International biodiversity law is at a crossroads. As the debate on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework intensifies, calls are growing for the Convention on Biological Diversity to set an ambitious overarching goal to fight biodiversity loss and find innovative ways to link such a goal with national targets and commitments.
In a two-part blog post just published on EJIL:Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law, I argue that the planetary boundary framework first developed in 2009 by the Stockholm Resilience Centre could represent an important tool in this quest to identify more substantive legal obligations applying to biodiversity within national jurisdiction. In addition, I suggest four ways in which the planetary boundary for biosphere integrity could be incorporated in international biodiversity law, ranging from institutional arrangements within the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to normative developments at the level of emerging principles of international law.