From Global Goals To On Field Actions

The protection of the environment is a global problem where different political actors have their words to say. About 200 countries need to come to an agreement and then respect it. One country cannot force another to do something, the action has to be voluntary. Otherwise the world would be a dictatorship with one country ruling the others. This is not possible.

In the global environmental protection policy, it exists some global agreements. The most signed agreement is the Convention on Biological Diversity. It was adopted in 1992 by 196 countries. This convention gives 5 main goals and 20 targets to achieve by 2020. To be short, the CBD wants to identify the cause of biodiversity loss, reduce human pressure on biodiversity and promote a sustainable use of this resource. Moreover, the CBD encourages the international exchange of knowledge and skills.

One may think that they are only rich politicians discuting under the sun of Rio de Janeiro and that they are not doing anything to save the global loss of biodiversity. Yet, they did something, they gathered all the data about the decrease of biodiversity on Earth and decided to warn people about it. Now everybody is warned and can take decision to conserve biodiversity. Whether they will do it depends on the internal policy of each country.

Let’s go in Europe.

The European Comission submitted three directives to better manage the environment :

- the Bird Directive limits hunting, bans harmful activities and promotes research to better manage the 500 species of European birds. It creates strategic special protection areas to conserve 194 threatened bird species.

- the Habitat Directive protects about 200 rare habitats and their 1000 rare, threatened or endemic species. These habitats must be managed according to the species needs.

- the Water Framework Directive protects lakes and restores the natural current of streams and rivers.

The areas designed by the Bird and Habitat directives form the Natura 2000 network. This European network unifies all the sensible ecosystems and habitats of 28 European countries, which represents about 18 % of terrestrial territory and 6 % of marine territory. Even if most of the land is privately owned, European countries pay landowners to ensure the sustainable management of important breeding and resting sites.

The European strategy has 6 targets and 20 actions to stop biodiversity loss by 2020. To sum up, the European Union will fully implement the previous Directives, restore degraded ecosystem with sustainable agriculture, forestry and fishery. Furthermore alien invasive species will be eradicated or controlled and invasions will be prevented. The European Union commits to avert the global biodiversity loss by cooperating with countries outside Europe. In addition the EU will give fundings, and create and share knowledge about European biodiversity.

Now let’s zoom into a particular country to see how it manages all these international and European goals and actions.

In Germany plan and maps are updated every 10 years so biodiversity important areas are considered in the country planning. When a large scale building project such as mining, road or power lines may change the landscape and threatened species, the public and environmental organization have to be consulted. These organizations assess the impact of the project on the local species. If the project has a too big impact on the environment, the company has to find a more sustainable way to build it. In the case the public interest is overriding the impact on the environment, the company have to pay a compensation.

This compensation is converted into ecobanking points. These points allow a time lag between the payment and the actual restoration of an area, it gives time for a better conservation planning. Some argues it looks like a licence to trash where companies pay to be able to destroy an area.

This was a example of how global ideas and advices created by global organisms can be implemented on the field by the state of a country. Of course, there are many examples of countries who don’t give a shit about these advices and just do whatever they want. However I am already impressed that some countries — usually northern countries — are following these advices without the need of any international enforcement. This means that good arguments can persuade countries to take action to solve a problem. There is hope…