The Global Biodiversity Framework with Sandra Diaz

We were lucky enough to have a short conversation with Sandra Diaz, where we find out more about here involvement with the COP 15 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. If you enjoy what she has to say, you can find a full lecture from her here:
https://youtu.be/oe2dKpudS4s
as well as numerous articles like this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04154-w
and
https://royalsociety.org/blog/2023/01/biodiversity-cop15-sandra-diaz/

We'd love to hear from you and answer any questions you habe or repsond to suggestions, so if you want to contact the show, please message us on Twitter @naturerecovery or  email us at:
naturerecovery@ouce.ox.ac.uk

You can also find us on linkedin for all the serious stuff like job postings, event news and more

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

Transcript

stephen thomas: 0:05

Welcome to the nature recovery podcast, we're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline. And we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas. Hello, and welcome to the nature recovery podcast with me your host, Stephen Thomas, sadly, no CO presented this week. But we do have an amazing guest Professor Sandra Diaz, who is an awesome and inspiring woman, she played a key role in putting some of the scientific text to the cop 15 framework in Montreal. And it's really interesting to talk to her and find out that all these amazing scientists are doing this great stuff and doing these recommendations, and then it kind of gets handed over to the politicians. And what seems to happen then, is an awful lot of backtracking, caveats thing and dilution. But the framework itself has some really bold goals and targets and gives us hope. And like with a lot of frameworks, like with biodiversity net gain, my feeling is once you have these, you know bold visions, even if there are loopholes and ways around it, it really gives you something to work with. But Sandra has a drive and determination that just makes me believe that some of the best scientific minds of our generation are just going to keep going keep pushing, they're not going to give up. And we can all play our part from rewilding your garden to using less weed killer to getting involved with local nature, partnerships, local nature recovery schemes, there's an awful lot we can do, and recognising the role of women, indigenous communities, and giving amplification to those voices, because they've been doing data recovery for hundreds, if not 1000s of years. And it's time that we recognise that actually, there's a lot of wisdom out there. But I'm going to stop talking and hand you over to a much wiser mind than mine. So let's listen to Sandra Diaz. Welcome My guest today is Sandra Diaz, an Argentine ecologist and professor of ecology at the National University of Cordoba. She studies the functional traits of plants and investigates how plants impact the ecosystem. She's also a senior member of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences for Argentina, and she is one of the 1% most cited scientist in the world, as well as being an elected a foreign member of the Royal Society and an international member of the American Philosophical Society, and has won numerous awards and accolades throughout her career. Welcome, Sandra. Hello. I want to talk to you about the coming Montreal global bio diversity framework. So so recently a cop 15. There was the adaptation that framework and it adhere to the headline aim of 30 by 30, that I think a lot of people might have heard about. And that's to ensure and enable that by 2030, at least 30% of terrestrial inland water, and coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity, and ecosystem functions and services are effectively conserved and managed. So in some communities, there's been a growing cynicism about what can be achieved at cops. But the biodiversity COP this year seems to be reported in a much more positive light compared with the climate cop. So I'm interested, as someone that played a significant part in drafting parts of the separate scientific texts, how you felt about the initial announcement and whether that has changed, as all the details have have come to light and being received by the wider scientific community?

Sandra Díaz: 3:51

Well, I'm very familiar with the full text. And having been the leader of one of the major inputs to this framework, which was the global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services. I would say I am actually optimistic about it. I think that it's not perfect. It doesn't have the ambition, it doesn't contain enough transformative power to deliver the future we want, but is much better than we all expected in the past couple of years. As you said the expectations were in particularly high because of the general context, the general climate. So we are moderately happy with the text. We think it gives room for a number of changes to be made by the people who wants to make

Stephen Thomas: 4:59

okay But that's interested you you've hinted at my next question really, which is, perhaps one of the reasons that there is sometimes cynicism around cops is that culturally, we seem very good at announcing targets. But with previous targets, like the it targets only, you know, six out of the 20 goals were partially achieved. So there seems to be this narrative of making targets, and then we're currently failing to meet them. However, though, given the state of biodiversity claim that we're facing, if we make the targets more achievable, then it's highly unlikely that they're going to have any real impact in addressing the biodiversity crisis. So how do you think we need to balance that need to inspire our leaders to make these bold commitments, but at the same time ensuring these targets can be credible.

