Is it a new day for freshwater biodiversity? Reflections on outcomes of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

Steven J. Cooke, Ian Harrison, Michele L. Thieme, Sean J. Landsman, Kim Birnie-Gauvin, Rajeev Raghavan, Irena F. Creed, Gary Pritchard, Anthony Ricciardi, Dalal E. L. Hanna

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2, e0000065

May 17, 2023

The 2022 United Nations (UN) Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recognized for the first-time ‘inland waters’ as a distinct realm in terms of setting targets and a process for monitoring and conserving them and their biodiversity. It is common for environmentalists and environmental scholars to bemoan things that they care about, but that have been forgotten, ignored, or excluded when it comes to environmental decisions, or the development of environmental policy. Often those concerns focus on a specific taxonomic group or species, a specific locality, a particular environmental decision, or a particular regional or national policy. However, rarely do they focus on an entire realm that occurs around the globe. By ‘realm’ we are referring to terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. Equally important, some of the key messages of the Kunming-Montreal GBF were picked up at the UN Water Conference in March 2023, the first of such meetings in almost 50 years, which commits to a global water action agenda to restore and protect freshwater ecosystems as a component of sustainable development. Here, we draw attention to the CBD included language that recognizes inland waters on their own merits (i.e., as a distinct realm) within the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) that was submitted by the President of CBD COP 15, held in Montreal, on December 18, 2022.

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CITATION

Cooke, S. J., Harrison, I., Thieme, M. L., Landsman, S. J., Birnie-Gauvin, K., Raghavan, R., Creed, I. F., Pritchard, G., Ricciardi, A., & Hanna, D. E. L. (2023). Is it a new day for freshwater biodiversity? Reflections on outcomes of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2(5), e0000065. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000065