{"id":12091,"date":"2021-02-05T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T07:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=12091"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:24","slug":"new-targets-to-protect-biodiversity-must-include-farmers-and-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2021\/02\/05\/new-targets-to-protect-biodiversity-must-include-farmers-and-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"New targets to protect biodiversity must include farmers and agriculture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity<\/a> is a treaty that aims to develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of a country’s natural resources, or biological diversity. This is a general strategy that all countries must then adopt at the local level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Convention – a legally-binding international treaty – is currently negotiating new targets<\/a> for the next 30 years. Decisions are made by parties to the convention, made up of 196 countries, supported by a range of observers including NGOs, researchers and academics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Convention is about to make a mistake: it concentrates primarily on protected areas when it should also recognise the potential of managing agricultural landscapes for biodiversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its “modified zero draft<\/a>“, released in October, of 20 targets only one refers to “agricultural and other managed ecosystems”. But its focus is essentially on biodiversity for food. It misses the point that agro-ecosystems can contribute to conservation through providing habitat to wild species and harbouring fragments of natural habitat, such as forests and wetlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Africa’s protected areas\u00a0cover an area of 20.4 million km\u00b2 or 15.1%<\/a>\u00a0of the landmass. But experts say this isn’t enough. For instance, 7% of Kenya’s land is\u00a0formally protected<\/a>\u00a0but between 20-30% of contiguous habitat is needed to maintain populations of “umbrella” species. Protecting these species indirectly protects many other species within its habitat. Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity is a treaty that aims to develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of a country’s natural resources, or biological diversity. This is a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}