Sandra Díaz: 5:47

That's, that's the real challenge, you have formulated it very well, this time, we need to be as ambitious as we can possibly be. And at the same time, we need to deliver, this is not a time for incremental change, we need to do transformative change, we need to be much more ambitious. And try if you ask me, we have to try to do the impossible. And there are a number of moments in history where people set out to do the impossible, and they managed. I mean, usually, the example that is given for this kind of situation is the wars. I mean, the degree of transformation of the economy and workforce, the countries achieved in the in the Gulf Wars is amazing. And they did it very quickly. They did it in one or two years, it was already in place, it was possible means that when people are really convinced and really convenient and committed, they change covenant. The important thing here is that those in charge, are really prepared to do what it takes to do this change. What I've seen in in COP, is that the first draft, the draft, put together by hundreds of experts, was really ambitious, really transferring to you. And then he got in the hands of the government representatives. And they looked completely. They partied any any ambitious targets there any quantitative verifiable target, they put all sorts of body language around it. So make sure that the government didn't have to really commit. And that was heartbreaking to see. I said, Well, if the world is in the hands of people like that, we have no chance, but I want to believe that then the global biodiversity framework, with only slight limitation, at least allows the space needed for those who really want to make the change. Because you can only vote. Maybe you have a good framework, and you don't go far enough. But it's very difficult that you walk farther than the framework if you see what they mean. Yeah, yeah. And I think as a framework, they the global biodiversity, different bodies good.

Stephen Thomas: 8:28

Yeah, that's very inspiring that you remind us that, you know, more recently in COVID is the UK government, you know, homelessness was eradicated for for some months, because they wanted to obviously put everyone into into homes and just seeing that, you know, that that rapid change can be done. It's past my lifetime. And I guess it reminds me that that kind of bold ambition with you know, things like the 1.5 degree C target, which I think a lot of people aren't convinced as achievable. But by having it as a bold target, it has stimulated rapid action. So the benefits may be outweigh the we could spend a lot of time fighting about the realism of hitting that target. But actually, the action that comes out of it does a lot of good. So yeah, thank you. That's a very inspiring answer. To change tack a bit, you know, often in these courts and in when we look at things from biodiversity, you know, the majority of world leaders are men and globally, women are likely to face disproportionate impacts from biodiversity loss, primarily due to the roles that they play as cannery land managers and natural resource users. However, we still live in a patriarchal society. And you could argue that might be one of the reasons for biodiversity disruption, and within that society, the voices of women are consistently marginalised. So for you, how important do you think it is that we think about gender as a factor when it comes Looking at halting biodiversity decline, and I guess to follow up, do you feel that progress is being made on talking about gender and gender inclusivity when it comes to discussing not only discussing biodiversity, but also implementing nature recovery projects and thinking about gender as a key part component of that.

Sandra Díaz: 10:19

This is one of the areas in which I feel that there is unqualified progress. Going back again to the global biodiversity framework is very good at recognising a lot of gender rights is not perfect, but a lot of gender rights are are recognised, there are a lot of rights of the minorities and lots of rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. And the fact that we mean are visible as a distinct part of society, in literally all the new and policies treatments, the fact that all the global reports look at how the use of biodiversity or the damages from biodiversity loss are gender specific. This didn't happen. Even five years ago, when we started doing the global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services, we didn't think of being gender specific, it was just not part of the agenda. only very recently, in the last two years, we start to think, well, we have to have an agenda focus. And the interesting thing is when you start having a gender focus, and you start making sure that you incorporate enough diversity in the groups, you start seeing the information is not only, you know, a nice thing to do, and it's better for human rights, blah, blah, blah, which is, of course, extremely important. But on top of that, the information, the picture you get, is much richer, because people from very different backgrounds, and including different genders have different perspectives have the same problem. When you see all of them in a negotiating table, they update, they bring different skills. So we have a much fairer, but also much richer picture with the incorporation of women. And this is a field in which we are doing steady progress.

Stephen Thomas: 12:25

That's, that's great to hear. I'm gonna ask you now a question that we ask all of our guests. So we're the Centre for next recovery. Nature, recovery seems to be quite a new term, actually. And it's quite specific to the UK. So everyone I've asked, you know, when we say what does nature recovery mean to them, they give quite a different answer. So, from your perspective, if I was asked you what, you know, what does nature recovery mean to you? How would you answer that?

Sandra Díaz: 12:52

Oh, okay, as you say it this is this means a very different thing for very different people, and is, at least in my area of the ground, hugely controversial. So for some people is just trying to get back to things as they were without people. But the problem is, basically, is virtually no ecosystem, which doesn't have any, any imprints of humans. So it's a little bit of a romantic idea, you know, trying to go to this human, less human free nature, which is a bit of a romantic, and I would say an elite idea. For others, at least for me, nature, recovery is about given a chance to the rest of nature to function more or less well, so you you restore functioning, you restore the richness, you restore the capacity of the system to perpetuate itself, not necessarily the initial composition. You may not get back to the initial composition, but you still have something that functions well. So there's all these people talking about. rewilding, I think is calling Europe which I my humble understanding of it is that they are not trying to recreate nature in the ice age or something. They are just trying to restore some of the functioning and to me, that's the what nature recovery means. And in some cases, it may be putting together bits of nature that are not similar to the bits that existed before so it's not going But to anything, he's just saying, Well, this is what we have. This is a resilient functioning, bit of nature that gives benefits that is self perpetuating. And this is the bit we can afford now. Yeah. Maybe as a simple as humble as this.

