Biodiversity: COP15 in Montréal must focus on reducing land-use change

Two weeks ago #COP27 came to an end. The world climate conference has brought important advances in some areas, but unfortunately less progress has been made in many others. One of the breakthroughs is that we are no longer just talking about reducing CO2 emissions; adaptation to climate change is finally a major topic and an important part of the final declaration. Biodiversity also featured prominently in the final document. Without a meaningful reduction of emissions, not only humans but also many other species will be pushed way beyond their climate comfort zone.

Now, with new momentum, I am preparing myself for the next, much less well-known but equally important UN summit: after much COVID-related delay, the UN #Biodiversity Conference (#COP15) is meeting in Montréal on December 7 to 19 to establish a framework for the governance of biodiversity, much like the agreement to limit global warming achieved at COP21 in Paris in 2015.

The UN Biodiversity Conference will attempt to agree to a new set of goals for nature over the next decade. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) sets out actions to transform society’s relationship with biodiversity and to live in harmony with nature by 2050. The Conference will also look at the implementation of the protocols of the CBD that deal with the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of nature.

Let me be very clear:

Species loss is just as big a problem as climate change. At a time of multiple crises, I very much hope there will be enough political will to establish an ambitious framework for the conservation, protection, restoration, and sustainable management of our threatened ecosystems.

And I want to push for change in crucial areas: support for smallholder farmers, much needed innovations in meat production, fertilizers and crop protection, and joint business reporting and action on biodiversity.

To halt and reverse biodiversity loss, we need tools similar to those in our global fight against climate change: science-based targets and reporting, financing, strong governance, and trailblazing coalitions including private companies like Bayer.

In this issue of 120months, I will outline why we need “nature-positive” as a global goal for nature, in parallel to the “net-zero” goal for climate, so that by 2030 nature is visibly and measurably recovering. I want Bayer to be dedicated to this goal, as there is simply no route to net zero without biodiversity — and that applies the other way around as well.

Yes, intensive agriculture threatens our planetary boundaries

The general term biodiversity refers to the variety of life on Earth, from genes to ecosystems, and can encompass the evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that sustain life. Biodiversity includes not only species considered rare, threatened, or endangered, but also every living thing in the air, in water, on land, and in the soil.

The Global Risks Report 2022 ranked the loss of biodiversity as one of the biggest threats humanity is facing. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), up to one million species are at risk of extinction. IPBES works in a similar way to the IPCC, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. Scientists tell us that human mismanagement of the environment is precipitating a sixth great extinction of plants and animals in Earth’s history. Reasons include climate change, pollution, resource extraction, overfishing, invasive species, urbanization, land-use change and a lack of knowledge and awareness of biodiversity. Each year, millions of hectares of forest are destroyed, often to create farmland.

Let’s not misunderstand biodiversity as a purely environmental issue. It encompasses all areas of our life, its loss will also have catastrophic consequences on social life and health. Biodiversity is the foundation of the global economy, since more than half (US$ 41.7 trillion in 2020) of global GDP is dependent on the healthy functioning of the natural world, according to estimates by the insurance group Swiss Re.

Without doubt, farming has an enormous impact on ecosystems. While it is true that we will not be able to feed the world’s population of 9 billion people without intensive farming methods, I also agree with EU environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevi?ius who told the Financial Times that “if nature continues to degrade at the same rate, we are going to have even bigger issues with food security.”

Beyond our current business models, we are investing in new ways to address the nexus between climate change, nature degradation and the need to improve food security. Our technologies and services can contribute to conserving and restoring biodiversity. Our customers, farmers around the world, are well aware just how much agriculture relies on biodiversity: many species create and maintain important ecosystem services like healthy soils, crop pollination or pest control. Maintaining biodiverse ecosystems allows agricultural systems to be more resilient in a changing climate.

What we are doing: innovating in crop protection

Bayer is committed to reducing the environmental impact of crop protection by 30 percent within our area of influence by 2030. We have found ways to mitigate the risk for bees through exposure to neonicotinoids after seed treatment and spray application. And one of the greatest benefits of herbicide-tolerant crops, for example, is their ability to foster healthier soils by reducing the need for tillage (or plowing). Farmers can leave their soil intact and let the previous year’s crop residue rot on top of the soil. This increases the amount of nutrients and microbes, tiny bacteria that assist plants as they grow in the soil. Reduced tillage practices have been shown to reduce soil erosion and CO2 emissions significantly.

