PARIS (AFP) – Expanding nature preserves will not be enough to stem a rising tide of extinctions, a panel of experts warned Wednesday, taking aim at a draft treaty tasked with rescuing Earth’s animal and plant life.

Setting aside at least 30 per cent of both land and oceans as protected zones is the cornerstone target of the so-called global biodiversity framework to be finalised in May at United Nations (UN) negotiations in Kunming, China.

But a report by more than 50 top experts said the draft plan still falls far short of what is needed.

“We’re in the middle of a biodiversity crisis, with a million species at risk of extinction,” lead author Paul Leadley, a professor at Paris-Saclay University, told AFP.

“There’s good evidence that we will fail again to meet ambitious international biodiversity objectives if there’s too much focus on protected areas at the expense of other urgent actions.”

The plan, under negotiation by nearly 200 nations, sets a score of targets for 2030 – and aims by 2050 to reverse biodiversity loss and be “living in harmony with nature”.

The world failed almost entirely to reach a similar set of 10-year objectives set a decade ago at UN talks in Aichi, Japan.

“We keep trying to treat a critically ill patient with plasters – that has to stop,” said Leadley.

Echoing a similar warning issued by the UN’s science advisory panel for climate change, Leadley and his colleagues said reversing the damage done to nature will require “transformative change” in society, starting with the way we produce and consume food.

Policymakers must also realise that all the drivers of extinction – habitat loss and fragmentation, over-hunting for food and profit, pollution, the spread of invasive species – must be tackled at once.

“Biodiversity loss is caused by multiple direct drivers in nearly all cases, meaning that actions on only one or a few will be insufficient to halt continued loss,” the report said.

Climate change is also rapidly emerging as a major threat to many animal and plant species on land and in the oceans, outpacing their ability to adapt. Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – “essential” for protecting nature – is not adequately reflected in the draft targets, the authors said.

Earth’s surface has already warmed 1.1C, enough to unleash a crescendo of climate-enhanced storms, heatwaves, droughts and flooding.

And it works both ways, the report warns: “Protecting and restoring biodiversity are key to achieving the climate mitigation and adaptation goals of the Paris Agreement.”

As with climate, there’s no time to lose. “The sooner we act the better,” said co-author Maria Cecilia Londono Murcia, a researcher at Humboldt Institute in Colombia.

“Time lags between action and positive outcomes for biodiversity can take decades.” The report also takes the draft treaty to task for not spelling out how goals will be achieved and enforced. Targets are all well and good, it suggests, “but it is how these targets are implemented… that will determine success”.

“For every euro we spend globally to help biodiversity, we spend at least five on things that destroy it,” said co-author Aleksandar Rankovic, a researcher at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

PUDSEY, UNITED KINGDOM (AFP) – Robert Tomlinson picks rhubarb stalks by candlelight in the dark, carrying on a century-old family tradition that survives today despite the challenges posed to his business by Brexit and climate change.

For four generations, Tomlinson’s family have been cultivating “forced rhubarb” in the winter months at their farm in Pudsey, northern England, and are profiting from a resurgence in the plant’s popularity.

Hundreds of bright pink stems of the “Harbinger” variety reach for the ceiling after they were brought into sheds from fields to be finished off indoors.

The temperature is kept heated to around 14 degrees Celsius, and it is almost completely dark.

With this mildness in the air, “we are tricking them into thinking it is spring”, Tomlinson, 41, said as he walked around his plants, which benefit from a government-protected designation of origin.

In the absence of stronger light, the plants cannot produce chlorophyll and sugar grows in the stalk rather than the leaf, “so you get a far more tender, sweeter stick than you do in summer with outdoor rhubarb”.

The stems can therefore be harvested in winter, when few fresh fruit and vegetables are produced in Britain, and command a higher price than free-range rhubarb, which is typically picked from May.

“You can hear them growing, it makes just like a pop,” said Tomlinson, whose farm lies in a part of Yorkshire known as Britain’s “rhubarb triangle” because of its concentration of growers.

His great-grandfather started growing the plant, which originated in Asia and Russia, in the late 1880s. Until the 1960s, its tangy taste was popular in Britain.

But rhubarb then fell out of fashion and many growers gave up. Today there are only 10 left in Yorkshire, according to Tomlinson, down from a peak of more than 200.

In recent years, however, chefs have embraced rhubarb with relish.

They include Tom Cenci of the 26 Grains group, which manages two high-end restaurants in London which use mostly British produce.

“The recipes are endless,” he said, before sauteing a few pieces of forced rhubarb in orange juice, adding sugar and a little ginger.

Forced rhubarb grown indoors “has a slightly sweeter taste”, and outdoor rhubarb can be more “stringy”. Cenci recommends pairing it with fish or duck.

Forced rhubarb is also used in drinks, from flavoured soda to gin, sparkling wine and syrups.

Tomlinson said the wide array of uses has helped him weather the closure of United Kingdom (UK) restaurants during successive pandemic lockdowns.

Foreign demand has also helped, from restaurants and hotels in Paris, Berlin, Zurich and even New York, he said.

But owing to new customs checks since Britain left the EU’s single market, “it is far more expensive to send it to Europe now”.

And like other British farmers, the rhubarb grower is struggling with labour shortages.
“Costs have gone up. There are so many jobs out there that pay a lot more money,” Tomlinson said.

His wife Paula assists, as do his children aged 13 and 14 on weekends.

Milder weather brought about by climate change is another headwind.

The plants need a period of cold in the autumn “to re-energise before we fetch them in the sheds” for indoor harvesting.

But Tomlinson remains rooted in a longer view of the business dating from his great-grandfather’s time.

“The way in which we are growing is almost identical as it was back then because there is no other way to do it.

“So, I will go on picking by candlelight, by hand,” the farmer said. “There are no machines to do it.”