Jörn Spolander: Does it matter if we exterminate other species?

There is an almost ghostly phenomenon commonly referred to as extinction debt. It describes how species continue to spread seeds, spores – or young for that matter – even though their habitat has become so degraded that in the long run it is unprofitable.

They are still alive, but in a sense already extinct.

In the Atlantic rainforests of Brazil, for example, there are large trees that can be several hundred years old. But their special pollinators and seed dispersers have disappeared due to hunting and other disturbances. So the trees can no longer reproduce.

In Sweden, there are corresponding examples where certain unique lichens and fungi are dependent on so-called silver pines – trees that have died standing for a long time and become very rich in resin. It takes several hundred years for a silver pine to form, and they disappear in modern forestry.

But who cares about some more or less unknown lichens, fungi and tree species? Since life appeared on earth, billions of species have died out for various reasons.

The problem is that it is now happening at a rate that is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average for the past ten million years, according to the International Scientific Panel on Biodiversity IPBES.

One of the main reasons is precisely man's extensive change of the earth's habitats on land and in the seas. It is a consequence of unsustainable farming and forestry practices, overfishing, climate change, pollution and the spread of alien invasive species.

So far we don't see the full extent of what is going on. There is an extinction debt.

Does it matter? A perhaps well-worn analogy is an airplane that is held together for safety by an innumerable number of rivets. You can pull out quite a few rivets without noticing it. But at some point it starts to crack.

When biological diversity seriously deteriorates, the consequences are extensive. Viable ecosystems are a prerequisite for us to be able to grow food, get clean water, raw materials and fresh air. In addition, many people probably want access to living nature to simply feel good.

The countries of the world have agreed that the negative development must be stopped. The loss of biodiversity must be halted and even reversed by 2030. It was decided at the UN COP15 meeting in Montreal in 2022, in the so-called Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) – a rescue plan for nature.

Two years later, at COP16 in Colombia, definitions of all sub-goals to be achieved were fine-tuned, so that progress can be measured and to be able to see if measures are leading in the right direction.

Now another two years have passed – halfway to 2030 – and the countries are gathering for a new environmental meeting; COP17 in Armenia's capital, Yerevan.

How is the work going?

"There is both good news and bad news," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said as he presented the "State of Biodiversity Action" report ahead of the opening of the meeting.

The good news is that almost all countries have drawn up national plans for how the work should be carried out, started to take some measures and also managed to report more or less extensively. In this way, it has become possible for the first time to get a picture of the development - a must for deciding how the work should continue.

The bad news – not entirely unexpectedly – ​​is that it's too slow and uneven. A concrete goal is that all countries must together protect 30 percent of the earth's surface on land and at sea. But the plans drawn up are only enough to protect 26 percent of the land surface and 12 percent of the oceans – if implemented.

Fixed protected areas are not enough, according to IPBES. The absolutely decisive thing is to stop the major driving forces behind the loss of biological diversity, i.e. unsustainable methods of agriculture and forestry and so on.

It is necessary to change to farming methods that also give room for other species to exist. There are many ideas and proposals in the scientific documents produced by IPBES. But the work is slow.

An important step identified in the framework is to identify and remove government subsidies that perpetuate environmentally harmful activities, for example large-scale monocultures and unsustainable industrial fishing. Every dollar in an environmentally friendly direction is met today by 30 dollars in an environmentally harmful direction. An interesting detail is that Sweden's government has reported to the EU that we have no such harmful subsidies at all, which several researchers and the environmental movement question.

There are many things for all countries to discuss in the next two weeks. The goal is to finally agree on a plan for how the work can increase the pace to reach the goals by 2030.

We'll see how it goes.