According to new research, more than 1,500 of Australia’s unique terrestrial and marine ecosystems are not represented in any of the country’s protected areas.
The study, by WWF-Australia, comes as countries gather this week for the first leg of the UN biodiversity conference, hosted by China in Kunming. The talks aim to set new goals for nature protection and restoration.
Environment ministers, including Australia’s Sussan Ley, will meet virtually and are expected to sign a Kunming Declaration, an official declaration setting out the ambitions of the conference – known as Cop15 – as countries work towards a new global framework to halt biodiversity loss.
Environmental groups say Australia, as the only developed and megadiverse country to have ratified the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), should take a leadership role in developing targets to increase the protection of nature, especially on land.
The WWF-Australia report found that many species and ecosystems of national significance receive no protection because they are outside designated protected areas, such as national parks.
The research reveals that 1,542 of the Earth’s 6,001 ecosystems have no protection and only 2,218 meet what WWF considers minimum standards of protection, meaning that at least 15% of the original extent of an ecosystem has been protected.
For marine ecosystems, 499 out of 920 had achieved the minimum standard while 115 had no protection.
The results are obtained through a spatial data analysis that WWF performs every few years using publicly available data on protected areas.
The research was released to coincide with the World Biodiversity Conference, which is working towards a milestone to protect 30% of all land and sea areas by 2030.
Australia said it supports this global goal, but did not indicate whether it would support such a commitment at the national level.
Rachel Lowry, WWF-Australia’s conservation manager, said gaps in protected areas were a “compelling reason” for Australia to support national targets.
“Nations like the UK, US and Canada have all pledged to protect 30% of land and seas,” she said.
“Australia is a thriving nation that has the means to achieve the full goal. Supporting an international goal without committing to it domestically is a double standard.
The WWF report also looked at 84 of Australia’s listed threatened ecological communities and found that only 13 had minimum standards of protection and two had no known or likely habitat protection.
Of 1,937 nationally significant species – which include threatened and migratory species – 129 had no known or likely habitat protection.
The biodiversity talks aim to establish a new post-2020 global nature framework that will replace the targets set in Aichi, Japan, in 2010.
These goals have largely not been met by countries.
Further meetings will take place in the new year before the countries meet in April 2022 in Kunming, where it is hoped that the new agreement will be concluded.
The new agreement would be articulated as a series of milestones and targets to be achieved over decades, with the ultimate goal of living in harmony with nature by 2050.
“As a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, we are committed to finalizing an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) to be adopted during the second half of this conference in April 2022,” a doorman said. -word of Ley.
“This is the next key step in achieving CBD’s 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature.”
He added: “Australia fully supports the High Ambition Coalition’s global goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land and 30% of the oceans to support biodiversity as part of this vision.”
Labor Party environment spokeswoman Terri Butler said Australia had failed to meet past nature targets – including the global Aichi targets – and environmental spending had been cut under coalition governments.
“Despite this government’s failures, they must now be part of a global call for greater biodiversity conservation, as parties to the Convention develop the post-2020 global biodiversity framework,” said Butler.
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“Australians expect their government to show leadership and call for an ambitious and robust set of global goals and targets for the next decade to tackle the biodiversity crisis facing the world. .”
Nathaniel Pelle, a nature campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the conference was the most important biodiversity meeting for a decade and that Australia, known for its unique landscapes and wildlife, had a lot to do. to lose.
“Setting a goal to stop and reverse the destruction of nature is important because our animals, plants, landscapes and oceans are under threat like never before,” he said.
“ACF urges Minister Ley to champion a new deal with an unambiguous goal to halt and reverse the destruction of biodiversity by 2030 and match this with national commitments, including a target to protect 30% of our lands, as other nations have done.”
