Is the G7 leading the way on climate and biodiversity action?
The G7 has the potential to encourage action across the world, building on current multilateral engagement with the UNFCCC and UNCBD. The G7 2030 Nature Compact has attracted substantial attention and raised expectations of the G7 nations to lead action at the climate–biodiversity intersection. During its 2022 presidency of the G7, Germany aimed to focus strongly on climate policy, partly in the interest of having robust foreign and security policies: ‘We can be under the illusion that the West is an island, but even here the water will continue to rise inexorably if we do not act now.’ The German presidency aims to deliver progress on climate and biodiversity. At the G7 summit in June 2022, there was an agreement to establish an ‘open and cooperative Climate Club by the end of 2022 as a global response to the climate crisis’. The Climate Club aims to be an inclusive intergovernmental forum of high ambition, open to countries committed to the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and Glasgow Climate Pact. Furthermore, all G7 countries have declared a net zero climate target for 2050 (or sooner, e.g. 2045 for Germany) – and all targets except for the US’s are legally binding.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz brought attention to the GBF and announced Germany’s intention to increase annual biodiversity funding by €870 million ($843 million), doubling the country’s previous commitment:
While G7 countries generally do not possess the most biodiverse ecosystems, the largest deposits of irrecoverable carbon or the most intact ecosystems, the bottom-up international agreement under CBD means they must pursue ambitious biodiversity policies at home to inspire action abroad. For example, without robust domestic policies to achieve 30 per cent protected land by 2030, G7 calls for the protection of critical areas such as the Amazon Rainforest, Congo Basin and Great Barrier Reef will ring hollow.
Protecting 30 per cent of land with a high biodiversity value by 2030 would require G7 countries to pursue transformative and joined-up policies.
Protecting 30 per cent of land with a high biodiversity value by 2030 would require G7 countries to pursue transformative and joined-up policies. While credible mechanisms to accelerate biodiversity protection are still lacking, some relevant policy approaches are emerging in individual G7 countries. In the UK, the 25 Year Environment Plan sets out a series of measures to protect biodiversity. A new Environment Act in 2021 introduced the framework for at least one legally binding target on biodiversity and established a 10 per cent ‘net biodiversity gain’ requirement on new housing developments – meaning efforts to replace and recover nature must exceed the biodiversity value lost from exploitation. However, there are some key concerns regarding structural inadequacies of the scheme, including monitoring and enforcement to tackle issues such as developers trading biodiversity ‘credits’ before any benefits have materialized, and local authorities being under-resourced to implement the scheme. At the same time, a new ‘sustainable farming incentive’ seeks to gradually shift approaches towards farming practices that promote biodiversity, such as the use of winter cover crops and protecting hedges through restructuring subsidies.
Similarly, the EU’s Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy aims to ensure food systems are fair, healthy and environmentally friendly. Two key goals of the strategy are reversing the loss of biodiversity and helping to mitigate climate change. Additionally, parallels can be drawn with the 30 by 30 target as F2F stresses the importance of preserving and restoring land, freshwater and sea-based resources. The EU will also focus on halving nutrient losses, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, which in turn helps protect biodiversity in rivers, lakes, wetlands and seas by reducing nutrient run-off. Like the UK’s sustainable farming incentive, the F2F strategy includes a shift from payments based on land ownership to those based on results.
However, both the UK and EU agricultural incentive reforms have been criticized for lack of ambition. The UK’s policy goes the farthest of the two, but higher-ambition interventions that reclaim land for biodiversity, like planting trees and rewetting peat bogs, are not compensated by the scheme. Meanwhile, in the EU, political inertia on agricultural subsidies means that only 25 per cent of funds between 2023 and 2027 are ring-fenced for eco-schemes. While reform of area-based agricultural payments is critical to reduce the loss of natural land to farming, the pace of change does not match biodiversity protection targets for 2030. It is unclear if and how a potential reduction in harvest yields associated with nature-friendly farming practices would be dealt with – i.e. whether more land will be converted to agriculture, or whether overall demand for food will be reduced through waste reduction and dietary changes to avoid land expansion.
In Canada, the 30 by 30 target is complemented with a ‘25% by 2025’ milestone and some policies to achieve these aims have been detailed in the ‘A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy’ plan. Over the next decade, CAD 3.16 billion ($2.42 billion) will be directed to tree planting and CAD 631 million ($483 million) to the restoration of peatlands, wetlands, grasslands and agricultural lands in a push to enhance and conserve carbon-rich ecosystems. Despite large investments in the designation and management of protected areas in Canada, additional effort could be made to help address the impacts of other land uses. For example, on a per acre basis, investment in climate-friendly agriculture in Canada ($0.54) is far lower than the investment in the US ($6.55) and EU27 ($40.03).
Other signatories to the G7 2030 Nature Compact show little sign of accelerating biodiversity protection. For example, Japan is taking steps to increase the certification of privately managed land, but little is being done to tackle the expansive pressures of the agricultural sector. Japan’s agricultural subsidies remain among the highest in the OECD, and agricultural commodity production targets indicate that land used for food will continue to exert pressure on biodiversity in the next decade. In the US, the Biden administration issued an executive order establishing US support for 30 by 30 in January 2021, but releasing funds to realize this ambition will prove challenging. The Federal Bureau of Land Management faces a backlog of $19 billion in maintenance of existing federal lands that was not completed when scheduled, in addition to the cost of almost tripling the amount of land under protection.
In some cases, economic interests have even led to the reversal of biodiversity protection, in so-called ‘protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement’.
More generally, G7 action on biodiversity conservation at home faces structural barriers to progress that must be addressed in order to halt and reverse biodiversity decline this decade. Firstly, protected areas need not only be designated on the map, but also adequately funded and resourced to make a real difference. Not only does conservation face a multi-billion-dollar funding gap, but it is also subject to uncertain and project-based finance, which jeopardizes the long-term nature of conservation efforts and nature-based solutions. The stop-start nature of funding can weaken partnerships, lead to a loss of expertise, and ultimately compromise or reverse biodiversity and climate outcomes. A second structural problem inhibiting effective conservation in the G7 and beyond is biodiversity protection being treated in isolation from policy areas that can have conflicting objectives. Mining, agriculture, infrastructure, biofuel production and urban development all compete for space with nature, and policy regimes often create incentives and land-use classifications that present trade-offs with biodiversity protection by undermining living conditions of species and habitats. In some cases, economic interests have even led to the reversal of biodiversity protection, in so-called ‘protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement’ (PADDD). In the G7, recent PADDD events have been linked to oil exploitation, and during the Trump administration the downsizing of several areas of protected land, or ‘national monuments’, led to an overall decline in US protected area coverage in 2017.
The impact of the G7 at home is mostly dependent not on the conservation of existing land use, but on the extent to which the group’s members pursue restoration of land and habitats and tackle GHG emissions. Abroad, the G7 must drive the restoration of degraded and lost habitats and the preservation of existing natural habitats. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has described the challenge of tackling the biodiversity and climate crises as ‘the fight of the century’. With ambitious targets for biodiversity and climate change mitigation leading up to 2030, the challenges of funding gaps and competing land uses will only become greater. With the global estate of protected areas set to almost double in the next decade, incremental change will not suffice – a rethink of land use is essential.
