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COP15 International Science Advisors’ Statement (English) HTML

Updated 5 December 2022

Statement by senior international science advisors in advance of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

There is compelling evidence that global biodiversity is rapidly declining. More than one million species are now threatened with extinction, many within the next several decades, ^{[footnote 1]} ushering in what may well be the sixth mass extinction in the earth’s history. ^{[footnote 2]}

Biodiversity provides many material and cultural benefits to people. The yield or quality of more than 75% of global food crops depend on animal pollination. ^{[footnote 3]} Approximately 50,000 wild species are used for food, energy, medicine or material. ^{[footnote 4]} Biodiversity enhances food security by facilitating food production, maintaining seasonal food supply stability, and increasing food supply resilience to shocks such as droughts, floods and pest outbreaks. ^{[footnote 5]} Global biodiversity is a rich trove of genetic information that has supported the development of novel drugs and therapies, with new technologies potentially further enabling natural product-based drug discovery. ^{[footnote 6]}

Biodiversity decline has important consequences for human health, security and economic welfare. Loss of important biodiverse marine and coastal habitats increases the risks to life and property from floods and hurricanes for some 100–300 million people living in coastal communities. ^{[footnote 7]}

Because wildlife is the source of 70 percent of novel pathogens, human encroachment on natural habitats substantially increases the risk of disease transmission from wildlife to people, ^{[footnote 8]} which in a world of global trade and travel, increases the risk of global pandemics. ^{[footnote 9]} Collapse of wild pollinator populations, marine fisheries and timber production alone could reduce global GDP by $2.7 trillion annually by 2030, with economic losses of up to 10 percent annually in vulnerable low- and lower-middle-income countries. ^{[footnote 10]}

The biodiversity and climate crises are largely of human making. And they are inextricably linked: biodiversity loss exacerbates the effects of climate change, which in turn accelerates biodiversity loss. Consequently, mitigating and adapting to climate change and protecting and restoring biodiversity are often mutually supporting goals ^{[footnote 11]}.

Three decades after the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity and 14 Conferences of the Parties, the global response to the biodiversity crisis remains “woefully insufficient.” ^{[footnote 12]} Avoiding catastrophic biodiversity loss depends on immediate, coordinated and effective biodiversity protection, conservation and restoration action. At COP15, we call on governments to:

• Commit to the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Meeting the framework’s goals and targets requires immediate action to transform domestic and international economic, social and financial sectors, and commodities supply chains, to incentivize the protection, conservation, restoration and sustainable use of wildlife populations and terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems; disincentivize activities that undermine biodiversity conservation efforts; and promote integration of natural capital or nature’s services into national economic accounting systems.

• Invest immediately in actions for which there is compelling evidence of beneficial effects on biodiversity. Priority should be given to actions that also help mitigate or adapt to climate change, accelerate progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and build social, economic or ecological resilience, with a focus on areas of high vulnerability and extensive local or regional biodiversity or that make significant contributions to global biodiversity.

• Implement robust, transparent, scalable, replicable and effective mechanisms for biodiversity monitoring that meet international standards. Such mechanisms are critical to transparent reporting and accounting, filling critical data gaps, prioritizing locations for recovery or restoration actions, and evaluating the effectiveness and human welfare implications of conservation or management actions.
• Coordinate action at local to international levels, with particular focus on empowering equitable and inclusive action on biodiversity protection, conservation and restoration through funding programs, voluntary technology or knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, and capacity-building, to encourage participation across networks of communities and with public and private sector partners and reduce the costs of protection, conservation or restoration investments.

• Foster innovation through the weaving of biodiversity knowledge from diverse knowledge systems; and by strategically investing in nature-based, Indigenous-led or community-based solutions; building replicable and scalable local to national-scale scientific capacity especially in low- and lower-middle-income countries; and developing scalable, cost-effective technologies to improve sustainable consumption and production, rapid biodiversity assessment and evaluation, species recovery and ecosystem restoration.

• Engage the public by working with domestic and international partners to develop and deploy inclusive strategies for raising public awareness and understanding of nature’s values and the global biodiversity crisis, with particular focus on children and young adults.

