IUCN CONGRESS: WHAT IS THE OUTCOME OF THIS KEY EVENT FOR THE CONSERVATION WORLD ?

At the end of the Congress, the IUCN unveiled its report on the event, entitled "The Marseille Manifesto" (which you can consult on this page).
It states that IUCN is pleased with the positive outcome of the Congress, which Noé also welcomes.

"Economic success can no longer be achieved at the expense of nature. We are part of nature and depend on it for our lives and livelihoods," says IUCN.

The NGO is therefore calling for nature-based recovery plans, with at least 10% of total recovery budgets dedicated to protecting and restoring nature, and the rest should not fund activities that harm it.

A MOBILISATION OF ALL TO SAFEGUARD BIODIVERSITY

It is clear that the Congress demonstrated its incredible capacity for mobilisation. 5,700 participants were present on site, 3,300 remotely and nearly 25,000 people visited the Generation Nature Spaces, which were free and open to the general public, a new feature of the 2021 Congress. This is a significant mobilisation at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over, which demonstrates the major interest of elected representatives, companies and the general public in the protection of biodiversity.

The Congress has also led to a much better understanding of the links between climate change and biodiversity loss, as noted in the press articles on the Congress. "We cannot save the climate without saving biodiversity", as Arnaud Greth, President of Noé, regularly emphasises.

Also, many motions were discussed and adopted by the IUCN Members' Assembly. 109 motions had been voted on in the run-up to the Congress (in October 2020) and around 20 were debated and accepted at the Congress.
These motions concern the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, the protection and restoration of 80% of the Amazon rainforest, the recognition of the inextricable link between nature and health to avoid the emergence of future pandemics, the end of plastic pollution in the oceans by 2030, the renunciation of seabed mining and the reduction of the impact of the mining industry on biodiversity.

MOTIONS TO BECOME "BINDING"

According to IUCN, "once adopted, motions become recommendations and thus form the body of IUCN policy".

As such, they are not binding. And this is not the role of IUCN, which aims to be a bridge between the scientific world and associations on the one hand, and the political and economic world on the other.

The success of these motions therefore depends on the political response to them and on future COPs, which bring together the States that have been committed since 1992 under the United Nations Framework Convention.

COP26 Climate, to be held in Glasgow in November 2021, and COP15 Biodiversity, which aims to set a framework for biodiversity protection for the next decade, to be held in early 2022, will be two excellent opportunities to measure France's degree of commitment. It is now up to governments to take up IUCN's motions to propose binding national frameworks that force action, in order to finally provide a political response that is equal to the ecological emergency !