations under the UN Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and to fulfil its potential as a Guardian of Nature. Find out more and join the initiative.
Learn more:
- Biodiversity Factsheet
- WTTC’s Nature Positive Travel & Tourism Report and Toolbox
- ANIMONDIAL’s NATOUR IMPACT Evaluation Tool to identify your impacts on nature
- Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality
Natour Impact Assessment – identify YOUR impact on BIODIVERSITY
On 22 May each year the world celebrates the importance of ‘Biological diversity’, and in 2023, the ask is to “Build Back Biodiversity”.
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This is, of course, exactly what our global society has signed up to following the ratification of the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, with its 23-target plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
While most people recognise the urgency to halt biodiversity loss, until now there has been no comprehensive solution to understand and minimise YOUR IMPACT. For the travel and tourism industry, ANIMONDIAL’s new online tool is about to change that…
Why is biodiversity important?
‘Biodiversity’ refers to the range of all living things (including humans). Studies have revealed that it is in a downward spiral as Earth is experiencing its Sixth Mass Extinction – the fifth one having wiped out the dinosaurs over 60 million years ago. Five human-induced drivers have been identified as the main causes behind this: habitat conversion, over-harvesting, climate change, pollution, and introduction of non-native species. These all lead to biodiversity loss, which undermines the stability of the climate, the availability of fresh air, water and food, and protections against extreme weather patterns and viral emergence. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse now dominate global risk forecasting (Global Risks Report 2023).
Reducing nature-related risk
The only way to halt and reverse biodiversity loss is to first avoid or minimise any negative impacts. Solutions until now have focused on simple, one-approach-fits-all action, such as ending single-use plastics. However, this is only a small part of the solution, which must mitigate ALL negative impacts. While there are some generic actions that can be applied, the only comprehensive way to address this challenge is to take a bespoke approach – by assessing YOUR IMPACT on biodiversity.
Natour Impact
This understanding is what led us to create NATOUR IMPACT – an online tool specifically for travel & tourism businesses to identify their impacts on biodiversity and nature. Travel & tourism very much relies on nature, not least for providing over 80% of its goods and services, but also in supplying or underlying much of the motivation for people to travel. Like most businesses, travel & tourism contributes to ALL drivers of biodiversity loss, but to varying degrees depending on the business. Even within tourism, different types of business can impact nature in different ways. So, a bespoke assessment of IMPACT makes good business sense.
What to expect
Natour Impact provides a thorough assessment of business performance across the interconnected issues of biodiversity protection, animal welfare, climate change, pollution, sustainability and social impact. It doesn’t work from estimated or explicit values – like emissions calculations do – but instead assesses the policies, procedures and actions of the individual business against relevant international standards, science-based targets and expert recommendations. It is also aligned with industry targets and guidelines such those of the Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sustainable Development Goals and ABTA’s Animal Welfare Guidelines. The evaluation delivers a report that provides each business with a detailed IMPACT assessment, highlighting areas of concern and priority actions to address them, as well as recommendations towards a full Nature Positive Tourism approach.
Fit for purpose
Registering your interest in a Natour Impact assessment is easy. There is a ‘no obligation’ opportunity to talk it through with members of our team, and you can trial our Natour Impact ‘taster’ that provides a snapshot of what to expect. Alternatively you can just contact us to receive more details on the tool itself and the assessment process. It is really that simple. If you are already sold, and keen to start your business IMPACT assessment, why not book your introductory call now?
There really is no better way to regularly monitor and assess your business’ impacts on biodiversity!
Book your Natour Impact introductory call
Trial our Natour Impact ‘taster’
Contact us
Identify the Global Biodiversity Framework business obligations (particularly Targets 14, 15 & 16)
Earth Day: Understanding the nature around you
April 22nd is Earth Day. A day to celebrate the amazing place where we live. Home to 7.4 billion people and an estimated 8 million species. It is also a time to reflect on our relationship with Mother Earth, our reliance upon it, and our responsibility to better protect it.
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This is, after all, where many of the negative impacts take place, where endangered species and fragile habitats are most threatened, and where the natural resources on which we all rely are in decline. Society really needs to look beyond its four walls and start to protect their very foundations – grounded in the natural world – sooner rather than later.
