Convention on Biological Diversity

About: Convention on Biological Diversity is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2232 publications have been published within this topic receiving 65599 citations. The topic is also known as: CBD & United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Global marine protected areas to prevent extinctions.

Abstract: One goal of global marine protected areas (MPAs) is to ensure they represent a breadth of taxonomic biodiversity. Ensuring representation of species in MPAs, however, would require protecting vast areas of the global oceans and does not explicitly prioritize species of conservation concern. When threatened species are considered, a recent study found that only a small fraction of their geographic ranges are within the global MPA network. Which global marine areas, and what conservation actions beyond MPAs could be prioritized to prevent marine extinctions (Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Target 12), remains unknown. Here, we use systematic conservation planning approaches to prioritize conservation actions for sharks, rays and chimaeras (class Chondrichthyes). We use chondrichthyans as they have the highest proportion of threatened species of any marine class. We find that expanding the MPA network by 3% in 70 nations would cover half of the geographic range of 99 imperilled endemic chondrichthyans. Our hotspot analysis reveals that just 12 nations harbour more than half (53) of the imperilled endemics. Four of these hotspot nations are within the top ten chondrichthyan fishing nations in the world, but are yet to implement basic chondrichthyan fisheries management. Given their geopolitical realities, conservation action for some countries will require relief and reorganization to enable sustainable fisheries and species protection.

Domestic Institutions and International Regulatory Cooperation: Comparative Responses to the Convention on Biological Diversity

Abstract: International regimes develop in three general ways: through coercion, convergence ("harmony"), or mutual state choice. Lasting coercive cooperation is rare. 1 Harmony is of limited interest. 2 In the majority of cases--and those of the greatest theoretical and practical significance--regimes arise through explicit state choices to cooperate. This article explores state choice toward international regulatory regimes for environmental protection. Regulatory regimes are frequently aimed at diffuse private actors and behaviors. International regime rules are commonly transformed into binding domestic rules or standards; regulatory cooperation, and environmental cooperation in particular, is marked by the degree to which this process of implementation relies upon and is shaped by existing domestic institutions and political structures. Because regulatory regimes at the international level are nearly always administrated through regulatory regimes at the domestic level, the latter, in conjunction with the politics new regulation [End Page 482] engenders, are central to understanding state choice. While many analyses have examined the role of domestic politics in international cooperation, I focus on domestic institutions. This article shows how institutions, in conjunction with the interests of key societal actors and the political incentives faced by governments, help to determine the expected political, economic, and legal impact of international commitments. Given that states are collectively the architects of international institutions, and these anticipated effects thus partly endogenous, the domestic regulatory structures of powerful states can also be critical influences on the scope, structure, and terms of international institutions. To develop these claims, I examine an important recent case of international environmental cooperation, the protection of global biological diversity ("biodiversity"), and analyze the divergent responses of two leading states to the core agreement of the new regime. While the United Kingdom signed and ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 3 negotiated as one of the keystones of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the United States refused to do so. Both states were active participants in the negotiations and shared a host of similarities: the likelihood both of harm from biodiversity loss and of gain from biodiversity protection, positions as economic powers, intensity of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, antiregulatory leadership, and positions on critical issues like intellectual property protection. Two theoretical perspectives that examine areas of potential difference are used to explore this divergence in choice toward the CBD. Building on the seemingly central role played by science and scientists in the formation of environmental regimes, Peter Haas and others have developed a prominent knowledge-based account of state behavior in which epistemic influence, built on positive and normative understandings shared by an elite community of experts, explains much of the observed intergovernmental coordination in environmental affairs. 4 An alternative perspective, that I term "regulatory politics," proposes that variations in core domestic institutions critically shape the anticipated impact of regime rules and hence the domestic politics of international cooperation.

Tourism and biodiversity: more significant than climate change?

Abstract: 2010 is the United Nations International Year of Biological Diversity. One of the goals of the international year was to gain a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss. This has not been achieved. Instead, biodiversity is continuing to decline at genetic, species and ecosystem levels while the ecological footprint of humanity exceeds the biological capacity of the Earth by a wider margin than at the time the 2010 target was agreed. Tourism is a factor in biodiversity loss and its conservation. The paper outlines some of the main themes in the relationship and stresses the importance of more research on tourism's role in extinction and habitat loss, biological invasion, climate change and biodiversity, and conservation strategies. The paper concludes that there is a need for a research effort on tourism and biodiversity similar to the rapidly developing interest in climate change.

A hard instrument goes soft: the implications of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s current trajectory

Abstract: The relentless loss of biological diversity, which will have a direct impact on human society and degrade ecosystem buffers against the extremes of climate perturbation, requires a strong global governance response. Of the numerous international legal instruments relating to the protection of nature, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the most comprehensive. This paper examines its current emphasis on global biodiversity targets to extend our understanding of its trajectory, and its evolving nature as an instrument of global governance. We review CBD documents, and early examinations of its emergent character, in the context of the distinction between hard and soft law approaches, and combine analysis on the issue of targets from the literature on development, climate change and conservation biology. We emphasise that the CBD, created as a hard law instrument with a framework character, had the clear facility to develop subsidiary hard law instruments in the form of protocols but has not significantly followed this route. We document how its approach – which has been typically ‘soft’, as exemplified by its focus on global biodiversity targets which are not backed up by obligations – suggests it operates de facto as policy rather than an instrument requiring state action. The adoption of global targets has parallels with other initiatives within global governance and may influence international political agendas, but they have failed to provide practical instruments for national implementation. Conditions may now exist for the CBD to develop focussed hard legal instruments in specific areas of its wide remit that support realistic targets.

Drivers of future alien species impacts: An expert-based assessment.

Abstract: Understanding the likely future impacts of biological invasions is crucial yet highly challenging given the multiple relevant environmental, socio-economic and societal contexts and drivers. In the absence of quantitative models, methods based on expert knowledge are the best option for assessing future invasion trajectories. Here, we present an expert assessment of the drivers of potential alien species impacts under contrasting scenarios and socioecological contexts through the mid-21st century. Based on responses from 36 experts in biological invasions, moderate (20%-30%) increases in invasions, compared to the current conditions, are expected to cause major impacts on biodiversity in most socioecological contexts. Three main drivers of biological invasions-transport, climate change and socio-economic change-were predicted to significantly affect future impacts of alien species on biodiversity even under a best-case scenario. Other drivers (e.g. human demography and migration in tropical and subtropical regions) were also of high importance in specific global contexts (e.g. for individual taxonomic groups or biomes). We show that some best-case scenarios can substantially reduce potential future impacts of biological invasions. However, rapid and comprehensive actions are necessary to use this potential and achieve the goals of the Post-2020 Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.