Opinion: We can’t let biodiversity COP 15 be a cover for greenwashing

Leaders gathered at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP 15, this week to address the planetary biodiversity crisis. The abundance of species has quickly plummeted, with a warning from U.N. scientists that we can lose 1 million species within decades. For anyone following the issue closely, it is evident that this biodiversity crisis is also a systemic crisis, intrinsically linked with the current economic system and the mantra of continuous growth. But will their plan be sufficient to address it at a systemic level?

In 2018, the Convention on Biological Diversity launched the process to define a new Global Biodiversity Framework at a U.N. Convention of the Parties, a gathering where many participating nations pledged to uphold a framework for transformational change.

Back then, I hoped that this would become a real opportunity to change the economic model and save biodiversity. I wrote to friends and environmental activists around the world, saying “Come and get involved in this issue, it will be transformational.”

While the CBD pretended to listen to the needs of civil society and Indigenous peoples in the first round of consultations when the initial draft text came out, the harsh reality hit home: Any measures that could truly transform the economic system that undermines biodiversity, such as strict and coordinated regulations minimizing environmental damage, didn’t stand a chance.

Now, with the negotiations on the Global Biodiversity Framework in their final week, it is clear things have become worse. The framework does not put forward any transformational change, yet includes many measures that undermine the possibility to address the root causes of biodiversity loss.

How did it get to this point? Watching the process unfold, we quickly learned that corporations’ participation in biodiversity discussions has been obstructive, as a recent Friends of the Earth International study finds.

Corporate polluters create coalitions where they present themselves as “pro-nature,” “green” or “sustainable.” Even the worst environmental offenders are part of such groupings, including BP, which is responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, and Vale, which poisoned hundreds of kilometers of rivers with toxic mine tailings after a dam collapsed in Brazil. Yet in closed meeting rooms, I witnessed how they advocated for voluntary greenwashing measures that pass as real regulation while preventing measures that would hurt their profits.

For years we have seen how countries participating in the CBD and U.N. high officials actively welcome these types of business coalitions and their proposals. In turn, this means the current draft, and likely final version,  of this crucial biodiversity convention — and the policies governing the next decade — are full of greenwashing proposals. “Nature positive” and “nature-based solutions” are such proposals that are damaging distractions from the urgent biodiversity crisis.

Nature positive might sound good, but its definition is unclear. Referring to “nature” in policies does not necessarily entail protecting biodiversity, and “positive” is even more ambiguous. While it seems like a beneficial promise, it can in fact create the conditions for further ecosystem destruction and dubious restoration processes. In Uganda, for example, the Trees for Global Benefit project has failed to reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere, while causing economic and environmental harm to local communities.

For corporate businesses, the plan appears to be to keep destroying more biodiversity in the short term, while promising to compensate for damage in the long term. Both nature positive and nature-based solutions are based on offsetting current carbon dioxide emissions, which assumes that certain geographical areas, ecosystems, species, and even sacred grounds for Indigenous peoples can be compensated for by others — ignoring the uniqueness of each.

Yet when I look at biodiversity loss in my lifetime, it is clear we cannot keep on at the current rate of loss until 2030. And for businesses to claim that ecosystem and biodiversity destruction is sustainable because it is compensated elsewhere is not only highly flawed — it is not realistic. These offsets would require vast amounts of land for carbon which far exceeds the land available worldwide.

Many of the nature-based projects are nothing more than monoculture tree plantations, which provide no biodiversity. Land reserved for carbon offsets also competes with agribusiness demands for cropland. Some exceptional nature-based solutions projects showing agroecology and Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ involvement falsely assert nature-based solutions as a meaningful change for climate and nature.

In addition, both these corporate concepts are burdensome for IPLCs. Many offsetting projects take place on their lands and often exclude them from their territories. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, around 80% of the biodiversity that remains was preserved through the efforts of IPLCs, in spite of Indigenous rights violations and the murder of environmental defenders.

While biodiversity loss is an environmental crisis we must address, it is also a matter of justice. Indigenous peoples’ rights should never be violated, much less in the name of nature conservation. Corporations must be kept under strict regulation and held accountable, rather than getting to craft their own escape measures to allow them to continue with business as usual.

Allowing ecosystem loss in an offsetting model gives companies a pass to continue environmental destruction in spite of the climate emergency and exacerbated biodiversity loss.

Overall, as the Global Biodiversity Framework is being finalized, it must guarantee that the world starts living within its planetary boundaries again. People and the planet must be the driving force behind biodiversity action, rather than profits. Unfortunately, in this final stage of the biodiversity summit, we aren't seeing any systemic changes likely to be adopted.