Elsevier

Ecosystem Services

Volume 29, Part B, February 2018, Pages 199-204
Ecosystem Services

The Convention on Biological Diversity as a legal framework for safeguarding ecosystem services

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.02.015Get rights and content

Abstract

Biodiversity underpins ecosystem services. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has adopted an ecosystem services approach as a framework for biodiversity management at the national level. Protection of ecosystem services requires far more than traditional nature conservation measures like the designation and management of protected areas. The economic sectors that affect biodiversity and ecosystem services must be involved, to address not merely the symptoms but the root causes of the degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Achieving coherence in policies and actions across economic sectors and the changes involved in values, decision-making and practices, requires legal approaches to ensure buy-in and accountability. Ideally, such approaches should be included in National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), the key instrument for translating the CBD into national action. A review of 20 revised NBSAPs shows that such measures have been introduced only to a very limited extent with many countries still in the earliest stages of preparing measures to protect ecosystem services. Thus, there is a need for further research and practical guidance regarding legal approaches to ecosystem services.

Introduction

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) expresses the ‘usefulness’ of nature in terms of providing for basic human needs, like food, fuel and, medicines, clean water, flood control and climate regulation. ES are essential to human well-being. As their continued degradation has a disproportionate effect on poor people, ES is a key concept in the context of sustainable development.

The concept was brought into widespread use by the UN initiative the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) published in 2005. The MA also points to the importance of biodiversity for the provision of ES. This has led to the integration of the ES concept in many policies and initiatives to protect biodiversity at the national and international levels. Most notable here is the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which in 2010 adopted the following Vision for its Strategic Plan: ‘By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people’; and the following Mission: ‘to take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity in order to ensure that by 2020 ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide essential services, thereby securing the planet's variety of life, and contributing to human well-being, and poverty eradication’ (Decision CBD/COP/X/2). This makes the CBD a global framework for national-level action to protect not only biodiversity per se but also ES.

This again raises the question of what the legal implications are of such an ‘expanded’ scope of the CBD - implications that may be far-reaching given the holistic, cross-cutting character of ES protection compared to a more traditional nature conservation approach. The aim of the article is to explore and raise attention on this issue that has remained largely unaddressed by the CBD, national governments and legal scholars. In doing so, the article will address the following questions:

  • What is the relation between biodiversity and ecosystem services? (Section 2)

  • In what way has the CBD embraced the concept of ecosystem services? (Section 3)

  • What legal approaches to the ecosystem services approach can be identified? (Section 4)

  • In what way and to what extent have CBD state partiers addressed legal approaches to ecosystem services in their national implementation of the CBD? (Section 5).

Section 6 concludes on and discusses the findings. Throughout, the article deals with the gaps in knowledge on the exact relation between biodiversity and ES, and concerns for linking the two concepts, as possible obstacles to applying an ES approach to biodiversity management.

Section snippets

What is the relation between biodiversity and ecosystem services?

The 2005 UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) identified ecosystem services as the benefits people obtain from what nature can provide, (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) and divided such services into four categories:

  • 1.

    Provisioning services: products obtained from ecosystems, such as food, fresh water, fuelwood, fiber, biochemical and genetic resources.

  • 2.

    Regulating services: benefits obtained from regulation of ecosystem processes, such as regulation of floods, drought, disease, land

In what way has the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) embraced the concept of ecosystem services?

The term ‘ecosystem services’ was not in use when the CBD was endorsed by heads of State at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, entering into force the year after. Still, the concept is implicitly covered in the text of this comprehensive convention.

In the negotiations leading to the CBD, representatives of developed countries argued for an instrument with a clear conservation strategy to protect species and habitats, using the same approach as earlier

What legal approaches to the ecosystem services approach can be identified?

Given the attention that ecosystem services have gained as an important concern for the management of land, water and living resources generally as well as in relation to important economic sectors like agriculture, forestry and fishery, it seems remarkable how little attention has been paid to the legal aspects of ecosystem services, in practice and in the literature.

To return to the close relations between biodiversity and ecosystems services acknowledged by the CBD: much of the legal focus

In what way and to what extent have CBD state partiers addressed ecosystem services in their national implementation of the CBD? (Section 5)

First, it would be relevant to recall some main findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) on ES:

Over 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services examined were found to be degraded or used unsustainably: this includes fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests. Changes undertaken in ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of nonlinear changes in ecosystems, such as disease emergence, abrupt

Conclusions and discussion

Conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity are means not only for protecting biodiversity per se, but also for maintaining and restoring the ecosystem services essential to human well-being and poverty eradication. This is the approach taken by the CBD. Besides including the ES concept in many of its decisions, the CBD has adopted the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, specifying an essential point: the importance of addressing not only the direct causes of biodiversity loss but also the

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