More than anybody else in our industry, we are investing to develop a new generation of herbicides and other pesticides to replace older chemicals.?One example is Targenomix, a German startup recently acquired by Bayer. Targenomix, a spin-off of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, uses novel systems biology and computational life science tools to discover and develop new methods for crop protection. In collaboration with Bayer, Targenomix has already found a new active ingredient to control weeds with the potential to gradually replace glyphosate. This is the first completely new herbicide in arable crops discovered by the industry in 30 years. The environmental impact of pesticides varies greatly. While some people believe we can do without them, I am skeptical.

Food loss would increase dramatically without crop protection, which in turn would lead to more land-use change at the expense of nature.

What we should all rally around, however, is the plan to phase out those crop protection products which have a very negative environmental or safety profile and where adequate alternatives are available. This approach is one that should be driven by both governments and the crop protection industry.

Additionally, we are advancing the use of integrated crop management and precision application technology, allowing farmers to use crop protection products in a more targeted way, applying them only when and where needed.?New biotech crops, new formulation technologies and seed coatings can lead to significantly reduced application volumes.

We need further alternatives

However, we need to look beyond sustainable crop protection to really reduce the impact of intensive agriculture on ecosystems. I am convinced one powerful lever is innovation in fertilizers.

The Haber-Bosch process to produce nitrogen fertilizers, invented more than 100 years ago, has enabled a tremendous increase in productivity, but the cost is a very energy-intensive, emission-heavy food production system. Nitrogen pollution adds to the problem. Nitrate run-off and leaching are major causes of eutrophication and acidification. Scientists advising the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture have identified the extensive use of fertilizers as one of the main drivers decreasing biodiversity. In economic terms, nitrogen pollution is estimated to cost the European Union alone between EUR 70 and 320 billion a year.

Promising start-ups are trying to use nitrogen-fixing microbes to reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers. Microbes are being genetically edited to take nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form that grains like corn and wheat can use, much like the bacteria that naturally form symbiotic relationships with peas, beans and soybeans.

Bayer’s joint venture with Joyn Bio, now part of a collaboration between Bayer and Gingko Bioworks, is one of these innovators. Andes, a firm combining nitrogen-fixing technology with seeds, is co-financed by Leaps by Bayer, our impact investment arm. Bayer also cooperates with Pivot Bio, a company which grows these microbes via fermentation, which is much less energy-intensive than the Haber-Bosch process.

I am fascinated by these technologies and am also advocating externally to put many more research dollars into innovation on fertilizers. By leveraging our global scale, Bayer can contribute significantly to the broad adoption of more sustainable fertilizer solutions. We need a convincing alternative as the example of Sri Lanka has demonstrated at scale. Fertilizers are currently feeding 4 billion humans. Without them, again, we would see much more land-use change at the expense of nature.

Besides alternative fertilizers, another powerful innovation to reduce the need for land-use change is cultured meat. For some, this may still sound like pie-in-the-sky, but the potential benefits are extremely interesting. Let me give you a short example: Leaps by Bayer has invested in Fork & Good, a Brooklyn-based company that is working to grow cultured meat at scale. The most commonly consumed protein in the world is ground pork. Fork & Good is trying to find way of growing that same meat with much lower impact by taking cells from a live animal and then rearing the cells in a nutrient-rich feed until the yield is high enough to harvest, achieving the same texture and the same nutritional value of ground pork as we know it. At scale, cultured meat can reduce carbon emissions by up to 50 percent and reduce the amount of land used by approximately 70 percent.

Supporting farmers & landowners

Conserving and restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services is a value that farmers and Bayer can jointly generate for society even today.?Bayer provides collaborative support to farmers, co-designing sustainable farming practices, stewardship activities and training programs. BayGAP for example is a service program which helps farmers get themselves certified for sustainable practices and thus helps them meet market demands. To empower smallholder farmers, Bayer has co-founded Better Life Farming, a public-private alliance to make innovations available and provide resources to smallholders in remote areas across the globe.

It is our ambition to identify the best incentivizing models for farmer engagement and biodiversity-friendly practices.

We are striving to bring commercial value to farmers who join our efforts in protecting biodiversity.

With the Forward Farming network, Bayer supports independent farmers with innovative solutions and cutting-edge technology. In Brazil, for example, Bayer is partnering with the Fiorese family farm in Goiás, where special care is given to the native forest on the farm which is home to many pollinator species. Cutting-edge innovations in crop protection and crop rotation between soybeans, corn, field beans, wheat and sorghum are used to protect and enhance the soil. Soil health and soil biodiversity play a key role in this context, as soil health and biodiversity-enhancing measures such as cover crops, crop rotation and field margin habitats can lead to significant soil carbon sequestration. ?

