070 - Accounting for biodiversity: encompassing ecosystems, species and genetic diversity

070 - Accounting for biodiversity: encompassing ecosystems, species and genetic diversity

Latest version in this language: Version for electronic vote | Published on: 19 Nov 2020

CONCERNED with the ongoing rapid decline of biodiversity, as highlighted in the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and its 20 Aichi BiodiversityTargets, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the negative impacts that this decline has on the benefits that living nature provides to health and well-being;

RECOGNISING the need to measure the contribution of nature to the economy and livelihoods, in order to complement the conventional system of national accounts, thereby supporting policy and decisions that take into account biodiversity and ecosystems;

ACKNOWLEDGING Resolution 6.058 Natural Capital (Hawai‘i, 2016), which will contribute towards mainstreaming the incorporation of biodiversity into national policy and other decision making;

EMPHASISING that natural capital accounting must recognise, and support the discussion of biodiversity’s multiple values to promote better-informed decision making and planning;​​​​​​

WELCOMING the progress led by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) in the development of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) and its implementation through many programmes;

OPTIMISTIC that the implementation of the SEEA offers substantial opportunity for synergy with the development of indicators to track progress towards many SDGs, in particular goals 2, 6, 11, 12, 14 and 15, the Aichi Targets, as well as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework;

FURTHER WELCOMING the progress led by the UNSD in the revision of the SEEA – Experimental Ecosystem Accounting with the objective of elevating it to an international statistical standard; and

NOTING that the Convention on Biological Diversity’s definition of ‘biological diversity’ includes “diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”, such that biodiversity spans levels of ecological organisation encompassing genes, species and ecosystems;

The IUCN World Conservation Congress, at its session in Marseille, France:

1. REQUESTS the Director General, Commissions, Members and partners to engage, and to mobilise resources to facilitate such engagement, with the UNSD, other partners and leading global initiatives:

a. in the development and implementation of the SEEA to describe accounting for biodiversity at ecosystem, species and genetic levels, building on current advances in accounting for ecosystems, including the development and maintenance of relevant classifications (e.g. the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species); and

b. in the application of accounting to support the derivation of indicators of biodiversity change (e.g. with respect to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, indicators for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, and the SDGs) and to underpin the production and organisation of data for assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services;

2. CALLS on Members and partners, especially national governments and multilateral institutions, to support national statistical offices, relevant technical agencies and experts in implementing the SEEA, on enhancing capacity building and awareness towards its implementation; and

3. CALLS FOR Members and partners, especially national governments and multilateral institutions to test, implement and apply the SEEA accounting for biodiversity in all relevant aspects of their work.

The Convention of Biodiversity Aichi Targets (e.g., Target 2), already recognized the importance of accounting and called for incorporating biodiversity in national accounts. The process for the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework calls for a transformative approach that considers the underlying economic pressures and drivers of biodiversity loss as well as the vital contributions that healthy, biologically-diverse ecosystems make to human health and well-being. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in turn, represent a fundamental shift toward integration of a multitude of policy issues into a single policy agenda.
The UN’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA), the agreed international statistical standard for natural capital accounting, represents a global effort towards the goal of mainstreaming nature into decision-making. The SEEA provides frameworks for producing accounts in several thematic areas, including SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA). It takes the perspective of ecosystems and considers how individual environmental assets interact as part of natural processes within a given spatial area. Enabled by significant advances in the science of measurement and valuation of natural capital, more than 40 countries are implementing SEEA EEA. Repeated over time as a regular statistics effort of a country, SEEA EEA has the potential to consistently inform a wide policy and management practice spectrum that does not currently consider nature, using the same system for economic assessment that countries currently use.
Biodiversity is defined according to the Convention on Biological Diversity as “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”. In SEEA EEA, biodiversity is reflected in (i) ecosystem extent accounts showing the changing composition of ecosystem types; (ii) ecosystem condition accounts which incorporate indicators of local species distribution and assemblage. Biodiversity is also recognized as underpinning the capacity to supply all ecosystem services and the SEEA EEA describes species population accounts. With ecosystems as an accounting organizing principle in the SEEA EEA, a clear and common understanding is needed about how the SEEA could incorporate all levels of biodiversity to support policy and decision making.
There is growing momentum toward accounting, with several regional and national efforts working toward mainstreaming of biodiversity and natural capital (e.g., Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa, EU Biodiversity Strategy). SEEA is also well-positioned to help drive the post-2020 Biodiversity framework and the implementation of the SDGs can also be informed and supported by the SEEA’s integrated statistical framework.
We call on IUCN to support and facilitate further development and implementation of the SEEA, including encouraging member countries to implement and further develop SEEA EEA and to further investigate how statistical and accounting approaches can more fully incorporate existing knowledge, and advances in, biodiversity measurement, with respect to diversity within species (i.e. genes), between species, and of the interconnections among levels of ecological organization.
  • Conservation International [United States of America]
  • EcoHealth Alliance [United States of America]
  • Re:wild [United States of America]
  • NatureServe [United States of America]
  • Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales [Mexico]
  • South African National Parks [South Africa]

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