Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
Following the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15, Campaign for Nature (CfN) is delighted to announce that a formal partnership between CfN and the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) has been agreed to deliver on the implementation of 30x30.
November 16, 2022
With the annual U.N. climate summit in its final week, many of the world's environment ministers assembled in Egypt have begun setting their sights on another high-stakes meeting for nature taking place next month.
But for those talks on protecting nature to be a success, experts say, governments must bring global warming in check.
"Climate change is one of the big drivers of biodiversity loss," said David Cooper, the deputy chief of U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity.
The U.N. agency will convene its next global summit on biodiversity next month in Montreal, after host country China postponed the event four times through the global COVID-19 pandemic.
At the COP15 talks scheduled for Dec. 7-19, national delegations will hash out a new global deal to protect plummeting wildlife populations worldwide and halt the continuing degradation of landscapes.
November 15, 2022
With just one month to go until COP15 begins in Montreal, Canada, the press reported on Thursday, November 10 that there will not be heads of state at COP15.
This is a very concerning situation considering this critical conference seeks to agree on a pathway to curb the collapse of our entire planetary life support system - one million species are at risk of extinction and unless critical ecosystems are urgently protected we could face serious threats not just to the natural world, but to our climate, health, food and clean water supply.
October 25, 2022
Over 330 businesses on Wednesday urged world leaders to force large companies to assess and disclose their impact on nature by 2030, ahead of the COP15 global talks on biodiversity in December.
Signatories of the COP15 Business Statement, which include GSK (GSK.L), H&M Group (HMb.ST) and Nestle (NESN.S) and which have combined annual revenues of more than $1.5 trillion, said the world needed to move past voluntary reporting rules.
"Improving the health of our planet requires bold, decisive action from policymakers and businesses. Some progress has been made, but it's not enough," Rebecca Marmot, chief sustainability officer at consumer goods company Unilever (ULVR.L), said.
September 27, 2022
The race to protect the natural world and its biodiversity reaches a critical milestone this December as countries gather for the United Nations’ COP15 meeting.
The stakes for the summit - in Montreal, Canada - could hardly be higher. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says: “We are losing our suicidal war against nature”.
COP15 aims to give biodiversity the same levels of international protection as the climate.
The race to protect the natural world and its biodiversity reaches a critical milestone this December as countries gather for the United Nations’ COP15 meeting.
The stakes for the summit - in Montreal, Canada - could hardly be higher. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says: “We are losing our suicidal war against nature”.
COP15 aims to give biodiversity the same levels of international protection as the climate.
July 9, 2022
Conservation organizations have cautioned that talks on a worldwide pact to safeguard nature this decade run the risk of failing to reach a consensus unless political leaders step up.
The fourth round of talks to establish a global framework to stop the devastation of the earth’s ecosystems came to a close on Sunday in Nairobi, Kenya, with essentially no progress made.
The Campaign for Nature’s director, Brian O’Donnell, told Climate Home News that the situation was “dark.” Instead of uniting on goals, negotiators turned to argue over details. The most significant difficulties have not changed noticeably.
This was the final scheduled conference before negotiators gather at Cop15 in Montreal, Canada, from December 5–17, to finalize the deal that has been dubbed the “Paris Agreement for nature.”
The biodiversity treaty, though, hardly registers on the international agenda four years after the process began as nations struggle with the coronavirus outbreak, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and skyrocketing prices.
June 30, 2022
At the United Nations (UN) Ocean Conference taking place in Lisbon this week, the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) announced that 100 countries have now committed to its core mission to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by the end of the decade, also known as “30x30.” The science-driven, global goal to protect at least 30% of the planet by 2030 is one of the cornerstones of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework set to be agreed at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) now taking place in Montreal 5 to 17 December 2022.
Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the United States of America, Estonia, Saint Lucia, Bahrain, Montenegro, and Burkina Faso are among the latest countries to sign on to the HAC, an intergovernmental group of over 100 countries co-chaired by Costa Rica and France and by the United Kingdom as the Ocean co-chair. Together, HAC member countries hold more than 58% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and more than 38% of the world’s terrestrial carbon stocks. HAC member countries hold more than 54% of the biodiversity conservation priorities that exist within marine exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and more than 54% of the seafloor carbon within EEZs.
June 25, 2022
With only two days left to hash out a U.N. draft agreement to protect global biodiversity, organizers on Friday urged delegates in Nairobi to "pick up the pace".
"We cannot afford to spend hours discussing one line of text," Basile van Havre, one of the two co-chairs of the talks, told Reuters.
Negotiations are scheduled to end on Sunday, with the draft agreement to be adopted in December by governments at a key biodiversity summit, known as "COP15".
But "at the current pace as we've seen, it will not be possible to have text [ready] for COP15," said co-chair Francis Ogwal during a plenary on Friday.
June 1, 2022
The UK government is set to pledge £330m to help developing countries tackle environmental breakdown, conserve nature and deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on the first day of a major UN environmental summit kicking off tomorrow in Stockholm.
