Advising on the Global Biodiversity Framework to be adopted in 2022

Lynne Shannon is a Chief Research Officer at the Department of Biological Sciences, UCT, and a Director of Amethyst Independent Facilitation.

Hub researcher Lynne Shannon (University of Cape Town, South Africa) has provided advice on the draft ‘post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’ currently being negotiated under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). She served on the organizing committee of an Expert Working Group comprised of over 50 scientists from around the world, in a concerted effort to synthesize newly available science underpinning the proposed 21 new international biodiversity targets (actions) by 2050. The advice has been published by the CBD Secretariat as an official information document to support inter-governmental negotiations at the UN Biodiversity Conference to be held in Kunming, China, later in 2022. The advice has been covered by international press, including Guardian, Le Monde, Macau Business, Globe and Mail, as well as on Nature. It focuses on transformative change through a variety of inter-linked goals, with action being coordinated at every scale.

Prof Shannon was quoted explaining that “there is no one-to-one linkage from any action target to a specific milestone or goal; instead, ‘many-to-many’ relationships exist among them. We need to recognize, therefore, the complex relationships among targets, milestones and goals and undertake our planning and actions in an integrated manner.” Prof Shannon is co-chair of Future Earth’s bioDISCOVERY programme, one of the two renowned international science bodies leading the Expert group initiative. Her biodiversity work is conducted under the auspices of the One Ocean Hub, which provides the ideal framework for bridging the science-policy gap to realize uptake of scientific research by global (and national) policy/decision-makers.