I have written a great deal about the importance of NATURE – the very fabric on which all life on Earth is based. The interaction between non-living natural materials, such as soil, water and stone, and all living things, from bacteria to blue whales. You will know that nature is essential to our prosperity and wellbeing, and its demise threatens our existence. In my previous blog, I explained the UN’s new biodiversity protection mandate and the particular obligation on global business to integrate biodiversity safeguards and assess their nature impact. Legal requirements that, as yet, few businesses are fully aware of, let alone preparing to comply with.
Consider your impacts and dependencies on nature
Progressive business is beginning to consider nature and, while some companies may just fund tree planting or donate to a conservation NGO, the smart organisation is thinking about its risks and impacts on nature. This includes both direct impacts, like land clearance for construction or agriculture, and indirect impacts through the value chain, from the sourcing and processing of raw materials to the use and disposal of finished products. All this needs to be properly understood before business risk, dependencies and impacts can be identified.
ANIMONDIAL can guide your business
This is where “Nature Positive Business” (the blog) and ANIMONDIAL’s wider work can help. Our expertise encompasses animal protection, nature conservation, sustainable development and social impact. We will ensure your business understands its legal obligations, your business’ relationship with nature, and its impacts, dependencies and risk-factors. Anticipating the task ahead, ANIMONDIAL and our partners have developed the services and tools that T&T businesses need. This includes an evaluation tool for individual companies to assess their impact on nature, a report and Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap with the World Travel & Tourism Council to guide strategy, and a toolkit of additional services to support implementation. Our goal: to support clients through the complexity of biodiversity protection so they can go beyond sustainability to deliver an overall Nature Positive outcome.
Understanding the nature around you is key
As part of our toolkit, ANIMONDIAL has partnered with NatureMetrics, to bring world leading, measurable nature intelligence to the travel & tourism industry. They use cutting-edge technology to generate biodiversity data at scale from environmental DNA (eDNA) – the traces of DNA that all animals leave behind on the ground, in water and even in the air. This provides valuable insight into the wildlife and biodiversity in a given location and enables ongoing monitoring at a fraction of the cost of traditional techniques. The result is easy access to crucial data that underpins good decisions for business and nature. Our partnership not only introduces the benefits of eDNA monitoring to the Travel & Tourism industry, it also provides valuable guidance to help integrate its use into operational programmes that minimise harm and maximise benefits for nature.
Turning data into nature
Using the eDNA biodiversity data collected, businesses can see the current state of biodiversity in their destinations, even around their offices, enabling them to make practical plans to protect and enhance it through precise, measurable steps. Repeated surveys provide direct feedback on the effectiveness of these efforts, tracking performance and demonstrating concrete progress.
Tourism as a force for good
While the obligation to monitor, assess and mitigate impacts falls on all businesses irrespective of their sector, tourism businesses have an added advantage: the means to collected biodiversity data from multiple sites across the globe. This gives us the capability to help society better understand the Earth’s biodiversity health and the ongoing damage and recovery of nature, as well as the ability to monitor the outcomes of Nature Positive actions as they are applied. The eDNA data collected through Nature Metrics is automatically shared with eBioAtlas – a global, open-access database supporting biodiversity protection and restoration activities around the world, to which Travel & Tourism could become a key contributor.
“Every organisation needs to know where it stands, what impacts it currently has and how each of its future decisions can alter that impact in its journey to becoming nature positive.”
— Pippa Howard, Chief Nature Strategist, NatureMetrics
Joint services of NatureMetrics and ANIMONDIAL will help businesses monitor, assess and mitigate operational impact on nature and its biodiversity. All in one package!
Nature Positive Tourism
Working with the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and partners, ANIMONDIAL will seek to integrate eDNA measurement and monitoring services into the Nature Positive Tourism approach. We want to provide tourism businesses with the tools to understand the nature around them (around their offices, in the destinations they visit and other sites) and the outcomes of their Nature Positive Tourism actions. Techniques like eDNA analysis are only one element of this, but as part of our broad and ever-expanding toolkit they can play a key role in our industry’s Nature Positive journey.
Learn more about Nature Positive Tourism and sign up as a Guardian of Nature
Contact ANIMONDIAL for a Discovery Call to find out how we can help your business
Identify your impact on nature
Learn more about NatureMetrics and biodiversity data collection
Act for Nature – but don’t forget the NATURE!