The Stockholm+50 conference has been organised to mark 50 years since the historic United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, and is expected to see rafts of global politicians, CEOs and civil society leaders in attendance, alongside the launch of a number of fresh environmental commitments.
The £330m set to be officially announced by the UK government tomorrow is earmarked for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the UN mechanism financing designed to help developing countries meet global nature commitments, in a move aimed at driving finance towards a "nature positive future".
International Environment Minister Lord Zac Goldsmith said scaling finance for nature protection was an economic imperative that would require governments and private actors to pool resources.
April 20, 2022
Big uncertainties hung over when the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity would be held. It had been rescheduled several times because of the pandemic. Now, it is expected to be held in August this year in the Chinese city of Kunming. The goal of COP15 is to create a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which would outline a roadmap for global action to maintain and protect biodiversity. After the round of preparatory talks in Geneva in April, parties decided to hold the next round of negotiations in Nairobi, from June 21 to 29, 2022, prior to the UN Convention. The meeting in Geneva resulted in the first agreed draft document for a post-2020 framework for nature, including goals, targets, and enabling mechanisms.
But there is still a long and stony road ahead. Despite the consensus on the main goals of the framework, disagreements are mainly regarding how to monitor the progress, finance for developing countries and divergence concerning specifics such as the reduction of nitrogen waste by 2030, among others. Leading policy makers have voiced concerns about the ambition of the GBF. As the EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius said: “At COP15, the international community will seek to agree on an ambitious global biodiversity framework with strong monitoring to measure progress on the ground in reversing nature loss. But we are not there yet, and we need to significantly narrow the gaps between Parties’ positions.”
March 28, 2022
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is an international treaty that was signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and entered into force in December 1993. Its purpose is to protect species and ecosystems, recognising this as a ‘common concern of humankind’. The Convention has three main objectives:
1. The conservation of biological diversity
2. The sustainable use of the components of biological diversity
3. The fair sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilisation of genetic resources
The CBD has two main supplementary agreements that help to implement these objectives:
• The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2003) governs the movements of modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology between
countries
• The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (2014) provides a transparent legal framework for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilisation of genetic resources
March 18, 2022
Once swathed in green, only three per cent of the Philippines remains covered with pristine forests. Losing these ecosystems — not to mention the impacts of overfishing, climate change and extreme weather events — has taken a tragic toll on the country’s rich biodiversity and its people.
While the Philippines remains well-stocked with unique fauna and flora and is recognised as one of the world’s 17 mega biodiverse countries, the latest science and fieldwork make it clear that this precious biodiversity is under threat. Especially at risk are the indigenous people and local communities, who battle to protect it.
We are hopeful that a new global target to protect 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030 (30×30 goal) is included in a new global strategy to safeguard biodiversity that is expected to be approved in Kunming, China, later this year.
January 25, 2022
During the first part of the COP15 Biodiversity Conference, held virtually in October 2021, Chinese president Xi Jinping launched a 1.5 billion yuan (US$233 million) fund for the protection of fauna and flora in developing countries.
With the second part of the convention due to take place in April this year, there are high expectations that the Kunming Fund, named after COP15’s host city in Yunnan province, southern China, could be a new source of green finance for Latin America, a region that is home to 40% of the world’s biodiversity.
The China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) was the first organisation to announce a donation to the fund. Other NGOs have followed suit. Maggie Ma, a spokesperson for the foundation, told Diálogo Chino that they are still waiting for information from the Chinese government on how to conclude their transfer of 1 million yuan ($158,000) but that they believe funds can be leveraged for the more sustainable use of tropical forests.
December 29, 2021
As the world examines the outcome of the COP26 climate summit, spare a thought for conservationists trying to protect the planet’s natural riches. A landmark UN biodiversity summit has been postponed three times because of the pandemic and now won’t be held in person in China until April, after a first session was held virtually last October.
The delay means that, incredibly, there are currently no global goals for stopping biodiversity loss. While countries missed most of the targets set for 2020, a new set of goals for 2030 – known as the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework – is still seen as essential for slowing and eventually reversing the decline of wildlife and habitats.
“I’m really hopeful that what’s adopted in Kunming will help move the needle on biodiversity,” says Susan Lieberman at the Wildlife Conservation Society, referring to the Chinese city where the COP15 biodiversity summit will be hosted.
December 17, 2021
October 2021 was an important month for crisis meetings. There was the big one, COP26, where decisionmakers descended on Glasgow to spend two frenetic weeks figuring out how to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement and keep global heating under 1.5 degrees Celsius. But earlier that month, a different crisis meeting took place that almost completely slipped below the radar—a meeting that will have huge implications for the future of every living thing on our planet.
The world is in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. Birds, mammals, and amphibians are going extinct at least 100 to 1,000 times faster than they did in the millions of years before humans began to dominate the planet. In the last 500 years alone, human activity has forced 869 species into extinction, according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). If things continue at their current rate, we’re on track for a sixth mass extinction—the first since that infamous dino-ending catastrophe 65 million years ago, which sparked an extinction event that eventually knocked off 76 percent of all species.
