Biodiversity loss and the global targets to stop it

Biodiversity loss has five main direct drivers, recognised by global assessments: habitat change, overexploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species. They interact: a forest fragmented by a road is easier to log, more prone to fire, more open to invasive plants and less able to support wide-ranging animals. Behind them sit indirect drivers — consumption patterns, trade, subsidies, population growth and weak governance — which are harder to legislate but often more powerful.

The Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted in 1992, is the main global treaty. Its earlier Aichi Targets for 2011 to 2020 were, by broad consensus, largely missed. In December 2022, parties adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties in Montreal. It sets four goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030, including the headline 30 by 30 ambition: conserve at least 30 per cent of land, inland waters and seas, and restore at least 30 per cent of degraded ecosystems.

The framework also calls for reducing harmful subsidies by at least 500 billion US dollars a year by 2030, mobilising 200 billion dollars a year for biodiversity from all sources, including 30 billion a year in international finance for developing countries, and cutting the introduction of invasive alien species by at least half. These finance and subsidy figures are targets, not money already delivered, and progress reports have warned that finance remains the weakest area.

For India, the framework means updating its national biodiversity strategy and action plan, expanding and connecting protected areas, restoring degraded land and reporting progress in a comparable way. The test will not be whether a target is repeated in a document, but whether degraded land is actually restored, whether a subsidy that harms nature is actually removed, and whether local people gain from conservation rather than only bearing its costs.