Biodiversity: “historic” agreement to protect land and oceans

On the first floor of the Palais des Congrès de Montréal, the speakers of the huge China pavilion follow one another to praise the environmental behavior of the Middle Kingdom.

If the declarations sometimes lend themselves to smiles, China, the country which holds the presidency of the COP15 biodiversity, can boast of a success.

," said Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Canada, host country of the international conference, on Monday morning.

Here we are at the end of two weeks of meetings between delegates from more than 190 countries and a marathon night of negotiations.

Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu, president of COP15, presented a draft agreement on Sunday evening.

The new roadmap, which runs until 2030, adopts 4 objectives and 23 targets.

Main object of consensus: to protect 30% of oceans, lands and coastal zones by the end of the decade.

This is currently the case for 17% of land and 10% of marine areas, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

This objective was presented by the parties as the equivalent in the field of biodiversity of the Paris agreement, adopted in 2015, which aimed to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

The Montreal agreement proposes to limit exposure to the risks of pesticides by half, to restore 30% of altered lands and to give guarantees to indigenous peoples, guarantors of most of the planet's biodiversity.

Other targets include reducing food waste and invasive species.

Read alsoA compromise proposed by China at COP15 on biodiversity

"It is not a perfect document, not a document that will satisfy everyone, but it is a document based on everyone's efforts for four years"

, Huang Runqiu explained at the end of the week.

Obtaining an agreement from the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal was necessary: ​​on the one hand, more than 1 million species are threatened with extinction and 75% of the planet's ecosystems have been degraded.

On the other hand, and this did not escape China, the European ministers, trapped by a schedule imposed by Brussels, were to be present on Monday at the European Energy Council.

So it was time to sign.

Only the Democratic Republic of the Congo opposed it.

Funding was at the heart of the discussions.

The craziest figures once again circulated in the corridors of COP15 last week.

Developing countries have called for the creation of an annual fund of at least 100 billion dollars to safeguard nature.

Some demanded as much as $700 billion a year.

The compromise presented on Monday seems to have satisfied most of the different parties.

Rich countries will contribute $20 billion a year until 2025 and $30 billion thereafter until 2030

, warned Radio-Canada Francis Ogwal, co-chair of the COP15 negotiations.

To date, developed countries pay between 7 and 10 billion dollars annually.

Lee White, Gabon's Minister of the Environment, told AFP.

Canada singled out

Rich countries were often singled out during the two weeks of the conference.

Particularly Canada, too dependent on the economic lobbies of its immense natural resources to really worry about biodiversity.

From Vancouver to Toronto, where all the floors of the metropolis skyscrapers remain lit at night, the ecological transition has never started.

Canada is the second country in the world for fossil fuel subsidies, with the quiet support of banks.

A Radio-Canada article noted last week:

Steven Guilbeault, who was an environmental activist in the early 2000s, invited the five largest Canadian oil companies to COP27.

Residents of Indian reservations, such as Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, are suffering from cancers due to the release of pollutants from oil companies.

The populations of Abitibi, in Quebec, are exposed to arsenic from foundries, others to asbestos.

The examples are legion in Canada and, beyond the good-toned communication of the authorities, leave little hope for the application of the COP15 agreement in the country.

France has also been criticized.

Besides the fact that several speakers blamed the presence of Emmanuel Macron in Qatar to attend the final of the World Cup, rather than the final on biodiversity in Montreal, the French Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, surprised some NGOs, including the very dynamic Climate Action Network.

Eddy Pérez, director of climate diplomacy for the NGO, told the Montreal daily La Presse.

While the parties reached a laudable agreement, neither the media nor the Canadian public paid any attention to it.

Not a Canadian daily made its front page Monday on COP15, preferring to headline on Messi or on the scandals of national hockey team players, accused of sexual harassment.

And, if Montrealers were expecting to see tens of thousands of students opposed to COP15, it was not.

On December 7, the day of the inauguration of the high mass of biodiversity, only a few dozen helmeted green anarchists marched to the sound of

.

A thousand people, students and NGOs, followed three days later, near Mount Royal, without enthusiasm.

COP16 will be held in 2024 in Turkey.