COP15 is the first to deliver health-centered biodiversity policies, and why it matters

With a growing sense that more needs to be done to address the health inequities caused by biodiversity loss, Montreal’s COP15 takes an important step forward.

By Asma Bouikni

The second part of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held in Montreal from December 7th to December 19th, 2022. The main goal of the conference was to see the adoption of a 10-year post-2020 global biodiversity framework to “address key drivers of nature loss”. Participants discussed and negotiated many aspects of biodiversity, including infrastructure, agriculture, invasive species, pesticides, and government subsidies that harm the environment. In the background of these critical discussions is the issue of biodiversity loss and its impact on human health. Indeed, it may seem like a distant link, but biodiversity plays a major role in nutrition, food security, development of medicines, and many other things. For example, pollinators contribute to the maintenance of crop production and food security by securing reliable and diverse seed and fruit supply. Approximately 75% of global crucial crops (fruits, seeds, nuts) depend on animal pollination. Despite their essential role in the well-being of populations, human activity is endangering pollinator populations. 9% of bees and butterflies are on the verge of extinction, a figure that rises to 16.5% for vertebrate pollinators.

In Montreal this year, COP representatives needed to answer some tough questions. What agreements need to be made to ensure the impact of biodiversity loss on human health is minimized? Will some regions of the world be more affected than others? What are the adaptation and mitigation measures that states need to adopt to reduce the impact of biodiversity loss on the health of their populations? It goes without saying that human health needs to be a central part of COP biodiversity frameworks, discussions, negotiations, and agreements.

The first draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework was published in July 2021, and it proposes 21 targets and 10 milestones for 2030. Health is mentioned only seven times in the document, including vague terms on the need for healthy and resilient populations. However, health is never explicitly discussed in the theory on which the framework is based on. This first draft of the framework was worrisome because human health was not at the center of the framework, which means that many important elements were overlooked.

Fortunately, with the conclusion of this year’s COP15, it appears the framework, including its goals and targets, seems to better consider human health. This is a step in the right direction. Indeed, there is a growing sense that more needs to be done to address health inequalities and create truly health-centered policies. This notable step will ensure that agreements going forward have more ambitious targets and strategies to improve human health across the globe in an equitable manner.

Health inequalities

The relationship between biodiversity loss and human health has been studied and established throughout the past decades. The extent to which this research has influenced global policymaking has been studied recently by a group of researchers who analyzed around 30 major global reports on climate change and biodiversity published between 2018 and 2022. According to them, human health has become a key consideration in the environmental global reports. These reports also discuss the health co-benefits of mitigating environmental issues, like the prevention of millions of deaths by the improvement of air quality. Furthermore, food and agricultural issues are discussed in biodiversity reports more than they are covered in the general research on climate change and health. Among others, the COP14 on biodiversity report promotes a One Health approach that recognizes the interdependence between humans, animals, plants and the environment. All of this leads the authors to say that health is no longer on the periphery of environmental policy making, but it has become an important part of it. However, they notice that these reports still fail to account for a major element: health inequities.

Health considerations related to climate change are disproportionately carried by the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries, even though they contribute least to the crisis. If we take the Paris Agreement as an example, greater health engagements in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) were found in low-income and middle-income countries when compared to high-income countries. Unsurprisingly, countries with higher levels of population exposed to ambient air pollution, small island countries and countries with a low GDP per capita are correlated with higher levels of health engagement. Overall, the health commitments made in the Paris agreement reflect global  inequalities between states. Even if the disproportionate impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss are discussed, their different consequences on population’s health are not highlighted in the Paris agreement nor the global biodiversity reports and agreements. Discussing health without discussing the varied economic realities of developing nations means the disproportionate impacts of biodiversity loss on vulnerable groups (children, seniors, etc.) will likely not be adequately addressed.  Without a global approach in the commitments made, huge disparities will exist between states since the capacity to do research is not the same everywhere.

It seems that this year’s COP representatives recognized this need to better allocate and redistribute resources. The framework provides for large sums of money to be provided by richer countries to poorer ones in order to finance the implementation of the agreement. Only time will tell if these amounts are enough, but they are certainly a step in the right direction. The agreement also stands out for explicitly mentioning the inclusion of Indigenous rights in all conservation efforts and emphasizing the importance of gender equality in achieving the stated goals and targets.

Health at the center of biodiversity and climate policies

Continuing to integrate health objectives into future COP discussions has the potential to increase ambitions to safeguard biodiversity, which in return, will increase health co-benefits. This argument can be made using the Paris agreement and the NDCs as an example. Researchers analyzed the health co-benefits of current NDCs and the resulting policies in nine countries (current pathway scenario; CPS) and compared them with two alternative scenarios. The first scenario has more ambitious policies, ensuring that the objectives developed in the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved (SPS scenario). The second comparative scenario goes even further,  integrating explicit health measures into the policies (HPS scenario).  The three scenarios they developed tracked GHG emissions and air pollution, diets and related health effects, and travel patterns and relevant health outcomes. Health outcomes were evaluated as ‘deaths avoided relative to the current pathway scenario’. In the three areas they evaluated, they found that an HPS pathway reduced the most deaths without sacrificing reductions in GHG emissions. This suggests that explicitly addressing health in the NDCs, and centering health in mitigation and adaptation policies, results in lower GHG emissions and greater protections of human health. A similar outcome is probable with biodiversity and health if leaders at future biodiversity COPs  continue designing their policies with a health-centered approach.

A focus on health has been increasingly included in the development of environmental global agreements, and undoubtedly, biodiversity loss has profound impacts on human health. It is a notable step in the right direction that the recent COP15 agreement recognizes this. We cannot, however, let COP15 be the only global agreement to appropriately address the health implications of climate policy. The climate and biodiversity urgency must push leaders at future COPs to continue their focus on health-centered policies in order to truly have goals and strategies that will be most beneficial for humans.

Asma Bouikni is a candidate in the Masters of Public Policy Program with the Max Bell School at McGill University. Asma is interested in health policy and social affairs, and hopes to bring an EDI (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) lens to her work.