LANDMARK AGREEMENT
UN biodiversity deal reached to protect 30% of world’s lands by 2030
The agreement represents the most significant effort to date to protect the world’s lands and oceans and provide critical financing to save biodiversity in the developing world.
The United Nations (UN) Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada, that began on 7 December ended on Monday with a landmark agreement, when 190 nations adopted four goals and 23 targets to be achieved by 2030, known as the Global Biodiversity Framework.
The aim of the agreement is to ensure effective conservation and management of at least 30% of the world’s lands, inland waters, coastal areas and oceans by 2030, with emphasis on areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Currently, only 17% of terrestrial areas and 10% of marine areas are protected.
Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations
It also intends to cut food waste in half by 2030.
The agreement represents the most significant effort to date to protect the world’s lands and oceans and provide critical financing to save biodiversity in the developing world. One of the most important topics that took centre stage at COP15 is financing to reverse the loss of biodiversity and deciding who will pay for it.
However, the Wildlife Conservation Society and other environmental groups were concerned that the draft deal puts off until 2050 the goal of preventing the extinction of species, maintaining genetic diversity within populations and preserving the integrity of ecosystems.
Here are the main conference outcomes.
The day before the conference wrapped up, Bert Wander, the acting CEO of the campaign website Avaaz made an impassioned plea to delegates to do the right thing by planet Earth and all its creatures:
“My name is Bert Wander and I’m the acting CEO of Avaaz, a campaigning community of millions of people from all over the world.
“Avaaz means voice or song. And I’m speaking today to deliver more than three million citizens’ voices from all over the world who are part of Avaaz’s campaign to put half the Earth under protection by 2030.
“But I’m also speaking to you today on behalf of all the non-human voices that aren’t heard at political negotiations like this.
“I’m speaking on behalf of the last Kauai O’o, whose song rained down from a treetop at sunset calling for a mate who would never come. I’m speaking on behalf of Spix’s Macaw. The Western Black Rhino. The Golden Toad.
“All torn from the great tapestry of life. Wiped out by a single species of bald ape that emerged from East Africa just 200,000 years ago. Humans. Us. And if we are the cause, we can stop it.
“Today a million species are clinging on in the face of extinction. Birds and plants and animals whose fate is being decided here. Decided now. Decided by you.
“If they could speak, they’d tell us that the Earth doesn’t belong to us. They’d say that we belong to the Earth. They’d tell us that everything we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. That their fate is our fate.
“That is the wisdom at the heart of many of our longest-surviving cultures. And it is wisdom that we desperately need. Because the truth is we aren’t here to protect nature. We ARE nature, trying to protect itself. And for all the hard work and the rare successes we’ve seen, species by lost species, habitat by lost habitat, to date, we have failed.
“But here, now, you have a chance to begin to turn this around. To miss it would be unforgivable. But to take it would be historic.
“That means protecting half the Earth by 2030. It means making sure the money is there to pay for it. It means real protections and direct funding for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, based on respect, humility and partnership.
“To succeed, we must all be prepared to compromise. Not to do what is easy, but to do what is necessary in the face of this extinction crisis.
“You have all the public support you need. Three million, two hundred and ninety-eight thousand, one hundred and thirty-five Avaaz members from almost every country on this beautiful Earth, urging you to end the destruction of the web of life.
“They are urging you to do it together. And they are urging you to do it now.” DM
Become an Insider
Without successful implementation in means nothing,how is UN track record?
At least this COP seems to have produced some tangible results which can be measured. That’s more than can be said for the CITES COP or the Climate COP. Am I optimistic that these targets will be met? Not at all!!! Political expediency, greed, apathy and selfishness will ensure that we continue on our current path. Can you imagine Richie Sunak telling the British people that “energy poverty” is the new normal and that the standard of living that they have enjoyed for the last 50 years is totally unsustainable. One notable omission from all 3 COPS is that there is virtually no mention of the population problem. As long as we as a species continue to add 80 or 90 Mill people per annum to the population, the climate will continue to warm, endangered plants and animals will continue to be exploited and biodiversity will disappear. Everything we have seen at these COPs over the last few months is a smokescreen which hides the fact that what we are bequeathing future generations is a hell on earth.
At the core of this seems to be a requirement for wealth redistribution. If the human activities associated with wealth creation are stopped in the name of saving biodiversity where will the money demanded come from? Do the 3m AVAAZ folk really speak on behalf of 8 billion humans and countless hundreds of billions of other living things or is it a much narrower agenda? And I am deeply cynical of the agreement to save only 30% of the planet’s surface, is that just the bits the COP15 people find pretty.