An ambitious global agreement on biodiversity will be under discussion starting this Wednesday in Montreal, Canada, at the 15th UN Conference on Biological Diversity (COP15).
The conference, which will last until December 19, brings together some 17,000 delegates from almost all over the world and the inauguration must be carried out by the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, the president of COP15, who is the Minister of Ecology and Environment of China, Huang Runqui, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the traditional chief of the Onondaga Nation, Tadodaho Sid Hill.
The Montreal meeting is the second part of COP15, the first part of which took place last year in Kunming, China.
An agreement is expected from COP15 that, specifically, establishes the protection of 30% of the planet by 2030, at sea and on land, and at the same time works to recover 20% of degraded ecosystems.
Although the director general of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, has already expressed her hope in the adoption during the conference of a global framework for the protection of biodiversity post-2020, with a strategy and a global objective of conservation roadmap, protection, restoration and sustainable management, environmental organizations have expressed their fears that important measures will not come out of COP15.
For the meeting that begins today, according to the already known proposal, 22 objectives have been set for 2030, although so far there is only agreement on two of them.
Among the objectives are issues such as reducing pesticides by two thirds, eliminating plastic, eliminating or drastically reducing incentives and subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity, or managing exotic species by halving the spread of invasive species.
On Tuesday, in an interview with the Efe agency, the European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, warned that the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to curb global warming, will only be effective if they are redoubled at the same time. efforts to protect nature.
“Even if emissions neutrality is achieved, it will not be enough because there is no technology that can replace the capacity of the oceans, soils or forests to absorb CO2 (…) to depend on healthy ecosystems,” said the official regarding COP15.
The CBD was signed by 150 world leaders in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, at the Earth Summit, with the aim of protecting nature, its sustainable use and the fair distribution of benefits.
Since then, there have been 14 Conferences of the Parties (COP), the body of the Convention that makes regular decisions.
International organizations have warned that around a million animal and plant species could be in danger of extinction with the continued destruction of ecosystems and without measures to stop the decline of nature.
Source: TSF
