Speaker 1: The high season is not just a poetic phrase but
Speaker 1: a legal designation. Anything two hundred miles off the coast
Speaker 1: of a country is not subject to any specific laws
Speaker 1: or In the United Nations lingo, they're called an area
Speaker 1: beyond national jurisdiction. That's nearly half the Earth's surface, by
Speaker 1: the way, and until recently, there was no legal route
Speaker 1: to protect marine life there. But in March, after nearly
Speaker 1: two decades of negotiations, delegates at a UN meeting agreed
Speaker 1: on a pathway to protect these areas. This came only
Speaker 1: months after a big UN agreement signed in Montreal at
Speaker 1: COP fifteen that, among other goals, aims to protect thirty
Speaker 1: percent of nature by twenty thirty. It feels good to
Speaker 1: hear about this progress, but is only seven years away.
Speaker 1: So it's worth asking how will all of these pledges
Speaker 1: come to fruition and where exactly are we starting from.
Speaker 1: To answer these questions, I have three guests today. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking of Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund,
Speaker 1: about how something as broad as biodiversity is measured and
Speaker 1: what the stakes are. Then I'll speak with Monica Medina
Speaker 1: of the US State Department about what can be accomplished
Speaker 1: when the US is not a party to either of
Speaker 1: these treaties. But first, I'm joined by my colleague Eric Roston,
Speaker 1: who attended COP fifteen in Montreal, to talk through the backstory,
Speaker 1: because it feels like all this progress happened overnight, two
Speaker 1: major agreements in four months, but there's more to it
Speaker 1: than that. Eric, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Now let's start with the basics. What is biodiversity because
Speaker 1: it feels like it's an all encompassing term, like planet
Speaker 1: or life.
Speaker 2: It's a great question. It does seem like one of
Speaker 2: these words that means everything. And it comes out of
Speaker 2: a nineteen ninety two UN treaty called the Convention on
Speaker 2: Biological Diversity that set in place a formal UN process
Speaker 2: by which countries that sign the agreement meet every two
Speaker 2: years and figure out, just like you said, how to
Speaker 2: protect more nature. But it is a real grab bag.
Speaker 2: Biodiversity is not like climate change in a number of ways.
Speaker 2: It is, at least on the most superficial level, much
Speaker 2: more complicated. Climate change is just about basically one number.
Speaker 2: It's like how much CO two is in the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Biodiversity it's much harder to pin down the metrics for biodiversity.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them.
Speaker 1: So this big agreement that was signed in Montreal was
Speaker 1: under the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is thirty years
Speaker 1: old a little more than that. Why is it that
Speaker 1: suddenly we have a agreement that aims to protect thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the planet.
Speaker 2: Part of it is coincidence. This Convention on Biological Diversity
Speaker 2: had a really big year in twenty ten, and well,
Speaker 2: that feels like a long time ago. What they did
Speaker 2: was they set up some very ambitious goals for protecting
Speaker 2: nature by twenty twenty, and they failed practically on every mark.
Speaker 2: So by the time twenty twenty rolls around, it was
Speaker 2: time for another big round of commitments. COVID happened and
Speaker 2: the meeting was postponed for a couple of years. So
Speaker 2: the Kunming Montreal meeting in December is the result of
Speaker 2: a two year wait to find successor goals to the
Speaker 2: ones they failed to meet from twenty ten.
Speaker 1: If they failed spectacularly on the twenty ten goals, what
Speaker 1: makes it possible to set a new goal that is
Speaker 1: even more ambitious and why would they be able to
Speaker 1: achieve it this time? Around.
Speaker 2: You put it that way, it really does start to
Speaker 2: sound like the conventional jokey definition of insanity. But a
Speaker 2: lot has changed. One of them is the problem just
Speaker 2: keeps getting worse. Animal populations across ecosystems around the world
Speaker 2: have fallen by seventy percent since nineteen seventy. Now there's
Speaker 2: other things that are very important too, and one of
Speaker 2: them is private sector and government awareness of this problem.
Speaker 2: What's really unique about what's happening these days is that
Speaker 2: parts of the private sector are very, very invested in this.