Adopting a Nature Positive approach goes beyond sustainable use. While sustainability makes clear business sense, it is the impact on the ground, amongst nature, that matters most.
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This is, after all, where many of the negative impacts take place, where endangered species and fragile habitats are most threatened, and where the natural resources on which we all rely are in decline. Society really needs to look beyond its four walls and start to protect their very foundations – grounded in the natural world – sooner rather than later.
Everything, everywhere, all at once
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently called for “action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once”. Hardly surprising considering the alarming state of nature: global biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history (UN CBD), it is now considered the 4th most severe threat we face this decade (WEF, 2023), and levels of global heating, which is driving biodiversity loss, are close to “irreversible” levels (IPCC AR6, 2023).
A slow start
Despite this urgent need for action, only a small share of companies globally seems to have set targets or be applying actions to protect biodiversity or address habitat loss. A similar trend is observed in a recent survey of tourism businesses – of the few that said Nature Positive actions had been adopted, fewer still confirm action on the ground – where most of the damage is being done.
Bringing in business
The UN biodiversity agreement, passed in December 2022, now requires all businesses globally to protect and restore nature: specifically “to progressively reduce negative impacts on biodiversity, increase positive impacts, [and] reduce biodiversity-related risks to business…”. In doing this, an understanding of “their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity” will be essential.
What nature does for us
All businesses depend on natural systems either directly or through their supply chains. Research by the World Economic Forum showed that $44 trillion of economic value generation – more than half the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. For Travel & Tourism, 80% of its goods and services depend on nature. … For us, it ensures our survival.
Who needs to think about nature…
Nature is essential for those businesses committed to reducing carbon emissions, global warming and achieving Net Zero goals. It is a vital consideration for businesses developing sustainable and resilient approaches towards activities they directly operate and indirectly influence. Nature Positive actions can also be valuable commercial investments and empowerment of local communities.
… And who is thinking about it
The finding by S&P Global that only about one-third of Europe’s biggest companies have set biodiversity targets, and even fewer among the largest companies in Asia-Pacific and the US, is certainly disheartening. It demonstrates the need for compelling incentives to enact or better enforce policies and actions to boost biodiversity.
Urgent action is needed to ensure businesses understand their obligations and have the tools to better protect and restore nature.
The Nature Positive Travel & Tourism Partnership
The recently launched tourism partnership between UN World Tourism Organisation, World Travel & Tourism Council and Sustainable Hospitality Alliance for a Nature Positive Tourism approach, highlights this industry’s commitment to nature protection and also its ability to contribute to positive change in global destinations influencing local and national policymaking and investment.
What we can do to help
My colleagues and I, at ANIMONDIAL, have had the pleasure of working with Travel & Tourism to guide the sector to not just mitigate biodiversity loss but to identify nature-related opportunities to boost biodiversity in destinations through private-public partnerships.
There is still a way to go, but a report has been produced, accompanied by a Toolbox of resources, while the Vision for Nature Positive Tourism invites businesses, large and small, to commit to a Nature Positive future – where we can travel in Harmony with Nature.
My hope is that other industries or business sectors will follow this lead and take a proactive role to better protect nature and its biodiversity across the world for the generations to come.
Keen to better protect biodiversity in nature?
Find out your business’ risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity with ANIMONDIAL’s Nature Positive evaluation tool
Measure the biodiversity in any location through eDNA analysis by Nature Metrics to benchmark your Nature Positive actions
Identify Biodiversity Partnerships in global destinations, working with businesses, NGOs and communities to better protect biodiversity and restore nature
Find out how your business sector faired in the S&P Global review of biodiversity-committed business
COP15: A Pact for Nature’s Recovery
Finally, after years of negotiations and a tumultuous couple of weeks at CBD COP15, there is good news from Montreal – a new ‘Pact for Nature’ – and an opportunity for Travel & Tourism to establish itself as a ’Force of Good’.
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The historic plan for nature was finalised in the early hours of this morning (19th December) to cheers from delegates and impassioned speeches by world leaders. It was presented as the “last chance” to put nature on a path to recovery. Having experienced the last week myself, with up-to-the-wire negotiations, the news of a positive outcome is a huge relief.
“Nature is our ship. We must ensure it stays afloat,” said EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevicius.
