Govt sidesteps world talks to save our species

Our futures have been at least partly decided by global leaders and envoys at the second and crucial final week of COP16’s United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Colombia.

The conference concludes on Friday with ministerial negotiations, but the New Zealand Government seemed unaware of just how urgent it was that we engage with this process.

On current trajectories, climate change will continue to degrade biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially as extreme events such as droughts, storms and fires increase in severity and frequency. However, conservation of biodiversity helps address climate change by providing carbon sinks that buffer some of the worst impacts of extreme weather events.

When Te Mana o te Taiao, the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity strategy was released in 2020, the conservation minister at the time, Poto Wiliams, highlighted the link between biodiversity and climate and the need for stronger targets to address biodiversity loss.

The current Government, however, has introduced the fast-track bill enabling mining and quarrying in wetlands, and amendments to the Hauraki Gulf/Tikapa Moana Protection Bill allowing commercial fishing in a marine protected area, both of which are detrimental to biodiversity.

Furthermore, New Zealand failed to submit a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan to show its commitment to the 30×30 pledge, the global target to protect 30 percent of the planet for nature by 2030 (agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity at COP15).

Aotearoa New Zealand is a biodiversity hotspot, defined as a global centre of high biodiversity with a high proportion of species under threat.

Here, 80 percent of our vascular plants (most plants excepting mosses and algae), 86 percent of molluscs, 81 percent of arthropods and 60 percent of our vertebrates aren’t found elsewhere.

In Aotearoa, more than 75 percent of indigenous species in reptile, bird, bat, and freshwater fish species groups are threatened with extinction or are at risk of becoming threatened. More than one-third of forests have been cleared for agriculture and 90 percent of wetlands drained.

Wetland, marine, coastal, forest and other terrestrial ecosystems absorb approximately half of human produced greenhouse gases. Wetlands store twice as much carbon as forests, they just need to stay wet in the face of a warming planet, while marine ecosystems can sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at up to four times higher than terrestrial forests.

As with many island systems, biodiversity is vulnerable to a range of threats, including invasive species impacts and habitat fragmentation.

Climate change acts to exacerbate these threats. Sea level rise and temperature increases, floods, and the destruction of coastal habitats equate to declines in fish populations and other taonga species.

Individually, climate change and biodiversity loss are a threat to planetary life. Together, they form a downward spiral.

There are a range of opportunities to address climate change and biodiversity loss in Aotearoa, where the total urban area expanded by 14.6 percent (or 30,264 hectares) between 1996 and 2018. While urbanisation is a global threat to biodiversity, regeneration of biodiversity using green infrastructure can boost the well-being of nature and people.

Flooding, food security, housing and heat islands can be mitigated with careful planning and thoughtful design. It’s clear: climate change can’t be tackled without nature. And our cities aren’t going away; if anything our housing crisis is going to create more of the same, if we don’t build differently.

Our current conservation minister might have declined to attend the Convention on Biological Diversity at COP 16, but the rest of us would be wise to pay attention to what agreements were reached and demand our government does so too.

The evidence on the relationship between biodiversity and climate change is clear: there is no room or time for destructive environmental policy or inaction.

While engagement from the Government has been lacklustre thus far, there is still time to act.

COP16 will be followed by its sister Conventions: COP29, the UN Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan in November and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (Saudi Arabia) in December.

In other words, there is still time to demand that our Government wake up to what the world is trying to do to protect our indigenous species.