Stewart M. Patrick
Joe Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as his special envoy for climate change signals the U.S. president-elect’s determination to place the fight against global warming, at long last, at the center of U.S. foreign and national security policy. His efforts to save the global environment should not stop there, however. Beyond climate change, the planet is experiencing a historically unprecedented collapse in biodiversity, undermining the countless benefits humanity gets from nature. To slow this disastrous loss of species and ecosystems, the incoming administration should spearhead a multilateral effort to reverse the multiple drivers of global ecological degradation, which go well beyond Earth’s rising temperatures.
After four years of catastrophic U.S. disengagement under outgoing President Donald Trump, Biden has pledged not only to restore U.S. climate leadership but also to accelerate the decarbonization of the U.S. and global economies. Biden’s determination to put “climate change on the agenda in the situation room” and mainstream these concerns across all Cabinet departments are welcome departures not just from Trump’s disastrous legacy, but also from the stove-piped treatment of climate action under previous administrations.
Biden’s global environmental policy cannot be limited to climate change, though, because the planet’s ecological emergency is not limited to global warming. The world is experiencing dramatic declines in species and ecosystems, jeopardizing the countless services the natural world provides us and which we often take for granted. These benefits range from the oxygen we breathe and the clean water we drink, to the insects that pollinate our crops, the microorganisms that enrich our soils, the pharmaceuticals we obtain from organisms, the coral reefs that sustain healthy fisheries, and so much more.
The scale of biodiversity loss is staggering. Populations of wild vertebrates have declined 60 percent since 1970, and insects by 45 percent. Humans and domesticated animals now account for 96 percent of all mammalian biomass. Since 1990, the oceans have lost half of their shallow-water coral, and much of what remains may disappear by 2050. Each year the world loses an area of tropical forest the size of Costa Rica. Current rates of extinction for plants and animals are between 100 and 1,000 times higher than the background rate for the past 10 million years. As many as 1 million of the world’s estimated 8 million to 9 million species are vulnerable to extinction.
The cost of humanity’s assault on the planet is astronomical. For too long, many of us have treated nature as something “nice to have” rather than as the ultimate foundation for human prosperity, well-being and survival. Belatedly, that is starting to change. In January, the World Economic Forum published a startling report underscoring just how much global capitalism depends on biodiversity. According to its calculations, some “$44 trillion of economic value generation—more than half of the world’s total GDP—is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and is therefore exposed to nature loss.”
Today’s dramatic biodiversity losses have five direct causes, and humanity is at the heart of each. Climate change, however, is not the most important. The leading factor is intensive land use, which has reduced, damaged, fragmented and eliminated ecosystems and habitats critical to species survival. Some 75 percent of the planet’s land and 66 percent of its marine environment has been “severely altered.” A third of Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface is now devoted to crops and grazing, and vast expanses have been denatured by logging, mining, urbanization and coastal development. Wetlands have shrunk by more than 85 percent, and 35 percent of mangroves are gone. Twenty percent of the Amazon rainforest has disappeared.
The four other direct drivers of biodiversity loss are climate change, unsustainable exploitation, invasive species and pollution. The higher temperatures, extreme weather, changing precipitation and ocean acidification associated with global warming are wreaking havoc on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, habitats and niches, as well as disrupting the metabolisms, reproductive cycles, foraging strategies and migration patterns of many species.
Biden’s global environmental policy cannot be limited to climate change, because the planet’s ecological emergency is not limited to global warming.
Meanwhile, humans are placing unprecedented pressures on plants and animals through relentless harvesting, hunting and fishing. A third of global fisheries, for example, are overexploited, with another 60 percent fished to capacity. We have also introduced invasive species, both as competitors and predators, and exposed endemic ones to new pathogens. Finally, new forms of pollution are poisoning living organisms, reducing their supplies of food and interfering with their metabolisms. Every year, the world dumps another 300 million to 400 million tons of toxic sludge, heavy metals and other industrial poisons into the water. More than 80 percent of global wastewater is discharged untreated, directly into the environment.
Biden has a golden opportunity to help the world slow these trends and change its disastrous trajectory, by elevating biodiversity conservation alongside climate change mitigation in U.S. foreign policy. Three priorities stand out.
First, Biden should ensure that the pivotal 15th conference of parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or CBD, is a success. At that event, which is scheduled for 2021 after having been postponed from 2020 due to COVID-19, nations are slated to adopt an action plan—a New Deal for Nature and People—to guide conservation efforts through 2030. Although the United States is not formally party to the CBD—and is unlikely to become one soon, given Senate hurdles to ratification—the U.S. delegation will have outsized influence on these negotiations. To promote the highest possible level of global ambition, Biden should immediately after his inauguration declare U.S. support for the “30 by 30” campaign to permanently protect 30 percent of Earth’s land and marine surface by 2030.
Second, the new president should strongly endorse the prompt conclusion of a U.N. High Seas Biodiversity Convention. That agreement, under negotiation since 2017, would close a gaping hole in global conservation efforts: the absence of rules governing the exploitation and sustainable use of living marine resources and ecosystems on the high seas, that portion of the ocean that lies beyond national jurisdiction. While Senate approval also remains unlikely in the near term, Biden’s explicit support for this treaty—and the likelihood that the United States will accept it as customary international law—could prove decisive in its successful entry into force.
Finally, the Biden administration should use its full range of diplomatic tools, including foreign aid, trade and other instruments, to incentivize responsible environmental stewardship, including by governments whose actions place precious biodiversity at risk. Such ecological concerns have traditionally been low on the U.S. bilateral and multilateral foreign policy agenda, but this indifference is no longer sustainable, in all senses of that word. Biden seems to recognize this. He recently proposed offering Brazil aid to protect the Amazon, while threatening penalties if it fails to curb its rampant destruction.
The United States and likeminded countries must bring such leverage to bear in the future, on this and all the other important aspect of this crisis, if they wish to preserve global biodiversity.
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