Dashboard map for 2022 SDG Index Goal #15 ratings. Data source: sdgindex.org
Mean area that is protected in terrestrial sites important to biodiversity (%)
Biodiversity is the variability of life on Earth. What happens without the richness of biodiversity in the form of healthy populations of myriad species? What other species beside our own could drive a million species to the bleeding precipice of extinction? What in our lives is worthy of this cost? Why are we all complicit in extinction, both of our own kind, and millions of others?
Unless you lived in a Third World country, your lifestyle - innocuous and well-intentioned - has left the planet worse off than when you got here. You partook in agriculture and were a cog and beneficiary in the consumption and production of the global economy. Other lifeforms are in a more precarious state than when you found them.
The Convention on Biological Diversity is the treaty adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit, the same UN conference adopting the UNFCCC. The Convention on Biological Diversity treaty ought to be a central pillar of our societies and governance, yet to most governments, it is a footnote.
The biodiversity Goal's, #14 and 15, get my vote for being among the most under-served of the Goals. We are in deep shit when it comes to biodiversity loss, and the outcome thus far is among the most tragic. It’s sad enough we’re unable to lend a hand to three-quarters of a billion individuals of our own species living on less than $2 a day. It’s quite another matter again to take a broad swath of life with you on the path to extinction. Tragically, there appears to be some sort of an innate mechanism within our species allowing us to ruin our ability to perpetuate.
Some may consider the following sacrilege, but if fate holds humanity to wipe itself out in the coming century or two, I’m uncertain planet Earth will miss us much. “Good riddance,” I would’ve thought would be closer to the sentiment. Such an outcome would see the end of the geological epoch of the Anthropocene, whereby one species i.e., humans, dominated so much, geologists monikered a geological span after us.
I want to ask you to reflect on how you feel about animals and plants, the world around you which fits into the definition of nature. Other species are more vulnerable than us. Even the monarchs of the jungles, savannah, and oceans - lions, tigers, and sharks - are vulnerable to human technologies able to kill from afar. Does the destruction of swaths of the planet - habitats of endangered species - cause heartbreak within you? If the answer is no, why not? A different disconnect altogether is when humanity cuts down an old-growth forest for forestry production. It goes to pulp processing, manufactured into our cereal boxes, or newly built homes. We'll knock the home down in 15 years anyway, as the housing stock changes over to catch up with a more modern style.
I bet each of us seldom thinks about these things. Even if we sometimes do, we can somehow make wild gymnastics of logic to ourselves, identifying as a tree-hugging greenie, yet also building a new house with fresh timber. It’s classic human behaviour. Humans equate natural resources as resources for utility and consumption in the context of economic growth in tandem with a pattern of environmental degradation. Life is a commodity to us.
What’s the answer? With SDG #15 languishing as it is, we have to be missing something heretofore we’ve been neglecting within ourselves. The Anthropocene extinction is happening right now, and has been for many years, but we instead live reactively according to daily news headlines.
The prescription is the same as its counterpart for marine Key Biodiversity Areas in Goal #14. Contact your government to demand the protection of terrestrial Key Biodiversity Areas.
Summary: Contact your government representative overseeing terrestrial protected areas in your country or state, requesting the government protect 100% of terrestrial Key Biodiversity Areas.
Mean area that is protected in freshwater sites important to biodiversity (%)
This indicator is similar to the previous, with close to the whole world scoring red. Again, the same prescription applies to the previous i.e., contacting your country and/or state government, calling upon them to protect freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas.
Summary: Contact your government representative overseeing freshwater protected areas in your country or region, requesting the government protect 100% of freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas.
Red List Index of species survival (worst 0-1 best)
Here, dear reader, we find ourselves pressed-up alongside the sad indignity of our species: the Red List, a list of those species at risk of extinction.
The Red List Index is a score, like the SDG Index - 1 being the highest score, and 0 the least optimal score. The Red List Index is our best measure for each country’s trends of biodiversity loss.
What for those countries scoring red for this Red List indicator? It's doubtful you're combing the taxonomy of species, setting forth into habitats to commit genocide upon birds and amphibians. But then who is responsible for biodiversity loss, as humanity is the driving force behind it?
