UN Convention on Biological Diversity today to agree a new plan to preserve and protect nature with the new Global Biodiversity Framework
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The UN Development Programme (UNDP) welcomes the historic agreement reached at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity today to agree a new plan to preserve and protect nature with the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This agreement means people around the world can hope for real progress to halt biodiversity loss and protect and restore our lands and seas in a way that safeguards our planet and respects the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.
The adopted text includes multiple important targets that frame the actions we must now take to halt runaway biodiversity loss, how we fund this and how progress will be monitored and reported.
The global community has come together and agreed on an ambitious pathway. Now, we must carry forward this vision.
For our part, through the ‘UNDP Nature Pledge,’ together with the UN Environment Programme and other partners, we are committed to turning this blueprint into reality. We are ready for action. UNDP is there to deliver the systemic changes that can shift the needle on our nature crisis.
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With governments and people around the world, we will work together to secure a better, more sustainable, more equitable future.
Over 140 countries will now be supported under the ‘UNDP Nature Pledge’, where our on-the-ground presence is mobilized for action.
Biodiversity is interconnected, intertwined, and indivisible with human life on Earth. Our societies and our economies depend on healthy and functioning ecosystems. There is no sustainable development without biodiversity. There can be no stable climate without biodiversity.
One of the most dangerous delusions is that we have a choice whether or not we preserve nature, because the stark truth is that we do not. Today’s agreement is a historic moment in recognition of this truth, and a moment that, if answered with actions as agreed, may set a course for a thriving future on a healthy planet that leaves no one behind.
More than 190 countries have adopted a sweeping agreement to protect nature at the United Nations’ biodiversity conference in Montreal.
The gavel went down in the early hours of Monday on an agreement which includes 23 targets aimed at halting the biodiversity crisis, including a pledge to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030. Only 17% of land and 10% of oceans are currently considered protected. Campaigners have hailed it as a “major milestone” for conserving complex, fragile ecosystems on which everyone depends.
But some countries were unhappy, criticizing the agreement for not going far enough. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has said it cannot support the agreement and has complained that it was rushed through without following proper processes.
The road to this deal has been long and littered with delays. It was originally supposed to take place in Kunming, China, but difficulties posed by the country’s zero-Covid policies made that impossible. The conference was moved to Canada under joint Canadian and Chinese leadership. Hopes were high for the conference, with some calling for it to be a “Paris moment for biodiversity” – referring to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Nature is declining at alarming rates. In 2019, a landmark report from the UN’s expert nature panel found that up to 1 million land and marine species face extinction because of human actions. Some scientists say the world is entering the sixth mass extinction, driven by human actions including deforestation, burning fossil fuels and polluting rivers and oceans.
After two weeks of negotiations — with tensions over how to finance global conservation proving to be a particular sticking point — the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework was finally adopted at around 3:30 a.m. local time on Monday.
As well as the pledge to protect nearly one third of land, freshwater and seas by 2030, the framework also includes an agreement to reform $500 billion of subsidies that are harmful to nature, and to increase biodiversity financing to developing countries.
“The agreement represents a major milestone for the conservation of our natural world, and biodiversity has never been so high on the political and business agenda,” said Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International.
Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature said: “The ’30×30’ target marks the largest land and ocean conservation commitment in history. It will have major positive impacts for wildlife, for addressing climate change, and for securing the services that nature provides to people, including clean water and pollination for crop.”
The framework also includes language to protect Indigenous people, who have an outsized role protecting the world’s biodiversity but have often been overlooked and, in some cases, even forced from the lands in the name of conservation. It “has the potential to usher in a new paradigm for conservation, one in which indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights are upheld and where they are recognized for the leadership they have provided,” said O’Donnell.
While many have welcomed the agreement, there are warnings that the proof of success will be in how the agreement is enacted.
“It can be undermined by slow implementation and failure to mobilize the promised resources,” said Lambertini.
The agreement has also been criticized for lacking quantifiable pledges around reducing production and consumption, which are key drivers of biodiversity loss.
The agreement is not legally binding. Countries have agreed to a monitoring framework to evaluate progress but “there are no binding commitments making the whole mechanism look weak,” Imma Oliveras Menor, senior researcher at Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford told told the Science Media Centre in London.
The history of biodiversity targets is checkered. The world failed to meet in full a single one of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets set more than a decade ago in Japan. Some developing countries have expressed disappointment over the funding levels promised in the final deal.
Many still remain cautiously optimistic.
“The Kunming-Montreal Agreement adopted today gives nature a fighting chance at recovery in a world currently divided by geopolitics and inequality,” said Lin Li, senior director of global policy and advocacy at WWF International.
The next biodiversity summit will take place in 2024 and is expected to see countries strengthen financial commitments towards halting biodiversity loss.
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