Global Citizen
August 31, 2021
By now you've probably heard of COP26 — the shorthand name for the next major UN climate summit, rescheduled for November in Glasgow after being delayed a year by the coronavirus pandemic.
But another big "Convention of the Parties" (COP) starts a month earlier — one that is far less talked about but also critically important. That is COP15: the two-part UN biodiversity summit that will kick off in October online and finish next May in the southern Chinese city of Kunming.
Efforts to protect the natural world have yet to achieve the same high profile as those to limit climate change, despite advocacy by British naturalist David Attenborough and many others.
Losses of crucial ecosystems like rainforests and wetlands, as well as animal species, have accelerated even as governments, businesses, financiers, and conservation groups seek effective ways to protect and restore more of the Earth's land and seas.
So what is COP15, and what does it hope to achieve?