The Global Biodiversity Framework, the agreed plan for nature, sets out ambitious yet achievable plans to increase protected areas to 30% of the planet, safeguarding vital ecosystems from rainforests to wetlands, and to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. It includes four goals and 23 targets ranging from the sustainable use of natural resources and the reduction of pollution to the restoration of destroyed habitats.
“It is truly a moment that will mark history as Paris did for climate,” hailed Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change.
However, we cannot afford to be complacent. We are still experiencing the sharpest decline in biodiversity and habitat loss in human history. It is acknowledged that this new pact for nature cannot be delivered unless the whole of society is involved. In the last week of negotiations, businesses, in particular Travel & Tourism, were recognised as a key driver of positive change, with the ability to deliver short-term goals where government efforts often fail.
Last week I had the pleasure of working on behalf of the World Travel & Tourism Council, the voice of our industry’s private sector, and together with the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA), to promote ’Nature Positive Tourism’. In a momentous announcement at COP15, these Travel & Tourism heavyweights acknowledged the importance of nature and the sector’s ability, as a global industry that operates at all levels of society, to become a ’Guardian of Nature’. They were united in their commitment to not only assist in the delivery of the Global Biodiversity Framework but, through the formation of a Nature Positive Tourism Alliance, to drive forward capacity-building action for businesses, the value chain, and global destinations.
Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: “Travel and nature are intrinsically linked. Wildlife tourism creates over $340BN USD each year and supports more than 21 million jobs around the world. Today’s collaboration between WTTC, UNWTO and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, spearheading the sector’s vision to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, shows our commitment to preserve the planet for future generations.”
Zoritsa Urosevic, Executive Director at UNWTO and Special Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said: “As part of the broad Alliance of stakeholders for ‘Nature Positive Travel & Tourism’, UNWTO shows its commitment to the Global Biodiversity Framework of COP15 – making tourism the Guardian of Nature. New governance and business models, enhanced capacity to monitor positive change and scaling up green jobs are all part of the solution as we move ahead together.”
Glenn Mandziuk, CEO of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA) said: “As an industry that relies on our natural world for everything from our buildings to attracting guests to outstanding locations across the globe, we recognise the immense importance of protecting our beautiful planet. Collaboration across sectors and across borders is essential to halt and reverse biodiversity loss… and make Nature Positive Tourism a reality.”
Dreams certainly became reality for ANIMONDIAL: not only by participating in a biodiversity COP but, off the back of our co-authored “Nature Positive Travel & Tourism” report with WTTC, by facilitating the establishment of the Nature Positive Tourism Alliance and gaining government support for the initiative.
Our efforts at COP15 efforts culminated in a statement to the High Level Segment of proceedings, when UNWTO said: “Together, the Alliance will support and inspire governments, business, and society to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework … help transform humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and through investment in global destinations, help support national biodiversity strategies and efforts to achieve the 30×30 Targets, and so allow these destinations to become true ’Guardians of Nature’.”
Actions will, of course, be more important than words, and the ability of the Nature Positive Tourism Alliance to deliver on the Global Biodiversity Framework will be the testament to its success. Work begins in January 2023 with the development of an implementation plan and by defining key outputs, but until then we can all celebrate that COP15 could not have had a better outcome for Travel & Tourism.
Global Biodiversity Framework main commitments:
- Integrate biodiversity safeguards into policies, regulations, spatial and urban planning, and development processes, poverty eradication strategies, and environmental assessments, across all sectors;
- Ensure that the use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal, preventing overexploitation;
- Minimise the impact of climate change on biodiversity through Nature-based Solutions, reduce pollution risks and the negative impact of pollution to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity, and reduce the introduction and establishment of known or potential invasive species by 50%, by 2030;
- Encourage and enable businesses to regularly monitor, assess, and transparently disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity along with their operations, supply and value chains and portfolios, as a mechanism to progressively reduce negative impacts on biodiversity;
- Ensure that people are encouraged and enabled to make sustainable consumption choices;
- Ensure that all actions respect and protect the rights of, and customary sustainable use by, indigenous peoples and local communities.
On behalf of ANIMONDIAL, I’d like to wish you Seasons Greetings, and a Nature Positive 2023!
» Read the finalised Global Biodiversity Framework
» Demonstrate your business’ support by signing on to the Vision for Nature Positive Tourism Nature Positive Tourism
» Discover your business’ risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity. The online Nature Positive Evaluation Tool for Travel & Tourism, enabling your business to discover its impact on nature and take the necessary steps to protect & restore it.
