The 15th United Nations conference on biodiversity has wrapped up with an historic deal for conservation of threatened species and habitats around the world.
Overcoming projections of failure, the conferees in Montreal, Canada, managed to get all participants on board with an agreement to fight global biodiversity loss through two central measures:
- Adopting the goal of protecting 30% of land and water areas deemed important to conserving the planet’s biodiversity by 2030; and
- Targeting international investment of $200 billion by 2030 for biodiversity efforts, including at least $20 billion annually by 2025 in funds going to poor countries, increasing to $30 billion annually by 2030.
“Many of us wanted more things in the text and more ambition but we got an ambitious package,” Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault said. “We have 30 by 30. Six months ago, who would have thought we could 30 by 30 in Montreal? We have an agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, to work on restoration, to reduce the use of pesticides. This is tremendous progress.”
A late side consultation of the delegations from the world’s three most rainforest-containing nations (Brazil, Indonesia, and Congo) held the deal together when objections from the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) threatened to derail consensus at the conference.
The United Nations’ convention on biodiversity is its counterpart to the better-known conference on climate change. While the United States is a party to the climate change efforts (having returned to participation after the Trump Administration’s efforts to withdraw), the United States is the only major nation to have failed to join the biodiversity convention. The Clinton Administration submitted the biodiversity convention for Senate approval in the 1990s, but the vote failed to gain the necessary supermajority for approval due to Republican opposition. No administration has attempted to win reconsideration since that time.