Speaker 2: They have learned a lot from climate change. By that,
Speaker 2: I mean they have learned about risks that they face
Speaker 2: to their supply change, to their raw materials, to their reputations.
Speaker 2: Messing up this topic, in addition to being just morally horrifying,
Speaker 2: could impede their ability to get investment or even operate. So,
Speaker 2: just as you know, in the last ten years, we've
Speaker 2: seen the rise of the Task Force on Climate Related
Speaker 2: Financial Disclosures, which is a body to help companies understand
Speaker 2: and express their risks they face from climate change. There
Speaker 2: is now a Task Force on Nature Related Financial Disclosures.
Speaker 2: So the Biodiversity Group has really just been cutting and
Speaker 2: pasting a lot of the successful climate initiatives, and what
Speaker 2: that's doing is making the very important discussion of measuring
Speaker 2: in metrics much more nimble. So it's a confluence of
Speaker 2: a lot of different things that are bringing this all
Speaker 2: to a head in the last year.
Speaker 1: My next guest is Rebecca Shaw, who is the chief
Speaker 1: scientist at the World Wildlife Fund, an organization that plays
Speaker 1: an important role in our understanding of biodiversity. Every two years,
Speaker 1: Rebecca's team publishes a report called the LPI, or the
Speaker 1: Living Planet Index. The most recent one shows a sixty
Speaker 1: nine percent decline in monitored vertebrate species since nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Restoring biodiversity is a goal in its own right, and
Speaker 1: it can also have positive impacts for the climate. I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear from Rebecca about the significance of these
Speaker 1: un agreements and how they actually can be implemented. My
Speaker 1: first question to Rebecca was simply, how have you seen
Speaker 1: the biodiversity crisis play out in your lifetime?
Speaker 3: Well, in my backyard it would be the monarch butterfly,
Speaker 3: which not very far from my home used to have
Speaker 3: a forest where it would come and overwinter, the entire
Speaker 3: eucalyptus forest would turn orange. There were so many butterflies.
Speaker 3: But with the increase in pesticize use and the decline
Speaker 3: in milkweed abundance because of that herbicide use, they just
Speaker 3: don't exist anymore. In fact, they barely come to the
Speaker 3: eucalyptus forest anymore, and they come one or two at
Speaker 3: a time, and not hundreds of thousands at a time
Speaker 3: like they used to. Certainly, as a scientist, I've been
Speaker 3: watching all the indices that track biodiversity, both at the
Speaker 3: national level and the local level, and of course globally
Speaker 3: decline and decline by a lot. On a personal level,
Speaker 3: you can really see this in your daily life in
Speaker 3: ways that make it a little bit more tangible. No
Speaker 3: more bugs hitting your windshield, You aren't seeing as many
Speaker 3: birds in the spring as you used to. Maybe the
Speaker 3: same bird, just not as many. And of course it's
Speaker 3: harder and harder if you like to go fishing, it's
Speaker 3: harder and harder to find those places to go fishing.
Speaker 1: And because scientists like to measure things, what are top
Speaker 1: line metrics that you use to keep a track of
Speaker 1: biodiversity laws?
Speaker 3: First, just to back up a little bit, biodiversity has
Speaker 3: lots of metrics to track it because there's lots of
Speaker 3: aspects of biodiversity that are really important to people. Sometimes
Speaker 3: we track genetic diversity because we really care about the
Speaker 3: fact that there's lots of different genetics out there to
Speaker 3: be used for medicines and such. Sometimes we track species diversity,
Speaker 3: which is how is this particular animal doing versus this animal,
Speaker 3: And we tracked populations of species across the planet, and
Speaker 3: how are ecosystems doing? And then all the benefits that
Speaker 3: people derived from ecosystems, like clean air, clean water, we
Speaker 3: track that as well. And so one of the ones
Speaker 3: that we track is the LPI, the Living Planet Index,
Speaker 3: which is one that tracks populations of animals thirty two
Speaker 3: thousand populations of over five thousand species globally, and we've
Speaker 3: seen sixty nine percent decline in these populations of animals mammals, fishes, birds, amphibians,
Speaker 3: and reptiles across the globe, which really is an indicator
Speaker 3: that ecosystem health is declining and that nature is unraveling.
