Biodiversity Deal Reached at COP15 Conference to Preserve 30 Percent of Land and Sea

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (L) shakes hands with Bhupender Yadav, environment minister of India, at the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal on Dec. 18, 2022. The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes

Countries’ delegates participating in the COP15 conference in Montreal have reached a deal on Dec. 19 to strengthen the protection of the world’s biodiversity, including the aim to protect at least 30 percent of land and sea and by pledging of billions of dollars.

The deal reached by consensus is dubbed the Kunming-Montreal Global Diversity Framework based on the host cities in China and Canada.

It includes four goals and 23 targets, along with the cutting of billions in subsidies deemed “harmful to biodiversity.”

“The adoption of this Framework and the associated package of ambitious targets, goals and financing represents but a first step in resetting our relationship with the natural world,” said Inger Andersen, under-secretary-general of the United Nations and executive director of the UN Environment Programme in a statement.

“We did it. The world has come together to land a historic deal to protect nature and biodiversity,” tweeted Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.

The fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity was taking place in Montreal from Dec. 7 to 19.

The stated goals of the Framework include to “substantially” increase the areas of natural ecosystems by 2050 and to the halt “human induced” extinction of species.

One goal also touches upon the use of “genetic resources” and their digital sequence information to be shared “fairly and equitably.”

Another goal involves wealth redistribution to close the biodiversity finance gap identified at US$700 billion per year.

One of the targets is ensuring that at least 30 percent of areas that have been degraded are under restoration by 2030, along with the preservation of at least 30 percent of land and marine areas by 2030 as well.

Another target seeks to identify and eliminate incentives and subsidies that are “harmful for biodiversity.”

The Framework says this should be done “in a proportionate, just, fair, effective and equitable way, while substantially and progressively reducing them by at least 500 billion United States dollars per year by 2030, starting with the most harmful incentives, and scale up positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.”

One of the targets says that all sources of financing need to be increased in a timely manner to implement national biodiversity strategies by mobilizing at least US$200 billion a year.

This includes developed countries needing to provide at least US$20 billion per year by 2025 to less developed countries, and at least US$30 billion per year by 2030.