The Convention on Biological Diversity and its related and fragmented spinoff treaties, platforms, conventions and protocols had basically been utter failures that had not deviated the Natural World significantly from the current wave of extinctions. There had of course been good reasons for the lack of progress, which could ultimately be boiled down to the low tolerance of the thermo industrial beast for sharing space or even remotely wanting to curb its expansion. None of the talking or even writing was backed by any walking, by any measure that could even slow down destruction of habitat. At best, humanity was simply compiling a catalogue barely keeping up with what species it was losing daily. Some species going extinct would get a slightly sadder eulogy than others, habitat destruction might even be delayed for a few weeks, months or even years, but that’s about as far as humanity’s efforts went. Species which had survived millions of years would just get a few more years respite from the human steamroller, yet it seemed to most humans that the balance was always tipped too far into the green zone, that the balance always seemed to favor an environment which was losing species at a rate a thousand times higher than background rates whilst human population was growing by 80 million every year, and fuelled by a compounded consumption growth rate of 3.5% per year on a finite planet.
The Gaia Roadmap had laid out the foundations for preserving what was left of the Natural World into the future. The world sharing maps, which had been drawn for each country, had set out the areas that would need to remain free of human exploitation and interference. In biodiversity hotspots, as much as possible of intact habitats would receive complete protection. In line with the now required de-growth of the human world, the Natural World would be allowed to expand for the first time in millenia, parts of the world would even be re-wilded.
Habitat fragmentation was another key consideration when drawing boundaries between the human and the natural worlds. Cohabitation and meshing in of the two worlds was possible, and in fact highly desirable from a human perspective, as long as ecosystem functions were preserved. Often those functions could even be reinforced, especially when some co-evolution between humans and nature had taken place in more traditional times. Along with passive protection measures such as fencing off vast areas of wilderness where humans did not play a role, activity would also focus on restoration. Dams would be dismantled, roads ripped up, forests rehabilitated, human settlements in some cases relocated. Humans would actively help nature claim back some ground.
Climate change was real and would have some major implications regarding the re-wilding of the world. In areas where it was desirable to reestablish extinct communities, climate change meant those communities would likely not survive the rate of change of the climate. Priority was given to the creation of North- South corridors which would allow species to migrate to higher latitudes if needed. Some species may fare better by adapting rather than by migrating. Opening corridors would at least give those species the two options. There was simply a need to prioritize and focus on maintaining diversity in general, so focusing less on individual species which were either doomed or overestimated in their future roles in maintaining ecosystem resilience. The interventionism that had seemed so prevalent was usually only fulfilling misplaced human needs for gratitude and self- importance, or was simply another business model siphoning more liquefied nature into the pockets of the rich. More often than not, an exclusion and hands-off approach would be adopted.
Reintroduction of lost ecosystem rungs such as top predators was subject to careful considerations of ecosystem size. In many cases, meshing into the human world would also be needed. Reintroducing bears, wolves, cougars lions and tigers would require the encroachment in many cases on territories used by humans. There had to be tolerance and a new vision of that cohabitation, some herd losses would have to be accepted in return for also a healthier overall system. In a world where food availability was going to decline sharply, maintaining a system heavily reliant on meat production was fraught with dangers and there were very good reasons to reconsider even what had been traditional herding lifestyles. In those cases, a heavy involvement of the BPU was required to educate people and attempt to change lifestyles. When drawing biodiversity protection zones, a line in the sand had to be drawn, this basically delimited the extent of traditional lifestyles prior to the advent of the modern world. Beyond those traditional territories, preservation of life would take precedence and the human world would have to gradually retreat.
Recent carbon offset models were little more than accounting tricks to insert countries within an acceptable range of mitigation measures. Often carbon offsets were used to allow further damaging industrial developments, simply to neutralize the carbon balance sheet. Other times they were used to simply generate revenue for friends of the powerful, to funnel and redirect taxpayers’ monies into already deep pockets. NGOs were no better, often worse, in terms of actual offsets and bang for buck, they were simply another business model nourishing an unchecked human greed. Reforestation projects would need to be re- evaluated and have a good chance of success, there would need to be follow up and results, and restoring biodiversity loss would be integrated into the requirements of such schemes. In most cases, it would be better to let nature reclaim its rights in areas which some Green Corporation would want to “manage”. Those projects often did little to promote biodiversity; it was simply industrial carbon farming, in line with the only model the corporate world knew.