Speaker 1: When I think of the overlap of biodiversity and climate change,
Speaker 1: the obvious link to me is forests. The more trees
Speaker 1: there are the more carbon is drawn down out of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and that reduces the impact that Greno's gases
Speaker 1: can have on the planet. But what are some of
Speaker 1: the less common examples of how biodiverse ecosystems maintain the climate.
Speaker 3: There's lots of good examples, but I think the one
Speaker 3: that really sparked my imagination, really made me start to
Speaker 3: think differently about diversity and its connection to ecosystem function
Speaker 3: and the things that we really need from ecosystems is
Speaker 3: that the loss of certain kinds of animals in a
Speaker 3: forest can lead to a decline in carbon stored in
Speaker 3: those tropical forests. There is a study in the Atlantic
Speaker 3: Forests of Brazil which looked at what was happening to
Speaker 3: the forest with the two thousand tree species in the
Speaker 3: forest and then the eight hundred animal species when the
Speaker 3: forest started losing its large fruit eating animals such as tapers,
Speaker 3: two can, golden lion, tamarinds due to hunting, illegal trade,
Speaker 3: and habitat loss. And what was happening is that we're
Speaker 3: losing the dispersal of the large seeded trees and therefore
Speaker 3: the composition of the tropical forest was changing dramatically. Now
Speaker 3: the impact of that is really not intuitive. The result
Speaker 3: is it became dominated by smaller trees with softer woods
Speaker 3: that stored less carbon. So you lose the species from
Speaker 3: hunting in illegal trade, and over time you begin to
Speaker 3: lose the carbon storing function of that forest. There's still
Speaker 3: small fruit eating animals that are not targeted by hunters
Speaker 3: and by poachers, small birds and bats and so on,
Speaker 3: and they continue to sperse small seeds, but those small
Speaker 3: seeds are associated with small trees that actually don't store
Speaker 3: as much carbon. And when the researchers looked at what
Speaker 3: is the impact of that mechanism across the world, they
Speaker 3: found that the force in Africa, the Americas, and in
Speaker 3: South Asia, which have high proportions of the animal dispersed
Speaker 3: tree species, consistently show carbon losses as high as twelve percent.
Speaker 3: And that's just one non intuitive mechanism about the way
Speaker 3: biodiversity promotes and sustains carbon storage. And I'm sure there
Speaker 3: are others out there that we are not yet aware of.
Speaker 1: So killing some of these large animals that eat particular
Speaker 1: types of fruit in their seeds is changing the entire
Speaker 1: structure of the forest and even shrinking its ability to
Speaker 1: act as the common saying that it was before the
Speaker 1: hunting and the legal trade began.
Speaker 3: That's right. You pull one kind of animal out of
Speaker 3: that and that changes the dynamics of the system and
Speaker 3: how the system can produce benefits for humans.
Speaker 1: This is a crisis that we need to deal with.
Speaker 1: It is something that has been less talked about, certainly
Speaker 1: than the climate crisis, but they overlap. And delegates from
Speaker 1: over one hundred countries met in Montreal in December at
Speaker 1: the COP fifteen event trying to discuss global biodiversity framework
Speaker 1: that would set goals to try and undo some of
Speaker 1: the damage that we are causing. What happened in December
Speaker 1: in Montreal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, delegates from all over the globe met in Montreal
Speaker 3: to discuss what are we going to do about this
Speaker 3: biodiversity crisis, and they came up with a Global Biodiversity
Speaker 3: Framework which has for arching global goals conservation of biological diversity,
Speaker 3: sustainable use of the components of biological diversity, fair and
Speaker 3: equitable sharing of the benefits of genetic resources, and the
Speaker 3: delivery of adequate resources for implementation. He also had twenty
Speaker 3: three targets. The most important of all the targets and
Speaker 3: the one that you probably heard the most about was
Speaker 3: the thirty by thirty, and the thirty by thirty just
Speaker 3: essentially means is that we will protect, conserve, and manage
Speaker 3: for biodiversity thirty percent of all the land and water,
Speaker 3: so freshwater and oceans by twenty thirty, on our way
Speaker 3: to a twenty to fifty goal where they will be
Speaker 3: conserved effectively and up to fifty percent.
