COP15: Summit agrees on ‘pact with nature’

•  Restoring 6 billion ha of land & marine ecosystems.
• The 30 x 30 target to protect biodiversity.
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• 25% reduction of our ecological footprint by 2030.

At the UN biodiversity summit, COP 15, a new agreement to protect the environment was reached.

By the end of the decade, 30% of the earth will be protected thanks to the “historic” plan.

There will also be goals for preserving important habitats like marshes and rainforests.

To cheers and acclaim, the deal was signed early on Monday in Montreal, Canada.

It was believed that the UN biodiversity summit in Montreal represented a “last chance” to restart nature.

However, there had been significant disagreement on the scope of the aim and the available funding.

How to finance conservation efforts in the regions of the world that are home to some of the world’s most amazing biodiversity was a major issue of contention.

All of the Earth’s living organisms and how they are interconnected to form a sophisticated web of life that supports the planet are referred to as its biodiversity.

The summit’s official president, China, also known as COP 15, made a modified version of the agreement’s wording public on Sunday. Due to Covid regulations in China, it had to be transferred to Canadian soil.

On Monday morning, delegates met in full session to begin reading the document; they swiftly came to an agreement.

The statement addresses the issue of financing with recommendations to increase the flow of foreign finance to developing countries and uses strong language to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples are maintained.

According to Sue Lieberman of the Wildlife Conservation Society, “it has a lot of really great features and if governments genuinely execute it, nature will be better off by 2030 than it is now.”

Concerns have been raised about how much of the world’s seas are included in an aim to safeguard 30% of the planet by 2030 due to the agreement’s lack of emphasis on oceans. And other people have expressed doubts about how effective the targets are at halting the loss of flora and animals.

The leader of the government’s advisory board for nature in England, Tony Juniper, tweeted that the new plans were inadequate and that requests for greater financial ambition must be matched by greater ambition for the restoration of nature.

Ministers delivered fervent statements on Saturday about the necessity of reaching consensus on specific objectives in order to put nature on a path to recovery by the end of the decade.

“Our vessel is nature. We have to keep it floating “Virginijus Sinkevicius, EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans, and Fisheries.

Decision time approaches at #COP15.

We need to agree on clear goals:

🟢 Restoring 6 billion ha of land & marine ecosystems

🟢 The 30 x 30 target to protect biodiversity

🟢 25% reduction of our ecological footprint by 2030

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Nature is our ship.

We must ensure it stays afloat. pic.twitter.com/T1PZvyNgX4

— Virginijus Sinkevičius (@VSinkevicius) December 17, 2022

Susana Muhamed, Colombia’s environment minister, received cheers for her appeal for ambitious environmental protection for the benefit of all. “Nature has no limits,” she declared.

In what is referred to as a “last chance” to agree on a plan that will stop and reverse the loss of biodiversity, nations have been convening in Montreal, Canada.

Scientists have cautioned that people are putting the Earth beyond its acceptable limits by causing record rates of forest and grassland loss as well as ocean pollution.

Increased exposure to diseases such SARs CoV-2, Ebola, and HIV from wild animals is one consequence of this.

The topic of money has been a major problem. Some nations have been advocating for the establishment of a new fund to support the preservation of biodiversity, echoing the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt, but this has been rejected by others.

Four overarching objectives related to preserving nature and spreading its benefits are included in the draught biodiversity framework.

22 targets are also included, ranging from lessening the use of plastic and pesticides to restoring ecosystems that have been damaged and managing wildlife in a sustainable manner.

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