Stephen Thomas: 15:18

No, exactly. Yeah, I'm, I find things like novel ecosystems very interesting that Life finds away. And you know, you say, certainly in the UK, we have no wilderness. In South America, there are obviously parts where humans have never, never tried. But in the UK, every every part of a natural landscape has been manufactured. And it still doesn't take away people have very deep personal experiences there. And there's great biodiversity. But yeah, there is no going back once you've already cut down all the trees at least one one or two times over. So I feel very positive, even just talking to you. But there are a lot of people out there who are suffering both from climate anxiety and really a deep sadness from the relationship our species has with nature. And in the past certainly has affected me and I found it was paralysing, but more recently, I've adopted what I think of as a as a pragmatic optimism, you know, I want to do my best to live and work in a way that is equally logical, ecologically beneficial, given the resources I have to hand and trying not to worry too much about what's outside of my control. Maybe turning off Twitter, you know, it doesn't seem to do me any good. So when it comes to humans relationship to nature and addressing the biodiversity crisis, do you consider yourself you know, an optimist or a pessimist? Or do you have a more nuanced outlook on on everything?

Sandra Díaz: 16:45

I consider myself an optimist of the will Meaning that I am stubbornly optimistic in my actions. If you start talking to me, and I started to use rational arguments, and you know, what things look like and what I see in policy negotiations, my words will be depressing, right? very pessimistic. But in practice in action, I am just stubbornly optimistic. I just keep going, as you said, pragmatically, all we have to do I mean, all we have left is just keep going the best you can. So that's my approach.

Stephen Thomas: 17:24

Great, excellent. And finally, if you were able to take some time off your work, and you're talking and you're researching and your policy, advising and interviews, and you could just spend a day in nature, what would be the kind of environment that you would visit? Oh, I'm

Sandra Díaz: 17:42

sorry. I'm very, very sorry to say, because I really like the British countryside, but it would be in some places war.

Stephen Thomas: 17:52

I think that's fine. I have no arguments here. There are many people that I'm inspired by our ancient woodlands. But when you talk to people that have been to the tropics, and they talk about real biodiversity and kind of new elements like that, so if it was if it was summer warm, would it be, you know, like an island that

Sandra Díaz: 18:09

would be anywhere warm? I mean, it could be the Mediterranean, it could be, you know, many places in the world. Actually, when you go to the tropics, when you get into the old growth forest is not really comfortable. Yeah, it's good if you go to the beach, or if you you know, go outside or in a balcony, but within the the old growth forests is dumb, fun. And, or too hot or cuckold full of bugs, which is awesome. Yeah. But it's not like a spend, you know, a relaxing afternoon.

Stephen Thomas: 18:43

I mean, nature is nature, right? I mean, Mother Earth thing, but nature is destructive. And it doesn't say anything. We're just and we're part

Sandra Díaz: 18:53

of it is quite uncompromising.

Stephen Thomas: 18:56

Absolutely. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time, and your energy and all the work that you're doing. I mean, it's for me, it's just great that you're out there doing it. And yeah, it was very inspiring. And I leave this interview feeling more optimistic. So thank you very much.

Sandra Díaz: 19:12

Thank you for having me.

stephen thomas: 19:15

So that was the nature recovery podcast this week. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to hear more from Sandra Diaz, she gave a full lecture about the process involving cop 15. And you can find that on the Oxford biodiversity network or you can also go to the levy him centre furniture recovery, niche recovery dot Oxford at the UK, and you'll find links to her talk there. She's also written numerous articles on this, so please seek them out. There's a lot more in it. I got in trouble last week for asking you to smash the subscribe button. We don't smash the subscribe button at Oxford University we gently click the subscribe button. So if you are enjoying the podcast, please subscribe please leave us a rating please recommend it to your friends. It's really important that we try and get the message out there. We'd also like to hear your questions. Do you have a question about nature recovery? Is there a guest you want us to talk to? This podcast is meant for anybody. So if you are working in the field of nature recovery, or you're interested in it, or you have a story to tell, please drop us a line. The email address is naturerecovery@ouce.ox.ac.uk Thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you next week. I think we're going to be talking about Garner next, which is going to be a lot of fun. All right. Take care. Have a great week, and go spend some time in nature. You've been listening to the nature recovery podcast with me, Stephen Thomas. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you can, please consider leaving us a review, as it will really help other people to find us. Also, why not consider sharing this episode with someone you know, you never know. You might get them interested in the wonderful field of nature recovery. If you want to find out more about the activities of the levy Hume Centre for nature recovery. You can find us on Twitter @naturerecovery Or you can visit our website for more information. That's www.naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk Thanks so much for listening