Speaker 1: So thirty by thirty and then fifty by fifty.
Speaker 3: That's right, and achieving the start is going to require
Speaker 3: a doubling of the extent of trustraal area protected and
Speaker 3: conserved areas and a quadrupling of the marine areas designate
Speaker 3: for conservation while ensuring their effective management. So this is
Speaker 3: not a small goal and almost two hundred nations around
Speaker 3: the globe agreed to this. I think that is a
Speaker 3: phenomenal outcome and is a big win for biodiversity.
Speaker 1: So, according to the Protected Planet Report, currently about seventeen
Speaker 1: percent of the world's land is protected and eight percent
Speaker 1: of ocean is protected. What does protected count for?
Speaker 3: Definitely in conservation in the past we've been thinking about
Speaker 3: you take lands or waters and you set up aside
Speaker 3: from human use, and action, and we've definitely found out
Speaker 3: that that is not a way to effectively conserve the
Speaker 3: resources we need to conserve to protect biodiversity over time.
Speaker 3: What we really need to do is better understand how
Speaker 3: to manage different types of uses along a landscape, along
Speaker 3: a spectrum from highly intensive uses to less intensive uses
Speaker 3: that allow for biodiversity to thrive and to deliver the
Speaker 3: services that benefit societies around the globe. We have seventeen
Speaker 3: percent protected in the terrestrial it doesn't mean they're effectively protected,
Speaker 3: so it's really important that we go after that. Effective
Speaker 3: protection and conserved is a whole lot more nuanced than protected.
Speaker 3: It means you can have certain activities like the harvesting
Speaker 3: of certain animals or plants at a certain rate that
Speaker 3: allow for the system to stay intact. You can have
Speaker 3: of people living within those conserved areas and managing the
Speaker 3: systems like lots of indigenous and local communities around the
Speaker 3: globe do. And it also means that you manage them
Speaker 3: actively to get the outcomes in biodiversity and biodiversity benefits
Speaker 3: that you're looking for. And so conserved and protected can
Speaker 3: take a lot of different shapes, and I think it's
Speaker 3: a diversity of mechanisms for delivering on the Biodiversity framework,
Speaker 3: that is really one of its deep strengths because it
Speaker 3: then recognizes and comes to terms with different types of
Speaker 3: communities around the globe are going to have innovations to
Speaker 3: bring to the table that will work within their cultures.
Speaker 1: And all of this will require some level of conservation.
Speaker 1: But conservation has a history of excluding people from areas
Speaker 1: that are theirs. Good example is the Yellowstone National Park,
Speaker 1: a thing of beauty, but that was founded by forcibly
Speaker 1: removing Indigenous people of their land. So are there examples
Speaker 1: that you know off places that have been conserved in
Speaker 1: an inclusive way? And what is it that you've learned
Speaker 1: from those areas that could be applied to other areas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework
Speaker 3: is that all of these efforts be taken in a
Speaker 3: way that are inclusive and equitable, and particularly inclusive and
Speaker 3: equitable with respect to indigenous peoples and local communities. And
Speaker 3: there have been studies just in the past five years,
Speaker 3: another real advancement in our understanding of conservation on the
Speaker 3: globe that have shown that in many ways, the lands
Speaker 3: and the waters that are managed by indigenous peoples and
Speaker 3: local communities have greater biodiversity, deliver greater resources with greater
Speaker 3: certainty over time than those areas which are managed more extractively.
Speaker 3: And so we have seen it's in the Amazon and
Speaker 3: in parts of the Congo and other places where communal activity,
Speaker 3: activity that manages it for the long term benefit for
Speaker 3: multiple generations, can have real biodiversity benefits and real climate benefits.
