UN meeting reaches historic biodiversity agreement

Negotiators at a United Nations conference on biodiversity have struck a historic deal that will represent the most significant effort yet to protect the world’s land and seas and provide critical funding to save biodiversity in developing countries.

The global framework agreement was reached a day before the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (Cop15) is due to close in Montreal.

China, which chairs the meeting, released a new draft earlier in the day, providing some impetus to the sometimes contentious talks.

The most important part of the agreement is a commitment to protect 30% of the land and waters considered important for biodiversity by 2030.

Currently, 17% of land and 10% of ocean areas are protected.

Brian O’Donnell, director of the conservation organization Campaign for Nature, told reporters: “There has never been a conservation goal of this scale on a global scale.

“This gives us an opportunity to protect biodiversity from collapsing. We’re now in the range where scientists think we can have a significant impact on biodiversity.”

The draft also calls for mobilizing $200bn (£164bn) from all sources for biodiversity by 2030 and working to phase out or reform subsidies that could provide nature with a further $500bn (£411bn).

As part of a financing package, the framework calls for funding flows to poor countries to be increased to at least $20bn (£16.4bn) a year by 2025 – or around double what is currently provided. This figure will rise to $30bn (£24.7bn) a year by 2030.

Some advocates want tougher language around the subsidies that make food and fuel so cheap in many parts of the world.

The document only called for identifying subsidies that could be reformed or phased out by 2025 and working to reduce them by 2030.

“The new text is a mixed bag,” said Andrew Deutz, director of global policy, institutions and conservation funding at The Nature Conservancy.

“It contains some strong signals about finance and biodiversity, but it has failed to move beyond its 10-year-old goals in addressing the drivers of biodiversity loss in productive sectors such as agriculture, fisheries and infrastructure, and so remains at risk of being rejected. Total transformation.”

Ministers and government officials from some 190 countries mostly agreed that protecting biodiversity must be a priority, with many likening the efforts to climate talks that concluded in Egypt last month.

Climate change, combined with habitat loss, pollution and development, is already hammering the world’s biodiversity, with a 2019 estimate warning that one million animal and plant species could face extinction within decades – the rate of loss is expected 1,000 times.

Humans routinely use some 50,000 wild species, and a fifth of the world’s 8 billion people depend on them for food and income, the report said.

But they have been working for almost two weeks to agree on what that protection will look like and who will pay for it.

Financing has been one of the most contentious issues, with representatives from 70 African, South American and Asian countries walking out of talks on Wednesday.

They came back a few hours later.

Brazil, which spoke on behalf of developing countries this week, said in a statement that a new financing mechanism dedicated to biodiversity should be established, with developed countries providing financial grants of $100bn (£82bn) a year to emerging economies , until 2030.