G7-Elmau-Progress-Report-2015-Biodiversity-A-vital-foundation-for-sustainable-development

40 G7 ELMAU PROGRESS REPORT4. G7 approaches andgood practices to reducethe loss of biodiversityKey messages• G7 countries undertake a broad range of efforts, both at home and abroad, to safeguard biodiversity,for example by supporting the establishment and management of protected areas while improving thelivelihoods of communities, and by combating poaching and the trade of illegal timber, wildlife andits products.• Efforts undertaken by G7 countries to tackle direct drivers of biodiversity loss, such as habitat loss andinvasive alien species, are aimed, among other things, at sustainable forest management and reforestation,and the development of several national or regional invasive alien species strategies.• To tackle the economic, cultural and sociopolitical causes underlying biodiversity loss (indirect drivers),the G7 has begun to calculate the economic value of ecosystem services, started campaigns to alterconsumption patterns and reduce food waste, and has taken initial steps to identify and reform subsidiesthat are harmful to biodiversity.• G7 efforts seek to enhance the benefits of biodiversity and ecosystem services to society by supportingsustainable agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and by using incentives for conservation.This chapter presents the approaches and good practicestaken by the G7 countries to reduce biodiversity loss, bothdomestically and in development cooperation. The presentationof examples for specific G7 countries does notmean that other G7 countries are not active in the samefield.4.1 Directly improving the state of biodiversityTo directly improve the situation of biodiversity, the commonapproach has been to protect species in their habitatsand ecosystems. G7 efforts in this field cover a wide rangeof activities at the domestic and international levels.Activities include the creation and sustainable managementof protected areas, the protection of species and theirgenetic diversity, as well as policy frameworks to preventillegal logging, poaching and illegal trade in wildlife.4.1.1 Supporting protected areasThe establishment of protected areas has been the mostcommon strategy among the G7 to safeguard biodiversity.Since the 1960s considerable progress has been made, andtoday 15 percent of terrestrial ecosystems are protected, atleast on paper (UNEP and WCMC 2014); in contrast, only2.8 percent of the global ocean area is protected (idem).Protected areas are of special importance, as these areasallow for the protection of endangered plant or animalspecies in their natural habitats as well as support thelivelihoods of communities. Good practices by G7 countriesrelate, for instance, to the site network of the Ramsar Conventionfor protecting wetlands, the Natura 2000 networkin Europe, and other bilateral and multilateral agreementsfor creating new and supporting established protected areas.At home, for example, Canadian protected areas grew morethan 87,000 km 2 between 2009 and 2013, Japan designatedprotected areas in 20.3 percent of its land areas and the