COP15: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I joined many conservationists last week in cheering loudly when the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) finally announced that COP15 – the global biodiversity summit – will go ahead in Montreal (Canada) from 5 – 17 December 2022.
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The previous location of Kunming (China) had experienced two years of setbacks and there were even doubts whether the vital conference would take place in 2022.
COP15 seeks to secure the commitment of 196 countries (Parties to the CBD) to ratify the proposed Global Biodiversity Framework and adopt its nature protection goals. Effective implementation will require the efforts of global governments, businesses and all sectors of society to reduce and reverse environmental damage if the ambitious 2030 and 2050 targets are to be met – to halt biodiversity loss and restore nature.
The Good news is that confirmation of the COP15 dates will help to focus minds during the current negotiations. The additional time between now and December can be used to mobilise the high-level commitment required to avert a cataclysmic loss of biodiversity. We are already experiencing the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of extinction of plant and animal species at least 1,000 times faster than would be expected without human influence. Time is of the essence, but we do still have a chance to lessen the decline and prevent ecosystem collapse. Failure to do so will threaten our wellbeing, prosperity and survival. The urgency must surely spur action.
ANIMONDIAL is proactively focused on supporting the travel and tourism sector. Our Services provide guidance for businesses that wish to adopt a Nature Positive approach, including capacity-building training, a directory of nature-friendly project partners, and an evaluation tool, in development, to identify dependency and impact on nature.
As with all industries, travel and tourism is implicated in driving biodiversity loss. However, unlike many other sectors, it has a unique opportunity to become a significant influencer for transitional change. I would go so far as to say that nature-aware travel and tourism, that values nature through all its offerings across destinations, could be a vital part of the solution to this biological crisis. This was a conclusion in our upcoming publication, Towards a Nature Positive Travel & Tourism, produced by ANIMONDIAL and the World Travel & Tourism Council.
The Bad news is that the content of the Global Biodiversity Framework has yet to be agreed by all Parties. While the pre-COP15 negotiations in Geneva and Nairobi have refined the targets, specifically those related to conservation and sustainable use, progress in other areas is reportedly slow and lacks ambition. Issues over money for protecting biodiversity, proposals to protect 30% of land and sea, and concerns over the stealing and commercialising of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources (biopiracy) have hindered an advance. Civil society is reportedly “appalled” at the lack of progress following the emergency meeting in Nairobi last week, calling on countries to “step up [and] show the leadership that this moment requires, and act urgently to find compromise and solutions.” It is hoped that governments will take the opportunity between now and December to overcome their differences and commit to ambitious actions to halt biodiversity loss and ensure stronger protections for life on land and in the sea.
The Ugly matter of benefit-sharing and biopiracy continues to divide ‘Developed Countries’ and ‘Developing Countries’. In fact, it threatens to derail the global agreement. Countries, including Brazil, India and Gabon, are demanding payment for drug discoveries and other commercial products based on their biodiversity. Meanwhile, additional demands on richer countries to pay £80bn in biodiversity finance to help subsidise conservation efforts, are causing further divides – similar to those currently hampering negotiations for the next climate change conference (COP27) scheduled for this November in Egypt.
There is a desperate need to overcome this impasse for the Global Biodiversity Framework to be ratified and biodiversity protections applied. Focused discussions and creative solutions will be needed to find common ground and move the process forward.
Travel and tourism, and the huge revenues generated through nature-based tourism, could well provide a solution. Not only does tourism underpin national and local economies, but job creation and community empowerment bring heightened value to nature, encouraging positive attitudes towards its protection. When structured well, our industry can help to provide income and development opportunities to fairly compensate lower-income countries for protecting their biodiversity. Often the most biodiverse locations on Earth, the low-income countries also help sustain travel and tourism and its revenues.
The increased international attention on commercial impacts on nature will present travel and tourism with an opportunity to demonstrate its potential for positive contributions and to play a leading role in building a global Nature Positive future.
» Want to know more about ANIMONDIAL and its Nature Positive services?
» Keen to learn how to Protect Animals and Nature in tourism?
» Unsure about the meaning of biodiversity, nature or Nature Positive?
» Find out about the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework