Feb 17,2020

Despite the climate and biodiversity crises continuing to escalate, environmentalists are calling 2020 a ‘super-year’ for nature because of several upcoming international policy meetings that have the potential to set nature on a path to recovery. Its primary goal being highlighting of 21 Sustaianble Development Goals(SDG) and their targets.

India marks the ‘’Super Year of Biodiversity” with the CMS of COP -13.

HERE’S WHY 2020 COULD BE A ‘SUPER-YEAR’ FOR NATURE

CLIMATE CHANGE

• At the 2015 UN climate talks in Paris (COP21), governments agreed to limit warming to “well below” 2 degrees C by the end of the century. Five years later, we are facing disastrous 3-4 degrees warming, even if existing emission reduction targets are met.
• Last November’s COP25 in Madrid, which aimed to strengthen existing commitments, was widely denounced as a failure.
• COP26 in Glasgow in 2020 – a particularly important conference because all countries will be asked to submit new long-term goals is now awaited.
• A 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified population growth as a “key impediment” to reaching climate targets.
• Our population is projected to grow by an additional 2 billion consumers by 2050 and reach almost 11 billion by 2100.
• COP26 discussions must include the widely neglected twin solution of educating girls and removing barriers to family planning, which according to Project Drawdown, has the greatest emissions-reduction potential out of all climate change solutions.

BIODIVERSITY

• 2020 marks the end of the UN Decade on Biodiversity, which aimed to halt the loss of wild species. Unfortunately the extinction crisis has got worse.
• The UN Convention on Biological Diversity will meet in China this October to agree a new framework and new targets.
• 2020 will also conclude several rounds of negotiations on biodiversity management in the high seas.
• There is possibility of the first legally binding international agreement to protect ocean health being formed.
• A key 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimates that a shocking one million species are now threatened with extinction.
• In addition, it was found that three quarters of all land and two thirds of all marine areas have been damaged by human activity.
• The IPBES report clearly identified human population growth as an “indirect driver” of biodiversity loss, fuelling the direct drivers such as habitat destruction and overexploitation.
•  New Convention on Biodiversity framework recognises and includes population action because population matters.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

•  2020 is the deadline for 21 of the targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to achieve a better world for people and planet by 2030.
• Many targets have been missed and will need to be renewed.
• Year 2020 marks the 75^th birthday of UN.

Programmes to be held in 2020:

 1. The Bejing Programme of Action will mark its 25^th anniversary in 2020. It was framed in 1995 at the fourth United Nation World Conference on Women.

2. The 64^th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women will be held in March 2020.

3. COP 26 to be held in Glasgow in 2020 to redeem the reputation of COP 25.

4. The first Global Transport on Sustainable Transport is to be held in May 2020.

5. IUCN will hold World Conservation Congress in Marsaille,France in June 2020.It is organised once in 4 years.

6. 2020- A Decade of Closure-(ocean)

• Apart from a new beginning, 2020 will also close Bio-Divdersity related agendas. It includes the Decade for Deserts which marked the fight against desertification.
• The second UN Ocean Conference is to be held in 2020.
• The first was held in New York. Under its aegis work has been going on in the area of ocean acidification.