Argentina among 30 key countries to recover the planet’s biodiversity – One Earth study

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Every October 18, World Wildlife Day is celebrated to promote environmental responsibility and the preservation of natural spaces. Research has identified 50 ecoregions to be preserved and 30 countries, including Argentina, that contribute critically to the goals proposed to recover 50% of the planet’s biodiversity.

A “Global Safety Net” to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize the Earth’s climate, published in the journal Science, pointed out that to stop a new mass extinction, it is essential to reverse the damage that humanity has done to the planet in the last century. The two-year research drew on multiple global datasets to identify areas in need of conservation beyond the 15.1% currently under protection.

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Using an interactive digital platform developed by One Earth in partnership with Google Earth Engine, the research shows a preliminary system of climate and wildlife corridors that identifies 35.3% of the land that would be required to connect protected areas and intact landscapes.

According to Karl Burkart, director of One Earth, establishing a list of the world’s most critical biodiverse regions requires asking which criteria might be more important than another.

This can be a bit of a dangerous game because choosing among “15 of the world’s most biodiverse regions” would leave out many magnificent and irreplaceable ecoregions with unique characteristics that contribute, in concert and interconnection with others, to maintaining biodiversity around the world.”

Based on this spatial analysis, the paper presented for the first time a common but differentiated, science-based approach to area-based targets that could inform the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on new targets for the 2030 Period in the current negotiations.

Each of the world’s 846 ecoregions studied has a mix of layers, creating a combined target for a given country, which can be broken down to the state or provincial level, allowing sub-national governments to improve the ambition of their local targets.

“Brazil and Argentina talk about the importance of action and ambition but use technical or legal process situations to delay negotiations. It’s a tactical position,” commented Diego Casaes of Avaaz before the first session of the CBD last week.

The research also highlighted the vital role of indigenous lands in protecting biodiversity and reversing climate change: these lands cover 37% of the area identified by the Global Security Network. “It is important to highlight the role played by indigenous peoples in these biomes, as science itself recognizes that indigenous conservation practices in the ecoregions they inhabit have prevented further biodiversity loss,” the study said.

Karl Burkart said: “If we exceed 1.5°C in average global temperature rise, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to meet the targets of the UN Biodiversity Convention. And if we fail to protect land for ecosystem services and carbon dioxide sequestration, we will not be able to achieve the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The two conventions are intertwined.”

Anup Joshi of the University of Minnesota added that the forest plays a vital role in sequestering carbon dioxide and is crucial to achieving the global warming targets defined in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

“The Global Protection Network finds that a quarter of the planet’s land area corresponds to forest regions (32.8 M km2), of which only 28% is protected. Safeguarding the remaining forests, which contain more than 1.3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, are essential to maintain the balance of our global climate system,” he said.