The 2019 IPBES report presents a bleak picture of the state of global biodiversity and ecosystems, our progress toward protecting those natural assets, and the acceleration of adverse impacts. Furthermore, climate change exacerbates all of those distressing trends. The report concludes, somberly, that most of the 2020 Aichi Targets will be missed. The IPBES report also attempts to evaluate progress toward the SDGs through the lens of biodiversity conservation, but notes that this assessment is complicated by a lack of explicit linkages with nature in many of the SDGs. A compelling case is then made for the vital contributions that nature makes toward many SDGs.

A parallel case can be made about the linkages, or lack thereof, between social and economic issues and the Aichi Targets. With only a few notable exceptions, the Aichi Targets focus strongly on non-human elements. Humanity is present in the Aichi Targets largely as an impact on nature, rather than as a resource worth protecting and cultivating in its own right. As the SDGs are not sufficiently explicit in the importance of promoting nature in their achievement, so the Aichi Targets are not sufficiently explicit in the importance of promoting humanity.

It was therefore a critical development in the history of the CBD that its parties agreed midway through the 2011-2020 Decade on Biodiversity that the SDGs should be embraced alongside the Aichi Targets. This union has the potential to counterbalance the deficiency of nature in the SDGs and of humanity in the Aichi Targets. That this union has not yet borne fruit, per the findings of the IPBES report, is likely due in part to the fact that the SDGs were not influencing the CBD across the full Decade on Biodiversity. Their presence for the entirety of the Post-2020 Framework might yield a different result.

However, strategies executed in the Post-2020 Framework must embrace the spirit of these combined targets. In other words, sustainable use of natural resources to meet social and economic needs must rise to a place of prominence alongside the strong, and necessary, focus on preservation of nature. This motion aims to do just that, pulling together important directives established through previous WCC Resolutions and Recommendations, UN FAO policy instruments, and others toward an integrated and scaled set of targets and activities for ocean conservation and sustainable use to be included in the CBD Post-2020 Framework and executed by the IUCN community.

Notably, CBD COP15 will be hosted by China, a nation undergoing a fundamental shift in its approach to environmental stewardship. High level policy mandates for sustainability are permeating numerous sectors, including fisheries, aquaculture, and other ocean uses. EDF is working with partners in China to support this momentum, which increasingly is becoming focused on COP15. This motion aims to build international momentum to parallel, influence, and support that in the COP15 host nation and through the 2020-2030 decade ahead.

Implementation of comprehensive sustainable use plans at a global scale will ultimately be a resource-intensive endeavor, costing on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars or more over the next decade. This motion does not aim to execute the actual implementation, but rather to enhance the supporting architecture to connect, educate, and empower the practitioners putting conservation and sustainable use into practice. 

• Coral Triangle Center [Indonesia]
• European Bureau for Conservation and Development [Belgium]
• Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre [Cuba]
• The Nature Conservancy [United States of America]
• WWF - New Zealand [New Zealand]