Speaker 3: And I think that the importance of moving forward with
Speaker 3: the Global Biodiversity Framework and the nature based solutions under
Speaker 3: the Climate Convention is that we are going to places,
Speaker 3: working with those communities to make sure that their values
Speaker 3: are respected, that they get the resources they need, and
Speaker 3: that it not just be a purview of nations or
Speaker 3: of other actors making these things happen, but really taking
Speaker 3: into account in an equitable and a respectful way, what
Speaker 3: indigenous peoples and local communities are delivering.
Speaker 1: Climate change forces some areas of the world to go
Speaker 1: through transitions that are going to mean that some children
Speaker 1: will grow up without ever seeing snow in their own
Speaker 1: backyards when their parents did. And these are just difficult
Speaker 1: things to tell young people when they haven't seen something
Speaker 1: that was beautiful and is now gone. What is your
Speaker 1: best method of being able to talk to young people
Speaker 1: about biodiversity laws.
Speaker 3: Really, for every disaster story or crisis story, when you
Speaker 3: see these kind of slow declining losses over time, we
Speaker 3: call them shifting baselines. So if you're born in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 3: you have a really different baseline than if you're born
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety or twenty ten, and it's that baseline
Speaker 3: is what you expect of the world. So if you
Speaker 3: come to the world and you've never seen a monarch butterfly,
Speaker 3: you don't expect it, and why would you work to
Speaker 3: have it. The important thing about both climate and biodiversity
Speaker 3: crisis being connected together and getting the kind of platform
Speaker 3: that they both have. Right now, there's so many people
Speaker 3: demanding that we have a stable climate and that we
Speaker 3: be able to return some of those populations of species
Speaker 3: back to the communities where they persisted for so long.
Speaker 3: We're definitely seeing that with a monarch butterfly, and we're
Speaker 3: seeing it with different kinds of species and different kinds
Speaker 3: of ecosystems and habitats around the world. We've seen the
Speaker 3: mountain gorilla in Rwanda is increasing because the community is
Speaker 3: focused on increasing that population because they benefit from it.
Speaker 3: So I think it's really important to young people to
Speaker 3: understand that, yes, we're seeing these declines. Yes it's bad.
Speaker 3: Yes some of them we won't be able to retrieve again,
Speaker 3: but so much of it we can retrieve and restore
Speaker 3: and sustain if we do things fundamentally differently, And they're
Speaker 3: a part of the innovation to make that happen. I've
Speaker 3: been working on bi diversity and climate for thirty years.
Speaker 3: It used to be I knew almost ever a beddy
Speaker 3: working on it because they were all scientists and we
Speaker 3: all went to the same meetings and we all talk
Speaker 3: to each other. Now I couldn't possibly know everybody working
Speaker 3: in these two areas anymore because they're in every single
Speaker 3: kind of discipline, every sector of the economy, everywhere around
Speaker 3: the planet. And so I think there's a lot of hope,
Speaker 3: but it's hoped that it has to be paired with action.
Speaker 1: That was a great conversation. Thank you, Rebecca, Thank you Acshaut.
Speaker 3: I'm really pleased to have had a chance to spend
Speaker 3: time with you today.
Speaker 1: After the break. How is the US contributing to biodiversity protection?
Speaker 1: I speak with Munka Medina, the US Special envoy to
Speaker 1: COP fifteen to find out. Before the break, we heard
Speaker 1: from rebeccah Shaw about her optimism, but there are thorny issues.
Speaker 1: Who will fund all this biodiversity protection, especially in developing
Speaker 1: countries where most of the biodiversity that we can preserve exists.
Speaker 1: This is something my colleague Eric Rosston has been looking into.
Speaker 1: What do experts say about where the Global Biodiversity Framework
Speaker 1: falls shot.
