Thread by @biosec_erc

🧵1/@UNBiodiversity #COP15 is being lauded as Paris Agreement for biodiversity with a deal to protect 30% of all land and water on Earth by 2030 but we should not get our hopes up - by @brambuscher & I @ConversationUK theconversation.com/biodiversity-t…

2/It took 60 years to get to 17% under protection, so how realistic is a near-doubling in 8 years? Its left to individual governments to work out where and how - given the history of conservation & growing militarisation this risks dispossession & abuses
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

3/ Even if 30% of Earth was protected, its not likely to be effective - protected area expansion has happened at the same time as the extinction crisis has intensified. Such area-based conservation has not tackled the underlying causes of declines conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11….

4/We argue that the era of post Cold War multilateralism based on cooperation between states may have had its day. UN summits have become little more than travelling circuses filled with desperate hopes but no real-world influence

5/ The Convention on Biological Diversity was hobbled at its origin in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. Because there they decided to split climate change and biodiversity across two conventions when scientists argue that they need to be addressed together reuters.com/business/envir…

6/ It also entrenched a logic of turning nature into commodities so the logic of the problem - the promotion of an ever-expanding economy - became the logic of the solution tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

7/ Fundamentally missing is a plan for an economy that accepts ecological limits to growth. sup.org/books/title/?i…

8/ We must therefore ask: are they empty institutional hangovers of a lingering status quo that must be abandoned? Or is multilateralism worth the effort, even if they are becoming little more than extravagant witnesses to enfolding environmental disaster? theconversation.com/biodiversity-t…