Panama City, 23 April 2012 – After several years of international negotiations, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was finally established. IPBES aims to accomplish for conservation science what the highly successful IPCC has accomplished for climate science questions. SCB has participated in the negotiations and will continue to focus on IPBES in the future. Carolyn Lundquist, representative of the Society for Conservation Biology, stressed “the need to for IPBES enhance the transparency of the platform through direct involvement of stakeholders and civil society organizations as observers.” The official press release stated:
IPBES aims to tackle head-on the accelerating worldwide loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem service by bridging the gap between accurate, impartial and up to date science and policy-makers. Although many organizations and initiatives contribute to improving the dialogue between policy-makers and the scientific community in this field, IPBES is established as a new platform, recognized by both the scientific and policy communities to address the existing gaps and strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services. “Today, biodiversity won”, said the chair of the meeting, Sir Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom. “Over 90 governments successfully established the science-policy interface for all countries. Biodiversity and ecosystem services are essential for human wellbeing. This platform will generate the knowledge and build the capacity to protect them for this and future generations,” he said.
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SCB’s North America section has previously commented on the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline because the pipeline controversy touches on broader concerns regarding sustainable energy and wildlife conservation (see here and here). The White House has announced plans to delay a decision on permitting the pipeline in order to allow more scrutiny of these and other concerns (news report).
In response to the announcement, SCB President Paul Beier joined Policy Committee Member and Canadian scientist, Paul Paquet, in issuing the following statement: “SCB plans to continue its strong scrutiny of the entire tar sands process as well as any alternate routes for the Keystone XL and Enbridge Pipelines. It seems likely that any routes will still cause great harm to the whooping crane, several ecosystems in Canada and the United States, and the earth’s climate.”
SCB’s North America section has been extensively involved in policy issues surrounding the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline because the pipeline controversy touches on broader concerns regarding sustainable energy and wildlife conservation. On October 9, SCB submitted comments on the State Department’s finding that the permit to allow the Keystone XL pipeline would be in the national interest.
The full comments are here. Also see SCB previous comments on the pipeline. The six questions are:
1) If you cannot adequately assess the effects of the pipeline and alternatives to it, how can you determine that it would be in the national interest?
2) How can the Secretary comply with her duties to ensure that her action will not be likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the endangered whooping crane when neither her Biological Assessment nor the Interior Secretaries’ Biological Opinion consider the impact of the oil sands developments and the pipeline that makes them probable on the northern third of the habitat?
3) How can the Secretary find the pipeline to be in the national interest when Canada’s own Environment Commissioner has found that the effects are poorly understood, poorly controlled and will diminish the effectiveness of Canada’s participation in international agreements for the control of climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gases?
4) Will approving the permit reduce our environmental and other security risks more than choosing more prudent available alternatives?
5) Will approving the permit guarantee a source of transportation fuel for the U.S. at any reasonable price considering the competing bidders who will be much less constrained by market prices? Or will it merely guarantee access to those very bidders who would not otherwise have that access at all?
6) Why cause serious environmental harm and raise serious security risks — and reduce room for renewable energy — by permitting the pipeline, when we can conserve wildlife and supply our energy needs with secure, safe, clean, renewable energy in ways that can probably provide more permanent jobs across the US?
The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and regulations based on it provide the framework for the management of 155 National Forests and 20 Grasslands, and are the key guidelines for ensuring that these lands help safeguard biodiversity. NFMA regulations are currently under revision, after a set of regulations enacted under the Bush administration was invalidated by the courts. A panel of scientists convened by SCB reviewed the new draft regulations. The scientists reviewed each of five focus areas in the agencies’ draft Environmental Impact Statement on the service’s proposed rule. While reviewers noted that the planning rule was in certain respects a marked improvement over the 1982 forest rule that is currently in effect, they called on the Forest Service to make improvements in order to reach the agencies’ stated goal of protecting water and wildlife in a changing climate and to meet the requirements of the law in today’s world. Read more…
Expansion of renewable energy infrastructure is an important goal but creates complex questions regarding how the renewable footprint can be expanded while minimizng adverse impacts on biodiversity. SCB recently submitted comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggesting how conservation science can best inform their current process of developing Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines.
The following column by SCB Policy Director John Fitzgerald is adapted from an article that will appear in the upcoming issue of SCB’s newsletter, available here later this quarter.
From Nagoya to Nuclear Catastrophe and from Organic Shade Grown Fair Trade Coffee to the Tea Party – in One Season
At the end of 2010 we reported in the Policy Insider and the Newsletter on the considerable progress that SCB’s delegation had made in the meeting in Nagoya, Japan, contributing to and improving the strategic plan and other elements of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s next ten years of implementation.
We also reported on initial attempts in the US Congress to curtail the application of the Endangered Species Act and other bedrock environmental laws, initially by removing gray wolves in two or more states from the endangered and threatened lists. (For more details on these and other issues see the Policy Insider at www.conbio.org/resources/policy.)
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Each quarter, John Fitzgerald, SCB’s Policy Director, prepares a newsletter describing conservation policy news and SCB’s policy activities. It often provides more depth on an issue than we can post on the blog.
December’s issue can be found here.
SCB today submitted comments on California’s proposed regulations for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and market-based compliance mechanisms (“cap and trade”). These are among the first such regulations in the United States, following similar regulations enacted by the European Union. SCB’s letter communicates the importance of achieving the most rapid reduction possible in human-caused greenhouse gases and other forcing agents, such as black carbon or soot, and combined with measures for ecosystem conservation and restoration. Nothing short of this combination will be likely to avoid accelerating losses in biodiversity and ecosystem services due to climate change. The second point we make in the letter is that California’s mitigation efforts should not rely upon carbon offsets when other approaches are available. In the US system, states have a great array of regulatory tools available under the Constitution, and California is the prime example of a state that uses this capacity to lead in the process, even when the Federal government lags, e.g., in controlling air pollution.
The full letter is here.
Environment ministers from many nations are in Cancun, Mexico this week for the 16th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Chang. This meeting follows the 2009 meeting of the group in Copenhagen. The Society for Conservation Biology today sent a letter to negotiators in Cancun, continueing the dialogue SCB began with the UNFCCC delegates and Secretariat before the Copenhagen meeting. Among other points, SCB’s letter stressed the imporrtance of including the significant contribution of biologically diverse, carbon-dense primary forests in temperate and boreal regions to climate stabilization in discussions on the REDD+ strategy. REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. “REDD+” goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
The SCB letter is here.
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