Speaker 2: The central issue is money, and it's almost always the
Speaker 2: central issue. I was at the Global Biodiversity Talks in
Speaker 2: Montreal in December, and I don't want to demean it
Speaker 2: by calling it a script, but like there are patterns
Speaker 2: to these negotiations, and developing countries trying to get the
Speaker 2: most financial aid they can to accomplish these ambitious goals
Speaker 2: is a really powerful hallmark. The other side is just
Speaker 2: trying to define these very large goals. The Biodiversity COP
Speaker 2: was not a place where you go and haggle over
Speaker 2: which hector of Land is going to get this technique
Speaker 2: versus that technique versus that sum of money. It's a
Speaker 2: place where the highest level goals and ambitions are really
Speaker 2: set down in stone and so it's really a lot
Speaker 2: of is very idea driven.
Speaker 1: Is that a problem though? I mean in some way.
Speaker 1: The Paris Agreement, which was signed on by again all
Speaker 1: countries in twenty five, was barely twelve pages long and
Speaker 1: was essentially a bunch of ideas which have taken the
Speaker 1: last eight years to be put into real, detailed legal
Speaker 1: wording of how things will actually play out. So do
Speaker 1: we see the Global Biodiversity Framework signed on in Montreal
Speaker 1: as a starting point?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this is another consensus driven enterprise, and by definition
Speaker 2: that means there had to be heavy negotiations and compromises
Speaker 2: all around. The flip side of that observation, though, is
Speaker 2: that when you have two hundred nations agreeing on something,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, that becomes an extremely potent document. And
Speaker 2: that potency is clear. It's clear from the agreement reached
Speaker 2: in Montreal that this is a priority now for everyone,
Speaker 2: and the private sector is listening and individual countries are listening.
Speaker 2: As a long time observed of various un processes, there
Speaker 2: is something deeply fundamental and central about soft power. It's
Speaker 2: not like somebody at a cop signs something and then
Speaker 2: agencies around the world execute new kinds of jobs the
Speaker 2: next day. It is this very powerful, undulating, wavelike stream
Speaker 2: of influence that emanates from successful negotiations like this, and
Speaker 2: it is that very fuzzy but critical soft power that
Speaker 2: is what in turn causes people in governments, people in boardrooms,
Speaker 2: people at institutional investors to interpret whatever the agreement is
Speaker 2: for themselves and execute new ways of doing business.
Speaker 1: The US did not sign this momentous agreement because the
Speaker 1: US cannot sign this agreement. The United States is not
Speaker 1: party to the Convention on Biological Diversity that was created
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. However, the Biden administration and chose
Speaker 1: to be involved in this meeting regardless. I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to speak with Monica Medina, who's the US special
Speaker 1: vote to the talks. I wanted to hear from her
Speaker 1: about what the US can actually do now that it's
Speaker 1: subjected to this fuzzy but critical soft power that Eric described. Monica,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. It's great to be here. Thank
Speaker 4: you very much for talking about this important topic.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: US is just one of two countries that is not
Speaker 1: a part of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The
Speaker 1: other country is the Vatican. What were you able to
Speaker 1: achieve without being a party to the convention at the
Speaker 1: COP fifteen meeting.
Speaker 4: Well, we were able to achieve an awful lot because
Speaker 4: we worked in concert with many of the governments who
Speaker 4: are parties. We worked through them and with them to
Speaker 4: achieve the thirty x thirty framework, which had been our
Speaker 4: goal for a long time. The Biden administration fully supports
Speaker 4: that framework, and in fact, the President himself made a
Speaker 4: promise that we would try to achieve that thirty percent
Speaker 4: of lands and waters and the ocean protected by twenty
Speaker 4: thirty goal ourselves domestically, and that we would help other
Speaker 4: countries do the same. So we had always been fully
Speaker 4: committed to the aims of the convention, and particularly because
Speaker 4: we are one of the largest funder of biodiversity in
Speaker 4: the world. At Biodiversity Conservation, we had I think a
Speaker 4: big voice that gave us an opportunity to talk about
Speaker 4: the work that we could do through our contribution to
Speaker 4: the Global Environment Facility and through our work related to
Speaker 4: climate change and nature and biodiversity.
