United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has slammed multinationals for turning the world‘s ecosystem into a “plaything for profit”, warning that failure to correct course could lead to disastrous consequences.
Guterres said at the opening ceremony of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference held in Montreal on the 6th, “With our endless desire for uncontrolled and unequal economic growth, human beings themselves have become weapons of mass extinction.”
From December 7 to 19, representatives from nearly 200 countries gathered at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, the second phase of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15).
The goal of this session is to arrive at a “Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework”, which will be a global roadmap for the maintenance, protection, restoration and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystems over the next decade.
One million species are at risk of extinction, one-third of the land is severely degraded and fertile soils are being lost, while pollution and climate change are accelerating the degradation of the oceans.
Guterres said, “We seem to use nature as a toilet”, “In the end, we are committing suicide”, and these consequences and impacts will eventually give us tangible benefits through work, hunger, disease and death. feel.
He added, “This meeting is our opportunity to prevent this destruction.”
Reversing biodiversity loss
Species on Earth are disappearing at a rate not seen in 10 million years. As assessed by the United Nations’ Global Land Outlook 2022, as much as 40% of the Earth’s land surface is considered degraded.
More than 10,000 people attended the summit, including government officials, scientists and activists, while environmentalists and business people called for protecting natural resources and preventing species loss.
Negotiators hope to strike a deal at the two-week UN summit to ensure that in 2030 there is more “nature” than there is today – including animals, plants and healthy ecosystems. But how to pursue and measure this progress will require consensus among the 196 signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The goals of the draft 10-year framework include a cornerstone commitment to protect at least 30 per cent of land and sea areas by 2030, often referred to as the “30×30 target”. Currently, only about 17 percent of the world‘s land is protected to some extent, and less than 8 percent of the world‘s oceans are protected.
This new target will rely heavily on the participation of indigenous peoples – who manage the lands that are home to nearly 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.
differences remain
Countries are already divided on key financing issues — rich countries are under pressure to give developing countries more money for environmental protection.
Negotiators say the current draft agreement is still full of phrases written in brackets – suggesting a lack of consensus on the issue. About 900 contentious issues emerged in the previous draft agreement, but that number has soared to nearly 1,400 during discussions in the days leading up to the summit.
Some of the thorniest issues include whether to curb climate-warming emissions and set deadlines for phasing out pesticides, and how to ensure poor countries get the money they need to restore ecologically degraded areas.
Hopes have been met with a setback as no other national leaders attended the summit except Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau stressed that countries must meet the “30×30 target”. He also said Canada would commit $350 million to international biodiversity financing.
At the same time, it is estimated that from 2030, the economic loss caused by the degradation of ecosystems will reach 3 trillion US dollars per year.
“There’s a lot of disagreement between governments,” Trudeau said. “But if we can’t agree on something as fundamental as protecting nature, then there’s no point in doing anything else.”
The biennial UN biodiversity conference has never been in the global spotlight like the UN Climate Change Conference. But people are increasingly realizing that protecting nature and controlling climate change need to go hand in hand.
Healthy ecosystems, such as forests and seagrass beds, are key to controlling global warming. At the same time, rising global temperatures are increasingly threatening many ecosystems and many species that cannot adapt quickly to a warming climate or migrate to cooler climates.
The fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity is currently chaired by China, but due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, China did not host the meeting.
The summit originally planned to be held in Kunming in 2020, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the first phase of the meeting was held in Kunming in 2021, while the second phase of the meeting was postponed four times, and finally decided to hold it in Montreal, Canada.