My suggestion for this indicator draws on the initiative of the late E.O. Wilson, a biologist who endeavoured to catalogue all known species. Your task is to familiarise yourself with those species on the Red List for your country. The data is available on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List website for each country, along with profiles of each species. There’s a search bar at the top of the page - enter your country’s name, select it, and explore the species on the List for your country, putting names to some faces. Also, check out the categorisation of each species e.g., 'least concern' through to 'critically endangered'. The reason for this is if you’re able to articulate what is being threatened by your lifestyle, how can you err on the side of conservation. You can also narrow the data by threats, of which there are 11 options, with further sub-options within each:
Residential and commercial development
Agriculture and aquaculture
Energy production & mining
Transportation and service corridors
Biological resource use
Human intrusions and disturbance
Natural system modifications
Invasive and other problematic species, genes and disease
Pollution
Geological events
Climate change and severe weather
Summary:
For readers in countries off-track:
Search for your country at the IUCN Red List website
Narrow your search by Red List Category, selecting the categories of ‘Critically Endangered’, ‘Endangered’, ‘Vulnerable’
Explore these species with a curiosity
Permanent deforestation (% of forest area, 5-year average)
This indicator reflects as tragic a phenomenon as the previous indicator: permanent loss of forest cover, measuring between 2014 and 2018, for reasons of clearing land for:
urban areas
agricultural farms and ranches
commodity production
This excludes temporary forms of deforestation like wildfires. The 2030 aim is to end permanent deforestation.
An obvious contender for an individual to respond to deforestation is reforestation. However, the damage may already be done if a habitat has been lost, with the resultant hit to biodiversity, leading to extinctions. Potential aridity, soil erosion and loss of soil health may set into the former forested area, with deforestation also affecting the water cycle, contributing to desertification. Deforestation also contributes to climate change, as forests have the effect of the biological sequestration of carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere.
A tremendous framework through which to perceive a solution to the dilemma of deforestation is REDD+, an acronym standing for 'Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’. REDD+ allows us to achieve two things: mitigating climate change and forest management. Afforestation allows for the creation of forest cover where there was none before, which ties into '30 x 30', an initiative aiming to protect 30% of the surface of the Earth’s land and marine surface by 2030.
There are even novel solutions to curb the negative driver of agriculture, with advances such as hybrid crop varieties. Citizens of poor countries may feel they have little choice for survival but to clear land to attempt a livelihood, but solutions for small-scale farms include hydroponics, greenhouses, and vertical farming. The solution to permanent deforestation needs to be sustainable forest management. But this is a complex, large-scale discipline, so we need solutions for you to end deforestation by 2030.
In likelihood, few readers will hail from the countries driving the bulk of permanent deforestation. The obvious prescription is to leave trees and forests to live. The following instead is proactive. It takes steps ahead of what’s already occurred, and may yet occur, which is to afforest and reforest i.e., plant trees. But wherever you live, if you look at the environment around you, whether urban or rural, in likelihood you’re surrounded by what used to be a forest. This forest has since been felled for our use, and for which we would benefit to reforest or afforest. The closer we get to mid-century and beyond, the more we’ll need extra steps such as afforestation to sequester the carbon dioxide already emitted.
Mindfulness of where your food is coming from also helps, as we may have cleared land to provide for cheap crops. Yet this is difficult, as supply chains are opaque to the average consumer. The bottom line is, if you’re participating in clearing forests and you’re reading this, get a new job.
Summary:
purchase commodities from either domestic sources or imported from countries on-track
reforest and afforest, by planting trees, or donating to tree planting projects
Terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity threats embodied in imports (per million population)
You’re by now familiar with embodied imports from previous indicators. A focus became clear to the authors of the SDG Index on the need to better account for ‘spillover effects’, whereby a developing, exporting country feels the negative effects of a developed country importing goods. It became clear these spillover effects were masking a wealth of the indicators, thus we have so many similar indicators focused on spillovers embodied in imports.
The 2022 results of this indicator bear out a similar pattern i.e., the high-income OECD countries are off-track. The Nature article from which this indicator uses as its source explains biodiversity is falling at a rate of 100-1,000% of levels before humanity. Five billion supply chains were studied worldwide. The research identified 25,000 animal species on the IUCN’s Red List to more than 15,000 commodities produced across all the UN member states. The title of the article bears out its conclusion: ‘International trade drives biodiversity threats in developing nations’.
Throw into the mix populations are growing. As more people in the developing world move into the middle class, their diets change, with more meat intake. Animal husbandry consumes land for intensive agriculture, requiring land development at the expense of soil health, and a lot of resource consumption, including fossil fuels. Intensive animal farming is also a major source of water pollution. Livestock needs a lot of land to graze, consuming grass and other foraged vegetation. Atop whatever grazed land livestock may eat is more animal feed, which needs agricultural land to grow. This can lead to overgrazing, leaving damaged land. Grazing land is used in the first place because it was unsuitable as arable land for growing crops - once overgrazed, it’s ruined.
You could curb purchasing imported goods altogether. It’s damaging to the environment by its means of arrival alone, due to the environmental effects of shipping or aviation. Lower demand for imported goods would come at the expense of developing countries, which would then be cut off from global trade, which is conflicting. Therefore, a specific offer is to abstain from eating imported meat, therein a meaningful step toward curbing the worst threats to terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity.
Summary: For readers in countries off-track:
plant-based diet
try to find domestic alternatives to imports from countries off-track for SDG #15