Helping to protect forests

In cooperation with farmers and external partners, we are engaged in programs focused on reforestation and avoiding deforestation.?Net-zero deforestation is the standard we have set for our own supply chain, and we encourage our licensees to do the same.

Bayer is supporting the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance (LEAF) Coalition. Its goal is to halt deforestation by financing large-scale tropical forest protection. In 2021, the #LEAFCoalition mobilized US$ 1 billion in financing, kicking off the largest-ever public-private effort to protect tropical forests.

Our more productive seeds, like the next generation of insect-resistant BT soybeans in Brazil, will reduce the need for land-use change. Together with other innovations, we can offer growers a deal to produce more on less land and, in return, allow them to commit to refraining from clearing forests and expanding at the expense of nature even where this would be well within their property rights. We expect our new Intacta2 Xtend soybean variety to be planted on about 10 percent of Brazil’s total soy farming area already in the next season (2022-23), with a yield of nearly double that of Brazil’s average.

Advancing the science on biodiversity

As a life science company, we advocate science-based policies and innovations. In my view, this is an area where the global governance of biodiversity has a lot of catching-up to do. Climate science is now supported and solidly funded through a global framework, and much better positioned than the equally important science on nature protection. As much as we need science on tipping points for climate, we also need reliable science on tipping points for species and ecosystems.

Bayer invests in scientific research in its own areas of influence to better understand the root causes of insect decline and to develop adequate countermeasures that are practical for farmers. Our research collaborations on pollinator management are already showing promising results, for example on landscaping measures fostering insect biodiversity in agriculture.

What all businesses need to do: replicating the climate agenda

In my last #120months column before my departure to the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, I lamented that governments and businesses are way off track to achieve the target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. But at least climate change is an established concept in boardrooms now, with emissions disclosure and reduction on the strategic and operational agenda. This is not yet the case for the biodiversity crisis.

Thousands of businesses are making commitments and taking action to reverse the loss of nature. However, Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of the IPBES, has said that this is not enough, and that political leadership is needed. The CBD’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework – due to be agreed at COP15 – offers the opportunity to adopt a global agreement that will kickstart the transformation of our economic and financial systems. This would help create a level playing field and a stable operating environment, and unlock new business opportunities.

More than 330 companies, including H&M, Sainsbury’s and Nestlé, published a ”COP15 Business Statement” on October 25, 2022. The document calls for mandatory assessment and disclosure of risks and impacts on nature by large companies and financial institutions. The aim is to halt the erosion of biodiversity and move towards regeneration.

In general, the first essential step is that businesses better reflect their impacts and dependencies on nature in their business models and reporting. Corporate understanding of their impact on biodiversity (and the impact of biodiversity loss on their business) is nascent. Targets are common for climate change but much less common for other dimensions of nature. According to a recent McKinsey report on where the world’s largest companies stand on nature, only 5 percent of them have targets for biodiversity, compared to 83 percent for climate.

What gets measured gets managed

Investors are telling me they are keen to raise capital for nature-based economic opportunities, and trying to analyze how portfolio companies like Bayer are contributing to, or vulnerable to, biodiversity loss. One problem for investors is that there is no standard methodology for assessing and reporting on nature-related risks and opportunities. Peter Harrison, Chief Executive of the asset manager Schroders, stated in the Financial Times recently that reporting on biodiversity is now at the point where reporting on climate change was five to ten years ago.

There will be big obstacles to overcome before agreement is reached, with finance being a major issue. The leaders of some developing countries are expected to argue that they need more money if they are to protect larger parts of their territories and grow their economies sustainably, reports The Guardian, and governments have a dubious track record on biodiversity commitments too.

But change is coming. Just as a classification system for three scopes of emissions emerged and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) developed standards for reporting climate risks and opportunities, a Task Force for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is working on disclosure requirements for the management of nature-related risks and opportunities.

Another crucial framework is being created by the Science Based Targets Network with new targets for nature (SBTN). Already today, large companies like Bayer are conducting a “materiality assessment” to identify the most “material” sustainability issues to be tackled. The Science Based Targets for Nature will create additional definitions showing how companies can assess, prioritize, measure, address and track their impacts and dependencies on natural ecosystems. First drafts are currently being consulted. A final version encompassing the realms of freshwater, land, biodiversity and oceans is expected by 2024-2025.

“We are losing our suicidal war against nature,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, emphasizing the stakes for COP15, which could hardly be higher. I couldn't sum up the need to act any better. Bayer is committed to the described efforts. Protecting biodiversity is a condition for protecting the climate and vice versa. Protecting just one will not work.