COP15 biodiversity summit: Key takeaways

Context

A United Nations nature summit (COP 15) culminated recently, with a “global deal” to protect the ecosystems and prevent the further loss of already ravaged plant and animal populations.

About

About the COP 15 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) summit 2022:

COP15 (CBD) is an international meeting bringing together governments from around the world.
The event was organised in Montreal, Canada.
Objective: To guide global action to preserve biodiversity through 2030 to halt and reverse nature loss.
Procedure: The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the governing body of the Convention and advances implementation of the Convention through the decisions it takes at its periodic meetings.
The Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) is held in two phases.
- Phase one took place virtually, from 11 to 15 October 2021 in Kunming, China.
- Phase two is an in-person meeting in Montreal, Canada, from 7 to 19 December

Key agreements of the summit:

The key areas agreed on after two weeks of negotiations hosted in Montreal, Canada is as follows:

To achieve 30-by-30 goal:
- Countries committed to protecting 30% of land and 30% of coastal and marine areas by 2030, fulfilling the deal’s highest-profile goal, known as the 30-by-30 target.
- Indigenous and traditional territories will also count toward this goal.
- Also to restore 30% of degraded lands and waters throughout the decade, up from an earlier aim of 20%.
- To prevent destroying intact landscapes and areas with a lot of species, bringing those losses close to zero by 2030.
Money for nature:
- Aims to ensure $200 billion per year is channelled to conservation initiatives, from public and private sources.
- Wealthier countries should contribute at least $20 billion of this every year by 2025, and at least $30 billion a year by 2030.
Big companies report impacts on biodiversity:
- The parties agreed to large companies and financial institutions being subject to “requirements” to make disclosures regarding their operations, supply chains and portfolios.
- This was intended to progressively promote biodiversity, reduce the risks posed to businesses by the natural world, and encourage sustainable production.
Harmful subsidies:
- Countries committed to identifying subsidies that deplete biodiversity by 2025, and then eliminating, phasing out or reforming them.
- The incentives by at least $500 billion a year will be slashed by 2030, and increase incentives that are positive for conservation.
Pollution and pesticides:
- The Parties aim to reduce the use of pesticides by up to two-thirds.
- But the final language to emerge focuses on the risks associated with pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals has been called for.
Monitoring and reporting progress:
- All the agreed aims will be supported by processes to monitor progress in the future, in a bid to prevent this agreement from meeting the same fate as similar targets that were agreed upon in Aichi, Japan, in 2010, and never met.
- National action plans will be set and reviewed, following a similar format used for greenhouse gas emissions under U.N.-led efforts to curb climate change.

Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) came into force on 29 December 1993. It has three main objectives:
- Biodiversity conservation.
- Sustainable use of biodiversity components.
- Equitable and equitable distribution of benefits from the use of genetic resources.
The Convention was unveiled on June 5, 1992, at the Rio “Earth Summit”.
This agreement is a legally binding agreement approved by 180 countries.
The CBD Secretariat is based in Montreal, Canada and operates under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program.
Areas of legal responsibility are biodiversity conservation, sustainable use of natural resources and equal sharing of benefits from their sustainable use.
The conference came into effect in 1993. Many biological problems are being addressed, including the conservation of habitats, intellectual property rights, environmental safety and the rights of indigenous peoples.
It has two supplementary agreements, the Cartagena Protocol and Nagoya Protocol.
- Cartagena Protocol: It is an international treaty governing the movements of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology from one country to another.