COP15 - WHAT HAPPENED?

By Davy McCracken, 10 February 2023

Living in Scotland, it was almost impossible not to know that Scotland hosted the COP26 Climate conference back in December 2021.

These regular meetings – called the Conference of the Parties or COP for short – bring together representatives from governments around the world to discuss – and ideally agree – actions to reduce future adverse impacts of climate change.

What seems to be less well known across Scottish society – even though it was recognised by the scientific community and governments across the world well before climate change was a twinkle in anyone’s eye – is that we are also facing a global biodiversity crisis.

As a result, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) holds its own set of COP meetings for biodiversity, with the latest – COP15 – being held in Montreal, Canada in December 2022.

By the end of that meeting, the 196 signatories to the CBD had agreed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. That in itself was nothing new, since halting and reversing biodiversity loss has been a cornerstone of the CBD since it was first signed in 1992.

What did emerge as an additional major outcome was what is called the “30 by 30 target - a global commitment to protect at least 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas of particular importance for biodiversity by 2030.

Scotland was represented in Montreal by Lorna Slater, Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy & Biodiversity, and while at the conference she published the Scottish Government’s draft Biodiversity Strategy for 2045.

This commits to setting statutory targets for nature restoration, accelerating the restoration of vital habitats, such as degraded peatlands, and taking steps to promote nature-friendly farming, fishing and forestry.

This is all very welcome and laudable – especially the commitment to develop statutory targets against which the Scottish Government can be held accountable. The lack of these is one of the reasons why we have seen insufficient biodiversity actions on the ground since Scotland’s first Biodiversity Strategy was published in 2004.

The draft 2045 Strategy also sets out 26 Priority Actions which are needed to put Scotland on track to halting biodiversity loss by 2030 and restore it across the country by 2045.

Examples of these include: secure positive effects for biodiversity from the National Planning Framework; reduce pressures on coastal and marine systems; continue to reduce deer densities; introduce an agricultural support framework which delivers for nature restoration, biodiversity and high quality food production; and ensure productive forests deliver increased biodiversity and habitat connectivity.

However, where it falls down somewhat at the moment is that the detailed Delivery Plans, which will set out how all of this will be achieved, have yet to be published and consulted upon.

And the longer the wait until it is revealed what will be expected of them, the bigger the hill will be to climb for those in industries such as farming, fishing and forestry who will be the ones primarily tasked by Scottish Government to implement the delivery plans on the ground.

Just as importantly, the draft 2045 Strategy also recognises that the biodiversity crisis cannot be tackled in isolation.

Hence one of the key Enabling Actions highlighted in the Strategy is the need to systematically mainstream biodiversity across sectors and the wider policy landscape, e.g. energy, housing, industry, education, health and transport.

But again, the policies in that landscape are continuing to develop largely independent of each other, and are certainly not sitting waiting until the Biodiversity Strategy gets all its ducks in a row.

The need to break down such policy silos was recognised in autumn 2021 in SEDA Land’s New Vision for Land Use in Scotland which I helped produce.

It is now only seven years before we reach 2030.

Hence the need to integrate biodiversity concerns effectively into all Scottish Government policies and funding streams is becoming ever more urgent.