To meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity, researchers have proposed five strategies to protecting the global ecosystem. 

Responding to calls to rethink the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the world's blueprint for the next decade of biodiversity conservation and management, researchers at the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KIB/CAS) and the China Programme of World Agroforestry (ICRAF) have published a new paper describing five transformative changes to stabilize and then reverse critical biodiversity losses.

They advocate for inclusion of these five steps in plans developed at the upcoming Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the CBD to be held in Kunming, China in 2021.  

The paper, published in Bioscience under the title "Five steps to inject transformative change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework", posits a radical new path forward for reversing the accelerating loss of biodiversity and strengthening our capacity to protect nature.  

The failure of signatory parties to the CBD to meet targets has severely arrested progress on biodiversity, argued the researchers, R. Edward Grumbine and XU Jianchu.  

"Traditional modes of thinking about biodiversity cannot extricate us from our planetary bind," said Grumbine, lead author of the paper. "Injecting transformative changes into the new global biodiversity framework will allow us to move away from seeing biodiversity protection as for nature and against people. Instead, we need to support the common good in which conservation, development, justice and equity are interwoven." 

Their proposed changes explicitly target social and financial systems with the twin goals of stabilizing biodiversity losses by 2030 and supporting recovery by 2050. To meet the enormity of the challenge, conservation scientists and practitioners are urged to embrace social change outside their traditional fields of expertise.  

"Transdisciplinary teams must include experts from biophysical, social and political disciplines as well as include representatives from multidevelopment banks, private enterprises and Indigenous peoples," said Prof. XU from KIB, second author of the study. 

The researchers expected that the transformative steps will be a focus of discussions at the CBD meeting in Kunming 2021. 

Rhinopithecus bieti (Image by HUAI Biaoyun)