In October of last year, the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference opened with virtual, online discussions.
Major United Nations discussions aimed at securing a pact to protect nature have been relocated from China to Canada.
In April, negotiations were scheduled to resume in Kunming, China, but this was constantly postponed due to Covid.
The purpose of the discussions is to determine global policy for the following decade. They will now end between December 5 and 17 in Montreal.
The purpose of the summit, which China will continue to preside over despite the site shift, is to endorse the final draught of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Minister Huang Runqiu, President of the 15th Conference of the Parties, stated, “China would like to emphasize its continued strong commitment, as COP President, to work with all parties and stakeholders to ensure the success of the second part of the 15th Conference of the Parties, including the adoption of an effective Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and to promote its delivery throughout its Presidency.”
Observers have already criticized the “snail’s pace” of negotiations and are now demanding that objectives be raised.
The decision will determine how the world addresses the challenges of reducing the risk of extinction for more than a million species, safeguarding 30 percent of land and sea, eliminating billions of dollars of ecologically destructive government subsidies, and repairing degraded ecosystems.
The Nature Conservancy’s Director of Global Policy, Institutions, and Conservation Finance, Andrew Deutz, stated that his organization was “We are relieved and grateful to have a fixed date for these crucially important final biodiversity discussions this year.
People and animals are in dire need of a global agreement and implementation of a strategy to prevent and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, but the global community is already far behind in this regard.”
