‘Path to recovery’: Part one of COP15 closes with hopes high for new global biodiversity accord
UN declares virtual talks have set the stage for the adoption of an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework next year
The first phase of the COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Kunming, China closed today with the UN expressing confidence the week long talks had helped set the stage for the adoption of a new international treaty next year to ramp up global biodiversity protection.
The latest round of virtual talks delivered a wave of new funding pledges for nature protection and broad political support for a new set of global targets that would serve to curb rates of biodiversity loss over the next decade.
The COP15 Summit had been scheduled to take place this week with diplomats hoping it would finalise a new set of global targets for nature protection and restoration that would provide a boost to the parallel climate negotiations set to get underway at the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow next month.
However, the coronavirus crisis forced a second postponement of the global talks, with the UN and Chinese hosts staging a virtual round of talks this week ahead of the conclusion of the summit in person next spring.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, said the latest round of talks had delivered encouraging progress.
“With the conclusion of the first part of COP-15 we have taken a critical step towards writing a new chapter for our planet and for our societies,” she said. “The adoption of the Kunming Declaration, and the strong political direction provided by many ministers has put us firmly on the path to the adoption of an effective post-2020 global biodiversity framework that will engage the entire world in the task of putting nature on a path to recovery by 2030.”
The Summit kicked off with a new $233m funding commitment from the Chinese government and confirmation that the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme are to launch a new Global Environment Facility to fast-track financial and technical support to developing country governments to prepare for the rapid implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
Moreover, the EU announced it is to double external funding for biodiversity, France’s President Emmanuel Macron pledged that 30 per cent of its climate funds are to be used for biodiversity, the Government of Japan announced a $17m extension to its Japan Biodiversity Fund, and a coalition of financial institutions, with assets of €12tr, committed to protect and restore biodiversity through its activities and investments.
However, China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment of China and COP-15 President, Huang Runqiu, stressed that the world faced “unprecedented challenges” as it seeks to reverse soaring levels of biodiversity loss.
“At present, the rate of global species extinction is accelerating,” he said. “The loss of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation pose a major risk to human survival and development. Global environmental governance is facing unprecedented challenges. The international community must work together to strengthen cooperation in the construction of global ecological civilization and biodiversity conservation in order to achieve sustainable world development and all-round human development.”
The positive sentiments at the talks were broadly welcomed, but environmental campaigners warned that the final text of the Kunming Declaration agreed by governments remained well short of the ambitious framework many activists and businesses are hoping to see finalised at the second half of the Summit.
The text merely “notes” calls by a coalition of countries, including the UK, for nations to “protect 30 per cent of their land and sea areas through well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures by 2030”.
Moreover, campaigners remain concerned about how any new targets will be enforced, stressing that the previous set of global biodiversity protection targets for 2020 that were agreed at the Aichi Summit over a decade ago were all missed.
