Mainstreaming biodiversity in economic sectors: An analytical framework

One of the major challenges in halting biodiversity loss is finding ways to address the issue in places where it would matter most; in the economic sectors of society that exert the strongest pressures on biodiversity such as agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Governments have acknowledged the need for this so termed mainstreaming under the Convention on Biological Diversity, but in practice have made little progress and struggle to find ways forward. In this paper we argue that the concept of mainstreaming was originally developed for situations where governments or intergovernmental organizations with explicit public mandates took the lead, but it is increasingly extended into various governance contexts where multiple types of actors at different levels (could) engage in conserving biodiversity. This paper aims to enable the identification of innovative repertoires of mainstreaming opportunities that optimally and realistically benefits from the broader governance context. Therefore it presents a framework, consisting of institutional, motivational and means dimensions for identifying key barriers and levers for mainstreaming biodiversity into economic sectors. By applying the framework on the forestry sector we show that it does not only help to identify new mainstreaming opportunities but it also shows directions for improving existing schemes as well.