Speaker 1: As the world's largest economy, the US also has impacts
Speaker 1: outside its own borders. Take beef. The US is the
Speaker 1: world's largest consumer of beef and cattle grazing takes a
Speaker 1: huge amount of land, both in the US and abroad
Speaker 1: from where the US imports beef. Do you think there
Speaker 1: need to be constraints put on the amount of beef
Speaker 1: people can consume it if we are to reach these golds?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't want to take away anybody's hamburger. They're
Speaker 4: Cheeseburgers are delicious, But we do understand. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think there are several things we need to think about.
Speaker 4: One of the other things that we are doing in
Speaker 4: the US and other countries are doing are looking at
Speaker 4: the ways that our own consumption patterns and our trade
Speaker 4: patterns might be actually driving deforestation in other countries. So
Speaker 4: we're trying to account for that and figure out, Okay,
Speaker 4: are there policy changes that we can make that help
Speaker 4: to mitigate or to minimize that kind of thing, And
Speaker 4: we and other developed nations are looking at that now.
Speaker 4: The EU has just done a similar study. The other
Speaker 4: thing I think we need to think about as a
Speaker 4: planet is food waste. You know, we waste an awful
Speaker 4: lot of food in this world, and if we could
Speaker 4: do less of that, we would have less methane escaping
Speaker 4: into the atmosphere from landfills in all of these areas.
Speaker 4: I think we have to really work hard to cut
Speaker 4: down the amount of things that we just dispose of
Speaker 4: the way. We don't think about how much the footprint
Speaker 4: we have on the planet for using resources and then
Speaker 4: disposing of them without thinking about the waste that we're causing.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of parallel being drawn between trying
Speaker 1: to tackle the climate crisis and tackle the biodiversity crisis,
Speaker 1: to the extent where many called what happened in Montreal
Speaker 1: the Paris Agreement for Nature, and the parallels do work
Speaker 1: to some extent. One very good example is the Paris
Speaker 1: Agreement is very clear on transferring sums of money from
Speaker 1: rich countries to developing countries to help them meet these goals.
Speaker 1: Because developed countries have for centuries exploited their natural resources
Speaker 1: but also the natural resources of colonies or other countries
Speaker 1: and have gotten rich on the back of that. Now
Speaker 1: developing countries are in the position of being able to
Speaker 1: use those resources for their own development, but are now
Speaker 1: being restricted by these necessary global agreements. So what is
Speaker 1: it that the Biden administration is doing to actually transfer
Speaker 1: money to developing countries to help them with biodiversity goals.
Speaker 4: Well, I will say I was at both cops and
Speaker 4: I think we saw at the Biodiversity cop a real
Speaker 4: effort by the Global Environment Facility, which is the main
Speaker 4: funder of biodiversity per se in the world, the main
Speaker 4: multilateral development bank, promised to change the way it does
Speaker 4: business in order to make it easier for those countries
Speaker 4: who have so much biodiversity to be able to get
Speaker 4: funding to keep it in place and not have it
Speaker 4: be developed. So I think that was a really important experience.
Speaker 4: What the US government is doing is funding biodiversity. We
Speaker 4: have huge programs at USAID that do biodiversity work in
Speaker 4: countries that are really in sore need of it. Just
Speaker 4: this past year increased dramatically our contribution to the Global
Speaker 4: Environment Facility, and we are the single largest contributor to
Speaker 4: the Global Environment Facility, which helps many organizations secretariats that
Speaker 4: do the work on a day to day basis. And
Speaker 4: we tagged half of our contribution to biodiversity and nature,
Speaker 4: so we kind of earmarked it, if you will, so
Speaker 4: that it will be used for biodiversity and conservation. But
Speaker 4: on top of that, I think we have to be
Speaker 4: pushing for private sector donors, and we need to leverage
Speaker 4: great projects in the right places because we know that
Speaker 4: there are some parts of the world whose biodiversity is
Speaker 4: still relatively intact, and we need to keep it that way,
Speaker 4: and we need to make it worth their while to
Speaker 4: keep it that way.
