Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Cross-Chapter-Paper-1 (section)

=== FAQ CCP1.2 | How can society ensure conservation of biodiversity in climate policies? ===

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''To reduce the effects of climate change on biodiversity, it is first essential to address direct human impacts that are already leading to a loss of biodiversity. This can be achieved by protecting biodiversity in conservation areas, restoring biodiversity everywhere possible and promoting sustainable development. Climate policies should thus integrate with policies to protect and restore nature.''

Avoiding further loss of biodiversity is implicit in sustainable development. This needs to happen on land, rivers, lakes and in the oceans. It is especially important in ‘biodiversity hotspots’ (FAQ 1.1) and protected areas to minimise species losses. Hence calls by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to increase the size and connectivity of fully protected areas (which aim to have biodiversity in a near natural condition) and include in them the biodiversity hotspots, need to be immediately implemented.

Five of the SDGs are life on land, life below water, good health and well-being, food security and climate action. They underpin and interact with many other SDGs. Healthy ecosystems play a role in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, not only protecting areas to prevent the release of carbon through land conversion activities but also restoring otherwise degraded land. The United Nations has declared 2021–2030 as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Restoration means actively or passively allowing habitat to return to its natural state (e.g., grassland, forest, peatland, oyster beds), including replanting native vegetation. This can benefit the recovery of biodiversity, help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and improve the delivery of nature’s contributions to people, such as climate regulation, water purification, pollination, and pest and disease control. Thus, protecting biodiversity helps to meet two SDGs directly, and three indirectly.

On land, the loss of natural forests and grasslands not only means a loss of carbon and many of their associated species, but exposes soils to erosion, affecting food production, and can affect the climate by altering the water cycle. Sustainable development, even within hotspots, involves active restoration of natural biodiversity, reducing poaching and trafficking of wildlife (UN SDG 15), and needs to include agriculture. This includes working to ensure biodiverse soils and supporting healthy pollinator populations. Biodiversity includes not only wild species but also genetic diversity, including crops and wild crop relatives. These wild relatives may contain important genes that could help farmed crops survive better in a changed climate. At least some of these wild relatives come from areas designated as hotspots. In the ocean, sustainable development means reducing pollution, carefully managed aquaculture development, increased protected areas (from the present 2.5% of the ocean area), enforcement of fisheries regulations, and removal of fishery subsidies that perpetuate overfishing within Exclusive Economic Zones and on the High Seas (UN SDG 14). Generally, the use of freshwaters, rivers, lakes and groundwaters, has not been sustainable and there is a need to restore biodiversity and water quality by eliminating pollution and to better manage abstraction, river flows, fishing and invasive species. Thus, as is the case with land and oceans, climate policies must prioritise the restoration of freshwater biodiversity, and reduction of the current negative impacts of human activities.

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