Amid high security and tight COVID-19 measures, governments of the world started gathering at Montreal’s Palais des congrès on Tuesday, with a lofty goal: save nature by 2030.
However, preliminary negotiations held over the previous three days produced little progress on the “global biodiversity framework” that countries are hoping to sign.
“We are all united by a profound link to nature on which our survival depends on this planet,” federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told reporters at an opening press conference.
About 20,000 delegates from almost 200 countries are gathering for two weeks to negotiate an eight-year plan to preserve and restore biodiversity.
Biodiversity — essentially nature, from insects, plants and animals to the forests, streams and oceans they live in — is under threat due to deforestation, overfishing, invasive species, industrial farming, pollution and climate change.
Around the world, an estimated one million animal and plant species face extinction this century.
Negotiators in Montreal are hashing out a series of goals.
Among the targets envisioned: preserving 30 per cent of the world’s land and water by 2030, and accepting the fair and equitable sharing of benefits of genetic resources — in medicine, for example. Developed countries typically benefit more from such resources than the developing countries where they often originate.
(Editor’s Note: The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) commenced on 7 December 2022 in Montreal, Canada , and will run until 19 December 2022. COP15 focuses on the living world through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a treaty adopted for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and related issues.
COP15 aims to achieve an historic agreement to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, on par with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. This year’s conference will adopt a new landmark global biodiversity framework that safeguards nature, the first of its kind since the Aichi Biodiversity Targets were introduced in 2010. For more, see https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/video/cop15-biodiversity-web-life-connects-us-all )