Nature & Democracy

An American Agenda for Biodiversity, 1.0

What actions could the U.S. undertake to make a really big difference on biodiversity quickly?

 

1. Join the world club. Ratify the UN Convention on Biodiversity and develop the U.S. action plan. Step up and engage in the international community on global biodiversity conservation strategies.

 

2. Deal with climate. Enact a meaningful climate change program. Quickly. Integrate the protection of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity into U.S. strategies for climate change.

 

3. Manage land like a landscape. Develop a large-landscape land-management system for the United States (including public and private land partnerships) with an emphasis on natural systems that can conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem functions and/or help us adapt to climate change

 

4. Fix our food system. Develop a 50-year Farm Bill to restore soil quality (including biodiversity), reduce dependence on chemical inputs, better integrate habitat and carbon sequestration programs into “working landscapes,” and restore diversity in food crops and proximity to food sources.

 

5. Stop pumping toxics into the system. Enforce our pollution laws and bring them up to date with what we know about new chemical inputs and distribution in the environment. Reinvigorate initiatives to reduce global loadings of bioaccumulative toxic pollution, starting with mercury, PCBs and PBDEs.

 

6. Control invasives. Develop a comprehensive national policy to prevent the introduction of invasive species, starting with ballast water controls. Then, invest in the research to determine the best ways to deal with the mess we’ve already got, including biological controls.

 

7. Protect the Oceans. Become a global leader in protecting the marine environment and marine species, tackling overfishing, marine pollution and investing in marine research to understand and respond to climate impacts in the marine environment.

 

8. Educate as though life on earth depended on it. Invest in ecological and sustainability education. Take environmental education out of the “pond water” box (or should I say Mason jar) and build ecological literacy, trans-disciplinary skills and systems thinking into our core education from K through Ph.D.

 

9. Sew the ecological seeds of peace.  Drought, crop failures, hunger and disease foster social instability, exacerbate poverty, and create dangerously fertile conditions for violence, oppression and war. Ecological restoration can improve availability of clean water and food sources, and strengthen the social fabric, all of which contribute to stability and security. Our security depends on greater ecological security throughout the world, and US investments in this arena will benefit life on earth, and earth’s people.

 

10. Improve education and economic opportunity for women in the developing world. These are the perhaps the most powerful tools for stabilizing population and improving health, stability and environmental quality in much of the world.

 

I’d love to see what’s on your top-ten list, and then perhaps we could get together with others who are thinking seriously about this topic and ally our strengths. 

Why we need a US Alliance for Life on Earth

I've been urging organizations and institutions to coalesce in a new alliance for life on earth. Why?

Urgency. Time is not on our side. Extinction is indeed, forever. Action was urgently needed in 1992, and is even more so now, given the rapidly growing impacts of a changing climate.

 

Scaling up. We must act at a significant scale. Isolated snippets of biodiversity conservation aren’t enough. The United States, especially, needs a coordinating body to coalesce complementary efforts into a powerful national strategy.

 

Community. We must galvanize the vast, dispersed community of interest—the scientists, activists, educators, managers, farmers, ranchers, business people, faith leaders, and others—through networks that can garner the resources and focus human capacity at the scale needed.

 

Coordination. Our work can become more efficient, our communications stronger, and our strategies more robust when we work in concert, not in silos.

 

Saliency. Our society is largely unaware of the value and requirements of biodiversity. This is a major barrier to protecting Life on Earth. The public can drive sound policies and lifestyle and consumption choices, but only if they are engaged. Wider audiences must grasp why this crisis is important to our common future.

 

Synergy. Strategies to reverse ecological degradation must go hand in hand with those tackling climate change. The goals are the same: to safeguard the fabric of life on earth. In concert, wise choices will help solve both problems, while disparate approaches may increase threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. Likewise, strategies for economic and social sustainability are directly linked to a healthy environment and robust biodiversity.

 

Timeliness. It is a new era. We can capture the promise of scientific integrity restored and unprecedented opportunities for action to protect the environment. And, we need to capture new opportunities to address the emerging generations’ missing connections to nature.

 

We envision that the Alliance for Life on Earth (ALOE) will act as catalyst, convener, and clearinghouse to:

Shape the development of a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (as required under the Convention on Biodiversity) to anchor an American agenda on biodiversity and ecosystem conservation.

 

Build collaborative relationships with other governments, international organizations, and other parties to promote biodiversity and ecosystem conservation internationally.

 

Build and coalesce leadership capacity to pursue these strategies at home and abroad, including among national, state, and local policymakers.

 

Build professional teams and cross-sector partnerships to address core challenges, creating opportunities to collaborate across fields and sectors. 

 

Develop a vigorous public communications campaign and an education strategy to:

- improve ecological literacy among the American public;

- build the next generation of biodiversity and ecological scientists, strategists, and problem solvers;

- motivate and engage public action on biodiversity protection;

- build social networks and information systems to accomplish these goals.

 

The Alliance could help us clarify an American agenda, and perhaps then, our pent-up need to connect with the American people on this topic could really get some traction.