Building Biodiversity: The Natural Resource Management Approach

The Aichi Targets state that governments and natural resource stakeholders ought to, among other commitments, implement plans for sustainable production and consumption. These targets were intended to keep the impacts of natural resource use well within safe ecological limits. There has been only very limited success, but we know that it is possible to do more. Using a natural resource management approach to fulfil this directive in the post-2020 framework means turning the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss, including consumption and production of natural resources, into opportunities for innovation and leadership with the potential to expose misaligned economic incentives and vested interests. We can address the illness, not the symptoms, of biodiversity loss, by promoting natural resource management strategies that enable the active protection, restoration and regeneration of biodiversity to drive sustainable development.