The United Nations nature summit, COP16, kicks off in Colombia on Monday with the aim of halting the rapid destruction of nature and erosion of biodiversity worldwide.
Human life depends on biodiversity, including the widest mix of species on earth - from animals to plants to bacteria - along with broad genetic variety and a range of supporting ecosystems.
Biodiverse ecosystems are crucial as they are natural carbon sinks and the “strongest natural defence” against climate change, according to the UN.
Land and ocean ecosystems currently absorb 60 per cent of human-caused emissions, and they are the planet’s only way of storing massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Yet biodiversity is in rapid decline, with Latin America and the Caribbean suffering the steepest loss.
Colombia, COP16 host country, is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, home to nearly 10 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity, according to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) of the UN Environment Programme.
So what makes a country biodiverse and which ones stand out?
What’s a ‘megadiverse’ country?
For a country to be classified as “megadiverse”, it must have at least 5,000 species that are unique to that country, along with a marine ecosystem, according to the WCMC.
It has identified a total of 17 megadiverse countries, which contain about 70 per cent of all biodiversity in the world and are classified by conservationists as being the richest in species.
Southeast Asian nations cover just 3 per cent of the earth’s surface but include three megadiverse countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
How is biodiversity measured?
There are many ways to measure biodiversity and there is no one definitive index or list that ranks countries.
There is also no globally standardised approach to measure nature’s decline or recovery, making it difficult to compare countries or measure their biodiversity loss.
One way is to rank a country by its percentage of species - such as amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles, as well as plants - and compare this to the total global number of species for each group.
Brazil, for example, is considered one of the world’s most biodiverse countries as it is home to the lion’s share of the Amazon rainforest, which spreads over nine nations, as well as the Pantanal wetlands.
One key indicator of biodiversity is how much of a country is given over to protected areas.
In the European Union (EU), for example, by the end of 2021, protected areas covered 26 per cent of land.
Only nine EU countries had designated more than 30 per cent of their land area as protected: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
What causes biodiversity loss?
One million species - out of an estimated total of eight million - are threatened with extinction, many within decades, according to a 2019 UN report.
Factors that contribute to biodiversity loss include changes in land use, such as clearing rainforest for farming, as well as illegal logging that accelerates habitat loss, over-fishing, rising pollution and the widespread use of pesticides.
Biodiversity loss is also being driven by the increased presence of invasive species - often plants or animals moved around by human activity - which take hold in their new environment and can then devastate native plants or animals.
Climate change is both a cause and consequence of biodiversity loss since destroying and degrading ecosystems releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Wildlife crime, estimated to be worth up to US$23 billion a year, also drives biodiversity loss.
What’s being done to halt biodiversity loss?
In 2022, at the UN Biodiversity summit called COP15, 196 governments adopted a landmark Global Biodiversity Framework.
The non-legally binding agreement pledges to protect 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2030.
Countries at the COP16 biodiversity summit in the Colombian city of Cali now hope to work out how to implement that pledge.
Currently, only 17 per cent of the world’s land area and 8 per cent of the ocean is under some form of protection, according to the UN
Designating more protected areas, such as parks, oceans, forests and wildernesses, could lessen deforestation and pollution and in turn slow biodiversity decline.
On the table at COP16 is a Colombian push to write a unified climate and biodiversity pledge, seeking to marry up efforts to protect nature with global attempts to tackle climate change.
More progress is needed to harness the private sector, both to stem biodiversity loss and make commitments of its own.
Few leading companies have signed up to nature-related commitments, be it on water use or chemical and plastic pollution, beyond offering pledges to reduce carbon emissions.
While 83 per cent of Fortune Global 500 companies have targets to address climate change, only 5 per cent target biodiversity loss.
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