List of signatories

Dr Cathy Foley	Australia’s Chief Scientist	Australia
Dr Mona Nemer, C.M., C.Q., FRSC, FCIC	Chief Science Advisor of Canada	Canada
Silvia Díaz Acosta	Minister of Science Technology, Knowledge and Innovation of Chile	Chile
Diego J. Inclán, PhD	Executive Director, National Institute of Biodiversity of Ecuador (INABIO)	Ecuador
Mahmoud Mohamed Sakr	President, Academy of Scientific Research and Technology ASRT	Egypt
Professor Nicole Grobert	Chair of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission	European Union
Professor Antoine Petit	Chief Executive Officer, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)	France
Professor (ETHZ) Dr Gerald H. Haug	President, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina	Germany
István Szabó, PhD	Vice President for Science and International Affairs National Research, Development and Innovation Office	Hungary
Professor Ajay Kumar Sood	Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India	India
Dr Takahiro Ueyama	Full-Time Executive Member, Japanese Council for Science, Technology and Innovation	Japan
June Nasrallah	President, Lebanese Academy of Sciences	Lebanon
Professor Emerita Datuk Dr. Asma Ismail, FASc	National Science, Technology and Innovation Advisor Malaysia	Malaysia
María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces, PhD	Director-General, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (National Council for Science and Technology)	México
Professor Dame Juliet A. Gerrard, DNZM, Hon FRSC FRSNZ	New Zealand Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor Kaitohutohu Mātanga Pūtaiao Matua ki te Pirimia	New Zealand
Professor Ekanem Ikpi Braide, FAS	President, The Nigerian Academy of Science	Nigeria
Mari Sundli Tveit	Chief Executive, The Research Council of Norway	Norway
Professor Hou Jianguo	President, Chinese Academy of Sciences	People’s Republic of China
Jose Ramon T Villarin, SJ, PhD	Executive Director, Manila Observatory	Philippines
Filipe Duarte Santos	Chairman of the National Council for the Environment and the Sustainable Development of Portugal (CNADS)	Portugal
Xavier Estico	Director General, Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI), Ministry of Investment, Entrepreneurship and Industry	Seychelles
Professor Himladevi Soodyall	Executive Officer of the Academy of Sciences South Africa	South Africa
Dr. Anil Jayasinghe	Secretary Ministry of Environment	Sri Lanka
Professor Dr. Marcel Tanner	President, Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences	Switzerland
Sir Patrick Vallance	UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser	United Kingdom
Arati Prabhakar	Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy	United States of America
Sir Peter Gluckman	President, International Science Council	International Science Council

1. IPBES (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services. E. S. Brondizio, J. Settele, S. Díaz, and H. T. Ngo (eds). Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) secretariat, Bonn, Germany. 1148 pages. Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPBES secretariat ↩

2. R.H. Cowie, P. Bouchet, B. Fontaine et al. (2022). “The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?” Biological Reviews 97: 640-663. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12816 ↩

3. IPBES (2016). Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production. S.G. Potts, V. L. Imperatriz-Fonseca and H. T. Ngo (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. 552 pages. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3402856 ↩

4. IPBES (2022). Summary for policymakers of the thematic assessment of the sustainable use of wild species. J.-M. Fromentin, M.R. Emery, J. Donaldson et al. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. 33 pages. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6425599 ↩

5. FAO (2019). The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, J. Bélanger and D. Pilling (eds.). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Assessments. Rome, Italy. 572 pages. http://www.fao.org/3/CA3129EN/CA3129EN.pdf Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. ↩

6. A.G. Atanasov, S.B. Zotchev, V.M. Dirsch et al. (2021). “Natural products in drug discovery: advances and opportunities” Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 20: 200–216. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41573-020-00114-z ↩

7. See endnote 1, p. 11. ↩

8. K. Jones, N. Patel, M. Levy et al. (2008). “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases.” Nature 451: 990–993. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06536 ↩

9. D.A. King, C. Peckham, J.K. Waage, J. Brownlie and M.E.J. Woolhouse (2006). “Infectious Diseases: Preparing for the Future.” Science 313: 1392-1393. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1129134 ↩

10. J.A. Johnson, G. Ruta, U. Baldos et al. (2021). The Economic Case for Nature: A Global Earth-Economy Model to Assess Development Policy Pathways. World Bank, Washington, D.C. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/35882 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO. ↩

11. IPBES (2020). Scientific outcome of the IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop on biodiversity and climate change. IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. 256 pages. https://zenodo.org/record/5101125 ↩

12. Science Academies of the Group of Seven (G7) nations (2021). Reversing biodiversity loss: The case for urgent action. https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/DES7289_2_S7%20Statement_Biodiversity_EN_FINAL.pdf ↩