Context

• Recently, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has released the summary of its much-awaited “Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species” at Bonn, Germany.

• The IPBES Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species is the result of four years of work by 85 leading experts from the natural and social sciences, and holders of indigenous and local knowledge, as well as 200 contributing authors, drawing on more than 6,200 sources.

• The assessment considers various approaches to the enhancement of the sustainability of the use of wild species and to strengthen related practices, measures, capacities and tools for their conservation.

• The assessment highlights drivers of sustainability and compares, among other, the effectiveness of policy options to better govern the sustainable use of wild species.

Key Highlights of the report

• The summary states that billions of people worldwide rely on some 50,000 wild species for food, energy, medicine and income. Around 33,000 of the species are plants and fungi; 7,500 are fish and aquatic invertebrates; and 9,000 are amphibians, insects, reptiles, birds and mammals. Of these, more than 10,000 species are used directly for human food.
• About 70% of the world’s poor directly depend on wild species for survival. In many cases, wild species are symbols of cultural identities.
• The report states that sustainable use of wild species would bolster the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs). It can help achieve 80% of the SDG1 and SDG2 goals each that aim at eradicating poverty and hunger. This is apart from contributing to the achievement of 15 other SDGs that include ensuring good health and well-being; reducing inequality; providing access to affordable clean energy; and promoting economic growth.
• Several conservationists have decried IPBES’s latest approach as anthropocentric because the 2019 report highlighted that humans had altered the natural world so drastically that 1 million plant and animal species were at risk of extinction. While another UN report declared that nations had made little progress on international commitments made in 2010 to tackle catastrophic biodiversity collapse.
• Many experts have warned that the international trade in skins of “exotic” species such as pythons, stingrays and crocodiles for fashion accessories also increases the risk of dangerous viruses spreading to humans. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerging infectious diseases affecting people began as diseases in animals.

Rapidly Uprooted

• The line between sustainable use and exploitation is extremely thin. Eg: In Rajasthan, every year around Holi, youth from the villages surrounding the Todgarh Raoli Wildlife Sanctuary congregate and venture into the forests for community hunting as part of a century-old ritual called Aeda. The wild meat they bring back is consumed on the day of the festival.
• The Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, has extensively studied the food habits of tribal communities in the northeastern region of the country and supports the consumption of wild meat by local communities, stating that it fulfills their nutritional needs as most tribal communities are extremely poor and have no other source for securing protein.
• The food system sustainability is the lowest in tropical regions, where people are often supported by wild-sourced foods.
• Overharvesting of wildlife for meat has been identified as an issue only since the 1960s, as populations and economies continued to grow, and has remained an intractable challenge. Factors such as Commercial opportunity, increased ease of movement between rural and urban areas, widespread availability of inexpensive hunting tools and low barriers to entering the trade in wildlife for food such as lack of lucrative wage labor opportunities, may increase hunting pressure or prompt families in rural areas to hunt for trade leading to unsustainable hunting.
• The unsustainable use of wild species has cascading consequences for people whose subsistence and livelihoods are tied to wild meat; depletion of wildlife additionally risks reducing food security and income and can cause social conflict.
• The wild species could also be dying because of reasons such as fragmentation of habitat, degrading ecosystems, invasive species and changing climate. Thus, Banning the use of wildlife is unfair in India, where various tribal and local communities depend on it for food, nutrition and livelihood.
•  Excessive use risks extinction of wild plant species. There is a need to focus on sustainable use of species that provides economic and nutritional benefits especially to local communities

Better to use

• Across the world, there are innumerable examples of species thriving because of traditional knowledge.
• According to a study cited in the IPBES report,  at least 34% of the 10,098 wild species that humans use in some way and that also appear on the “red list”—those listed as threatened by the IUCN experience stable or increasing population trends. “Sustainable use” is the reason these species have returned from the brink of extinction.
• Indigenous peoples manage fishing, gathering, terrestrial animal harvesting and other uses of wild species on 38 million sq km of land across 87 countries.
• The report thus notes that future policies governing wild species will need to take into account the social and historical dimensions of sustainability. 
• When conservation is coupled with livelihood, especially in areas where there are no viable alternatives, communities respond positively and wildlife management is successful.

Challenges ahead

• Environmentalists acknowledge that adopting sustainable use of wild species will come with challenges such as:

• Having a robust system and implementation policy that will ensure strict regulation on use of wild species.

• Rise in infectious diseases

• There is a need to define “sustainable use”, particularly for consumption as in India, the wildlife population is dwindling and human population is exploding.

• There is no denying that sustainable use of wild species will require the rule of law and support from the government. But it cannot be implemented unless local people must feel secure in their ownership of the animals and what they produce.

• The lack of adequate data on a large number of species is concerning, as there is a growing demand for these resources in food, alternative medicines and aromatics.

• Wild species are also the third largest class of all illegal trade, with an estimated value up to US $199 billion per year. In terms of volumes and value, timber and fish lead in illegal trade.

• Unsustainable gathering is one of the main threats for plants such as cacti, cycads and orchids. An estimated 12% of wild tree species are threatened by excessive logging.

Rope in Native communities: A viable solution

• As there is no silver solution, the assessment finds that policies supporting secure tenure rights and equitable access to land, fisheries and forests, along with poverty alleviation, enable sustainable use.
• Eg: Solomon Islands, where fishing is organized around customary sea tenures provided to native communities and fish are distributed through a kinship-based system.
• The Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature reports that though there are currently more than 50 methods to indicate values of nature, the

focus is solely on short-term profits and economic growth. Eg: The assessment’s review of studies on people’ participation in deciding market values shows that just 1% of them include stakeholder consultations and involvement in every step of the valuation process.

• It notes that strengthening of inclusive and participatory decision-making practices; recognising and supporting multiple forms of knowledge; enabling fair and equitable

sharing of benefits; monitoring wild species and practices; and aligning policies at international, national, regional and local levels can augment the success of policies.

Conclusion

• The world depends on 50,000 wild species for various purposes but while the world is able to identify many of these plant species and the manner in which they are used, there are massive information gaps on their gathering, conservation status and sustainable management of such species which can be detrimental to global food systems and livelihoods.