Speaker 1: And it certainly sounds great that the US is the
Speaker 1: largest contributor to the global environment facility, but we have
Speaker 1: to remember the context here, which is the US is
Speaker 1: the largest economy in the world, and it has to
Speaker 1: be the largest contributor to these funds. What the US
Speaker 1: tends to fail at, which is true certainly in the
Speaker 1: Climate Fund, is that it doesn't even reach its potential
Speaker 1: off how much it needs to contribute towards those funds.
Speaker 1: So the Climate Fund, the US needed to contribute as
Speaker 1: much as forty billion dollars. It's not even gotten close
Speaker 1: to the eleven billion dollars that the Biden administration wants
Speaker 1: from Congress. So there's a long way to go in
Speaker 1: making equity work in both climate and nature. What is
Speaker 1: it that you have to do internally for the politics
Speaker 1: to align so that funds can be given to developing countries.
Speaker 4: Well, I think we need to actually help create this
Speaker 4: understanding in our Congress of how important biodiversity and nature is,
Speaker 4: and we need to look for those co benefits. We
Speaker 4: have I think a lot of good support there, but
Speaker 4: we need to keep going. I don't rest, I really
Speaker 4: I get up every day trying to think about how
Speaker 4: can I do more? What more can I do. I'm
Speaker 4: always excited when I see members of our Congress go
Speaker 4: to Africa and see the benefits of biodiversity conservation there.
Speaker 4: I think that's a huge way to help. And so
Speaker 4: I can tell you this administration is determined to do
Speaker 4: it and determined to be smart about it by using
Speaker 4: the best science to figure out where can we get
Speaker 4: the best benefits for both and that to me is
Speaker 4: sort of the sweet spot.
Speaker 1: But do you think that ability is inhibited by the
Speaker 1: fact that the US isn't part of the Convention on
Speaker 1: Biological Diversity. Do you feel there's a need for the
Speaker 1: US government to convince Congress to become part of this
Speaker 1: international treaty.
Speaker 4: Well, we are a member of the High Ambition Coalition
Speaker 4: for Nature and People, which was the coalition of countries
Speaker 4: that were the drivers behind achieving the thirty by thirty framework,
Speaker 4: and I think our role is clear you said it.
Speaker 4: We have a responsibility. We know it. We're stepping up
Speaker 4: to it. Do I wish we were a member of
Speaker 4: the Convention shore, But do I think that we will
Speaker 4: continue to work very hard to meet the goals. The
Speaker 4: President said we want to achieve thirty by thirty, so
Speaker 4: we know that's our directive here in the federal government
Speaker 4: to make that happen. I also know he said we
Speaker 4: want to help other countries do the same. That's my job,
Speaker 4: so I spend a lot of time going out trying
Speaker 4: to figure out where are the best places, which governments
Speaker 4: can we work with, Where is the need the greatest,
Speaker 4: How do we work with our colleagues at USAID, Where
Speaker 4: are they doing things? Where are the gaps. We spent
Speaker 4: a lot of time, for example, last summer in the
Speaker 4: Pacific Islands trying to help them. They are obviously important
Speaker 4: for biodiversity in the ocean, really important. That's some of
Speaker 4: the most pristine areas in the ocean that remain. There
Speaker 4: are coral reefs there that are really vital. So we've
Speaker 4: been working hard with them on their ocean parks, if
Speaker 4: you will, and trying to find funding for permanence for
Speaker 4: ocean parks, which is a whole new area, so we're
Speaker 4: constantly pushing the envelope.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That was a great conversation.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's great to see rapid progress on protecting nature in
Speaker 1: the last few months, but the agreements are only great
Speaker 1: if they lead to action. The way the global economy
Speaker 1: is set up, it continues to undervalue nature, which needs
Speaker 1: to be corrected quickly. Thanks for listening to Zero. If
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode, please share it with the bird
Speaker 1: watcher in your life. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and
Speaker 1: senior producer is Christine Driskell. Our theme music is by
Speaker 1: Wonderly Special Thanks this week to Mobarrow, Anna Maazarakis, Stacey Wong,
Speaker 1: Eric Rosston, and Kira bindram i'm Akshatrati back next week.