Mainstreaming Biodiversity: Vitally Important? Marginal? Misleading?

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On 14th May, Friends of the Earth International and EcoNexus held a webinar on mainstreaming. It looked into the vital importance of mainstreaming to make sure that all economic sectors -in aggregate- reduce their impact so that the world can return to live within planetary boundaries as defined for biodiversity. 

It quickly became clear that the process to define the draft mainstreaming decision has been flawed. There was an Informal Advisory Group (IAG), as decided by the COP, with a balanced participation of parties and a limited number of stakeholders. However, an extra Extended Consultative Network (ECN) has been set up, comprised of stakeholders only, most of them with corporate links. The inputs of the ECN have been taken into account for the drafting of the IAG, in a completely un-transparent manner. 

 

More information on the mainstreaming process can be found in the presentation which is available here: https://nextcloud.foei.org/index.php/s/jyG8zBQSqR72eDk

 

The result is a text that mentions several mechanisms that pretend to limit the impact of economic sectors on biodiversity, but that in practice are even counterproductive. Offsetting, No Net Loss, nature Based Solutions and Voluntary Certification constitute forms of greenwashing, which gives both policy makers and the public the IMPRESSION something is being done to prevent biodiversity collapse, but effectively delay real action. 

 

More information about these greenwashing issues in the mainstreaming text  can be found in the presentation which is available here: https://nextcloud.foei.org/index.php/s/jyG8zBQSqR72eDk

 

 

For more information, or the full recording, please contact nele@foei.org or h.paul@econexus.info

 

 

 

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