Hannah Thomas and Yi Fei Chung
CBCS PhD candidates
CBCS PhD candidates Hannah Thomas and Yi Fei Chung have recently co-led a Policy Forum in Science, co-authored by past and present CBCS members Brooke Williams, Martine Maron, Jonathan Rhodes, Michelle Ward and Jeremy Simmonds. This piece calls for nations to commit to policies that align with nature positive outcomes, and was published to coincide with COP16, held in late October in Cali, Colombia.
The authors propose four key steps:
(1) legislate for “absolute net gain” and aligned biodiversity targets; (2) limit and fully compensate for any biodiversity loss from development; (3) take substantial additional conservation actions to tackle other threats; and (4) resource effective and transparent implementation and enforcement of such policies.
“Our goal in providing these recommendations is to help countries make meaningful changes, be aware of potential loopholes in the conservation policies, and drive real positive outcome for species and ecosystems”, Fei says. “I hope that publishing this paper will contribute meaningfully to the discussions at COP16 in Cali, Colombia.”
Australia is among the first nations to commit to “nature positive” law reforms since the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was agreed on in 2022. However, the Australian Government’s proposed reforms raise critical issues that must be rectified if its laws are to align with true nature positive outcomes, act as a template for other nations and support achievement of the 2030 Targets and Mission outlined by the GBF. “If laws are titled ‘nature positive’ I think it’s easy to assume that they will therefore reduce the loss of biodiversity and implement recovery actions for threatened species,” says Hannah.
“This paper is therefore important to illustrate that not everything that is titled ‘nature positive’ will result in an outcome that is positive for nature. We really wanted to communicate this in an easy-to-understand way.” Some of the key issues discussed in
the paper include the use of “relative” rather than “absolute” net gain when compensating for impacts to biodiversity and the option for developers to skip strict “like-for-like” offsetting requirements, and instead provide a “conservation payment”, which does not necessarily have to compensate the same species that was originally impacted.
To find out more, read the paper here, and articles in The Conversation here, the Biodiversity Council News here and COSMOS magazine here.
