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The Montreal summit closes the agreement to stop the loss of biodiversity and protect 30% of the planet's surface by 2030

2022-12-19T15:47:48.082Z


The UN negotiations conclude with commitments to restore degraded areas, stop the extinction of species and mobilize financing from developed countries to the poorest


The 195 countries that have met during the last two weeks at the UN biodiversity summit, COP15, have closed an agreement this Monday morning (Spanish time) to try to reverse the unprecedented loss of biodiversity that is plaguing the planet and for which the human being is mainly responsible.

The agreement, which aspires to be a crash plan for this decade, commits its signatories that by 2030, 30% of "terrestrial, continental, coastal and marine waters" will be "conserved and managed effectively through systems of protected areas ”.

According to the latest United Nations assessment, currently around 17% of the land surface and 10% of the sea are under protection.

In addition, the pact establishes that "at least 30% of the areas of terrestrial ecosystems,

The agreement has come after several delays to this COP15, which should have been held in China in 2020, but which the restrictions due to the pandemic in that country have meant that it is carried out with a two-year delay in the Canadian city of Montreal.

In recent months, the pact that was being sought has been defined as the Paris Biodiversity Agreement, in reference to the important treaty to combat climate change of 2015. Precisely, the great global battle against warming has meant that in many Sometimes the loss of biodiversity remains hidden, the most extreme face of which is the gigantic process of extinction that threatens one million of the around eight million known plant and animal species on the planet.

But both crises go hand in hand and in many cases the causes of one and the other are common.

A historic pact

The agreement closed this Monday morning is structured around four major objectives and is developed with 23 goals.

The closing in the final session has been controversial;

The representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has expressed in plenary his rejection of the text presented, which must be adopted unanimously as established by UN rules.

Despite this circumstance, the Chinese Minister of Ecology, Huang Runqiu, who chairs the summit, has approved the pact, which has been described by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as "historic".

The agreement reached also includes a commitment to mobilize by the end of this decade at least 200,000 million dollars a year in national and international financing (from public and private sources) related to biodiversity.

In addition, developed countries promise to increase by 2025 to 20,000 million dollars a year "international financial flows" to countries with fewer resources, which in many cases are the ones with the greatest planetary biodiversity.

By 2030, that amount should reach $30 billion annually.

Precisely, the main objection of the Congolese representative has focused on the lack of guarantees for developed countries to help nations with fewer resources.

Another of the goals established in the pact —called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework— involves halving both the excess of nutrients and the general risk posed by pesticides and highly hazardous chemical products for nature.

And the text urges countries to gradually end or progressively reform public aid that damages biodiversity by at least $500 billion each year by 2030.

This Kunming-Montreal treaty calls for "ensuring urgent action" to "halt the human-induced extinction of threatened species."

By 2050, says one of the objectives of the agreement, "the rate of extinction" will have been reduced tenfold.

Developing

The environmental organization WWF has applauded the adoption of this agreement that commits the world "to stopping and reversing the loss of biodiversity by 2030, a global objective hailed as the equivalent of 1.5 degrees of climate" (referring to the highest goal ambition established by the Paris Agreement).

The pact, according to Marco Lambertini, the general director of WWF International, "sends a clear signal and should be the launching pad for action by governments, companies and society."

However, this organization also warns that the fight against biodiversity loss may derail if the pact is implemented slowly and if the promised money is not mobilized.

"Now we must see the immediate development of this agreement, without excuses, without delays," Lambertini added in a statement.

Along the same lines, Inger Andersen, the director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), has pointed out that the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal framework is

"

a first step to reestablish our relationship with the natural world."

But she has stressed that success will be measured by "rapid and consistent progress in the implementation" of what has been agreed.

In the minds of many conservation organizations is what happened with the so-called Aichi Targets for Biological Diversity.

At the tenth COP of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was held in 2010 in the Japanese city of Nagoya, objectives for the protection of biodiversity for the past decade were agreed.

But, when it came to 2020, none of the 20 goals set had been fully met, according to the latest review by the convention (only six can be considered partially met).

The low level of compliance does not mean that progress has not been made, such as reducing the rate of deforestation or increasing the surface area of ​​protected areas, which now wants to be given a definitive boost with the commitment to reach 30%. in 2030.

The pact adopted this Monday explicitly mentions that million species on the planet that face their total disappearance in the coming decades, unless measures are taken to reduce the causes of biodiversity loss, among which are the uses of land, overexploitation of resources, climate change, invasive species and pollution.

If no action is taken, "there will be a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction," which is now "tens or hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years."

The agreement closed at COP15 proposes measures for each of these drivers of biodiversity loss by 2030. For example, in the case of invasive species, it is advocated reducing by at least half "the introduction and establishment" of these species and "eradicate or control" those that are present on the islands and priority places from the environmental point of view.

Regarding pollution, it is proposed to “halve both excess nutrients and the overall risk posed by highly hazardous chemicals and pesticides” by the end of this decade.

In addition, it is advocated to also reduce by half "global food waste".

The most outstanding goals

These are the most important objectives of the Kunming-Montreal agreement for 2030:  

  • Protection of at least 30% of the world's land, inland waters, coastal zones and oceans. 

  • Completely restore (or be in the process of achieving) 30% of the planet's degraded terrestrial, continental, and coastal and marine ecosystems.

  • Cut global food waste in half and significantly reduce overconsumption and waste generation. 

  • Halve both excess nutrients and the overall risk posed by pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals. 

  • Phase out or reform subsidies that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion each year by 2030. 

  • Mobilize at least $200 billion by 2030 per year in national and international biodiversity-related financing from public and private sources. 

  • Increase international financial flows from developed countries to developing countries to at least $20 billion annually by 2025 and to $30 billion by 2030. 

  • Prevent the introduction of priority invasive alien species and reduce by at least half the introduction and establishment of new invasive alien species.

    And eradicate or control them on the islands and other priority sites.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-12-19

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