Can the quest to save nature find its guiding star?

An agreement has been reached at the COP summit in Montreal. But the real question, according to Harriet Bulkeley, professor in Environmental Governance and Sustainable Transitions, is whether this provides enough direction for the kinds of transformative change we need to create new socio-natures that are both significant in their own right and generative of sustainable development or whether we will be left following the path of business as usual when it comes to nature conservation.

The long-awaited meeting, delayed several times during the pandemic, is intended to forge a new set of commitments from national governments to both set aside areas of land and sea for conservation and restoration as well as to ensure that nature was mainstreamed in decisions by all levels of government and across society – from local planning to boardroom decisions, pension investments through to subsidies for pesticides.

There have been times over the past two weeks - as conservationists, scientists, businesses, indigenous people and governments gathered in Montreal, Canada, for the COP15 summit - that all hope of a new global agreement to protect and restore nature seemed lost. Above all, those gathered in Montreal hoped for a ‘guiding star’ – with many backing #NaturePositive as a clarion call, a uniting ambition to mobilise action and set the direction of travel for both governments and societal actors alike, much as the target of keeping the world below ‘1.5 degrees’ has done for climate change.

Just over two weeks ago, when the final rounds of negotiation started in Montreal, it was clear there was still much work to be done. The text of the agreement remained heavily ‘bracketed’ – with multiple sections and phrases failing to receive endorsement from governments – and the pathway ahead to consensus unclear. During the talks, seemingly endless committee meetings have worked hard to clean up the text. Key breakthroughs in financial commitment from the countries of the global North to the global South have helped to clear the way. Yet there remains a significant distance between the proposed agreement tabled by the COP15 Presidency just minutes before the World Cup Final on Sunday and the ambitious, comprehensive outcome so many have been working for – and that the planet desperately needs.

Even as the gravel came down on the agreement reached in the early hours of Sunday in Montreal, there is growing concern that it lacks the teeth needed to achieve tangible progress – indeed it is sometimes difficult to see much advance on the Aichi Targets agreed more than ten years ago. The biodiversity agreement appears to be running to stand still.

Part of the problem lies, as it always does, with governments reluctant to confront vested interests, find new resources to support environmental action, overcome other political differences to realise agreements and generate the political will for difficult decisions. And in the divisions over who should take responsibility – and who should pay – for action, as was crystal clear as African countries sought to challenge the final text in the dying seconds of the negotiations.

But part of the problem also lies in those who want change. For some, the way ahead is clear – to set aside areas of the world for nature, and there has been strong momentum for the ’30 by 30’ target which would allocate 30% of land and sea for this purpose by 2030. Yet the latest science tells us that without mainstreaming action on nature across society and governments at all levels, simply placing the nature we want behind a line on a map will do little to save it.

Transformative change requires instead that the underlying drivers of the loss of nature are tackled – from diets to climate change, corporate decisions to how we build infrastructure. A unlikely group of actors, from indigenous people and local communities to pension fund managers, multinational corporations to local and regional governments have been seeking to mobilise action to carve out this path forward. With the agreement now concluded, it is less clear where this momentum will go.

One strategy has to been to seek to insert small but carefully formed changes in the draft agreement text – to recognise the role of subnational governments, to make reporting on nature mandatory for businesses, to support the use of nature-based solutions in action for biodiversity and to align the biodiversity agreement with climate change, for example – with mixed success.

The fundamental shifts in both the politics and economy of responsibilities for the loss of nature that this would entail – from distant, biodiversity rich countries back to the governments, boardrooms and shopping baskets of wealthier countries – are resisted. And many traditional conservationists and the national governments that support this approach have also found it hard to get behind this cause. The ‘nature positive’ strapline that seeks to unite this movement seems too ephemeral and the intended actions too weak, such that they see a very real risk that important forms of biodiversity will be lost without hard lines being put in place that lock nature into specific places.

The other strategy has been to pledge to go it alone – if COP15 won’t save us, they argue, its time to save ourselves. Moving between the multiple events taking place on the side of the negotiations proper it has been difficult to navigate the number of new pledges, commitments, pacts and funds that are being declared. Calls for an Action Agenda, to keep track of all of this work and to provide at least a loose connection to the ongoing efforts of national government, have been strong but again even those national governments that want change for nature seem so set on the particular guiding star of allocating land and sea for nature that they can not see the wider prize just within their grasp.

With the final negotiations now complete, an agreement has been reached at Montreal that promises much in terms of ambition – a renaissance for nature as one delegate put it in the final plenary. But with significant concerns raised by African countries, and concerns over the lack of concrete measures to be adopted means that it rings hollow in terms of delivery, treading the well-worn path of international agreements. The real question is whether the other actors gathered here are prepared to continue their quest, to build a coalition willing to take the road less travelled and rather than focusing only on putting aside space for nature start to generate the kind of action we need for transformative change to halt its loss and create new socio-natures that are both significant in their own right and generative of sustainable development.