Dear President von der Leyen,
Business warmly welcomes the Commission's ambition to propose legally binding targets for nature recovery and urges it to publish these in June 2022 without further delay.
Nature recovery targets are fully consistent with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and the upcoming post-2020 global biodiversity framework, and are set out in the EU Green Deal and its strategy to reverse biodiversity loss by 2050. is the key to achieving your broader goals.
Europe is facing difficult times. We commend the Committee's primary focus on ensuring food security in response to the war in Ukraine. However, we believe that discussions about risks to food security should not come at the expense of progress in tackling the climate and biodiversity crises..
In fact, it is the climate and biodiversity crises that are having a major impact on food production.1. Our food production fundamentally depends on healthy ecosystems and the services they provide, such as healthy soils, abundant fish stocks, and pollination.Land-use change and intensification are major causes of biodiversity loss worldwide2. At EU level, a JRC study found that the mere absence of insect pollination would lead to a 25% to 32% reduction in total crop production.3. Yield impacts vary depending on crop type and local climate. Under a 2°C warming scenario, wheat yields are estimated to decline by 12% in the southern region, reaching losses of up to 50% in the most severely affected regions.Four. The IPCC warns with great confidence that the climate crisis and extreme weather events will push current food-producing regions “beyond safe climate space for production.”Five.
The climate and biodiversity crises are also seriously undermining the resilience of Europe's forests to provide rich and diverse social benefits and services. Therefore, to restore biodiversity, ensure the feeding of a growing world population, and ensure socio-economic prosperity, we must fundamentally shift current agricultural and forestry models towards practices that support nature's recovery. Businesses strongly believe that they need to recalibrate. A transition to more sustainable agricultural and forestry systems is necessary to achieve the goals set out in the European Green Deal and must be supported by strong political ambition at EU level. The European Commission's upcoming proposal to adopt legally binding EU-level nature recovery targets could provide the much-needed impetus to making this transition a reality.
Finally, rewilding is definitely good for business. Nature provides the raw material inputs and ecosystem services on which many of our businesses depend. The continued destruction of nature only threatens our business model by causing unexpected and often unmanageable disruptions to our supply chains. Meanwhile, extreme weather conditions continue to impact our productivity and increase operating costs.
We look forward to reviewing the Commission's unified framework and approach to nature restoration through the achievement of legally binding targets.
To all the corporate organizations that have signed below,
CDP Europe
European Business Leaders Group
One Planet Business for Biodiversity
Responsible Business Forum in Poland
B team
we mean business association
