Biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainability

12 Novembro 2021, 16:00 • João Guerra

Professor Cristina Branquinho began by stressing a major gap in the PhD program on Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies. According to her, the issues between biodiversity and climate change are not properly addressed by most experts working in climate change. In particular, she stated that climate change experts should not neglect the identification of the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services delivery and climate change policy.b) Agreements and Commitments vs Targets Achieved:The Earth Rio Summit in 1992 represented a milestone in environmental awareness regarding worldwide biodiversity loss. Since then, several countries have endorsed commitments towards halting the loss of biodiversity. The most relevant commitments were the 2010 Biodiversity Target,enacted in the Convention for Biological Diversity and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.Concomitantly, in 2005, the United Nations (UN) launched the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment to improve the scientific information concerning the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. Later, in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlighted the links between biodiversity and human health. The SDGs, among other targets, call for the preservation an dconservation of biodiversity and guarantee the provision of ecosystem services. This number of agreements and commitments emphasizes the increasing pressures on biodiversity, further exacerbated by climate change and land desertification.Despite the multiple commitments and assessments, pressures on biodiversity are still increasing.The main Conventions concerning biodiversity, in particular, the Conventions on Biodiversity,Climate Change and Land Desertification have proposed ambitious targets to halt biodiversity loss.However, the inability to achieve the proposed targets to halt biodiversity loss can eventually reach a point of no return, leading to the extinction of many species. We should note that nowadays the issue of climate change sees the most funding opportunities. Still, the issues of biodiversity loss and land desertification are less subsidized. Concerning land desertification, the speaker stressed that this happens because the areas more vulnerable are in developing countries.