I Will Survive; Let’s Talk Biodiversity
Amidst an overarching global disturbance to daily life, the European Commission has not been spending oh-so-many nights just feeling sorry for themselves. Rather, they have been hard at work on pieces of a new European ‘Green Deal’ which includes, among other focus areas, a long-awaited biodiversity strategy and Farm-to-Fork (F2F) strategy. These in turn aim to “put Europe’s biodiversity on the path to recovery by 2030” and “set a global standard for sustainability”. Ambitious? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely. This has been in the works since before the COVID-19 outbreak but will now form a crucial part of the EU’s economic recovery plan, which is exactly what we like to hear. The 10-year plan covers targets including reducing chemical pesticide usage by 50%, planting 3 billion trees, and reducing agricultural emissions. This also involves placing 30% of Europe’s land and sea area under ‘strict’ protection — no human activities or interventions other than basic management for wildlife habitat preservation — so basically people, just turn around now, ’cause you’re not welcome anymore.
This monumental undertaking obviously does not come cheap, and the commission will aim to raise a minimum of €20 billion per year from both private and public sources at the EU national level to achieve this. Even more, the biodiversity plan has come up against the existing common agricultural policy (CAP) currently in place in the EU, which provides €60 billion per year in subsidies to European farmers, mostly based on how much land they farm. The CAP is not tied to any meaningful environmental outcomes and has now positioned agricultural yields and conservation goals as archenemies, which is clearly going to make this breakup more difficult.
The showdown between yields and environmental outcomes is, however, grossly misunderstood. At first, they were afraid, they were petrified: but farmers all over the world, particularly smallholders in developing countries, realized they could never live without nature by their side, and have seen the value of incorporating biodiversity to improve their farms’ productivity. Shea farmers in West Africa that farm in ‘shea parklands’ among natural flora have seen better yields than those who have transitioned to more permanent, mechanized systems, due to the much higher number of pollinators living amongst the wild shrubs and trees. In Vietnam, farmers intentionally incorporate biodiversity to increase their yields, farming fish and waterfowl in rice paddies in an aptly named fish-duck-rice polyculture system. These ecology-based cultivation systems have also been successfully applied to rice paddies in California, adding a revenue stream for fish production without sacrificing rice yields, also (almost too good to be true) reducing methane emissions due to healthier plankton populations.
Last year, The United Nations General Assembly declared 2021–2030 as the “U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.” Now, in 2020, organizations, governments and dedicated individuals won’t let this goal crumble; won’t let it lay down and die. The links between biodiversity loss and the direct impacts to human health have become very evident, so be it ecosystem services, nature-based solutions, wildlife and habitat protection or less destructive supply chains, we’ll take it. 2020 has largely been cancelled, but that doesn’t mean the natural world doesn’t need us more than ever, and we need it just as much, to survive (hey, hey!)
Hayley Mole, Senior Associate
Most of us didn’t know what ‘wet markets’ were until December 2019, but these establishments are now very much under global scrutiny, and it seems not long for this world as global leaders call for these markets to be banned. The solution, however, is not that simple. Wet markets provide food to hundreds of millions of people and can be found from Hong Kong to Johannesburg to New York City. We undeniably want to end endangered species trafficking and remove potential pandemic breeding grounds (ASAP preferably), but a blanket ban on these markets might not be the way to go.
If you haven’t heard of it, the Global Seed Vault or ‘Doomsday Vault’, tucked away in a mountain in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago might be one of the most 007-movie-appropriate concepts you’ve ever come across. The vault aims to provide an apocalypse-proof store whereby any plant species could be brought back from extinction, with 60,000 seed samples being added in 2020 alone. Moreover, any country can send seeds here, with boxes from the U.S. sitting alongside those from North Korea, so this effort in biodiversity preservation may also be a good example of true international cooperation.
You don’t have to be a farmer to help improve and protect biodiversity in the world around you. From your food choices to your own household waste management, here are some ideas of how you can do your part at home.
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