Connectivity Conservation: forging the nexus between biodiversity protection and climate action in Australia

The purpose of this policy discussion paper is to provide a summary of the importance of connectivity conservation for protecting and restoring biodiversity and ecosystems in Australia, including supporting Australia’s response to climate change. It also provides guidance on the implications of connectivity for Australia’s national biodiversity plan and related policy areas. Key points include: 1. Maintaining and enhancing ecosystem integrity and resilience through connectivity is a key element in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at CBD COP15. Goal A and Targets 2, 3 & 12 explicitly recognise the importance of ecological connectivity for achieving biodiversity objectives. 2. Decisions taken by the UNFCCC at COPs 25, 26 and 27 reinforce the importance of integrating climate and biodiversity action for climate mitigation and ensuring ecosystem integrity. Protecting and restoring ecosystem integrity is an essential pre-requisite for the success of Australia’s commitments under the Convention on Biodiversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. 3. Connectivity conservation is also critical for achieving Australia’s national biodiversity plan and meeting Australia’s new goals of 30 by 30, preventing new extinctions and 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 leading to net zero by 2050. 4. All natural ecosystems, and especially carbon dense ecosystems such as native forests, are the only means by which carbon can be removed from the atmosphere and accumulate in relatively stable long term, ecosystem carbon stores. Protecting these ecosystems therefore has significant mitigation benefit by preventing anthropogenic emissions and enabling ongoing removals through natural growth. 5. ‘Conservation corridors’ provide a framework for conservation planning and implementation efforts informed by connectivity conservation and characterised by a whole-of-landscape approach, the integration of protection and restoration actions, partnerships within and between sectors, and coordination of actions across tenures and jurisdictions. In Australia, conservation corridors are in the main community-led in partnership with governments and NGOs, Traditional Owners and cognate enterprises. 6. Community based connectivity conservation initiatives provide important vehicles for building partnerships within and across sectors and for the whole-of-landscape and system approach needed to address the multiple and interacting threats of habitat fragmentation, loss and damage, invasive species, and climate change. 7. Australia has been culturally connected for millennia by Songlines and other culturally significant pathways including trade routes, that remain of great importance to First Nations people, and are a living part of Australia’s cultural heritage. Restoration of these can be an important element in strengthening connection to culture and country. 8. A national system of conservation corridors, with protected areas as the cornerstones, would provide the foundation for enabling strategic, community-led connectivity initiatives that combine to create impact at the regional and continental scales. 9. This new national system could be implemented through a National Conservation Corridors Framework in support of the Australian Government’s National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy to ensure respectful, considered and meaningful consultation with stakeholders, and support the roll-out of integrated nature-based solutions – those based on native ecosystems – that address our climate, biodiversity, climate resilient development and health challenges. 10. Conservation corridors help preserve Australia’s unique species and ecosystems, maintain and restore the ecological integrity, resilience and adaptive capacity of our landscapes, waterways and seascapes and mitigate the impacts of climate change by: • Promoting coordinated, multi-scale biodiversity outcomes across tenures (public, private, leasehold, Indigenous) • Addressing the major threats to biodiversity which cascade and compound across tenures. • Maintaining and improving ecosystem carbon sequestration and storage and water quality through improved conservation management, increased protection and encouraging assisted natural regeneration in degraded landscapes. • Strengthening the population viability and resilience of wildlife, particularly threatened species through maintaining critical habitat , including source habitats and refugia, and movement pathways, on all tenures. • Supporting the natural adaptative response of species to climate change, including supporting dispersal to new locations providing suitable habitat. • Maintaining the ecological processes that sustain ecosystem integrity, including long distance species migration and transfer of pollen and plant propagules between otherwise disconnected areas. • Supporting biodiversity recovery following mega-disturbances. • Contributing to climate resilient development, and • Improving community health, wellbeing and resilience. 11. Robust, targeted and ongoing research is needed – including monitoring and evaluation of ecosystem condition – to support the adaptive management now needed in the face of a rapidly changing climate and other pressures and threatening processes. 12. There are important social and cultural benefits arising from the approach, including building capacity among local communities as well as creating awareness of the benefits from and threats to a healthy environment, and helping cultivate the social mandate in support of strong biodiversity and climate action.

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