Climate Home News

July 13, 2021
The UN biodiversity body has released the first draft of a global agreement to halt nature and wildlife loss in the next nine years.

The document will form the basis of negotiations ahead of a biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, where governments are due to agree on a post-2020 framework to protect life on Earth.

“This is meant to be both a summary of the current state of the discussion but also a way to elicit more discussion and negotiation,” Basil van Havre, co-chair of the open working group in charge of overseeing the negotiations at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity wrote on Twitter.

But while the draft text sets out aspirations and objectives for 2030 and beyond, it fails to provide a concrete action plan to meet them, campaigners say.

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The Guardian

July 12, 2021
Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss.

The goals set out by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)to help halt and reverse the ecological destruction of Earth by the end of the decade also include protecting at least 30% of the world’s oceans and land and providing a third of climate crisis mitigation through nature by 2030.

The latest draft of the agreement, which follows gruelling virtual scientific and financial negotiations in May and June, will be scrutinised by governments before a key summit in the Chinese city of Kunming, where the final text will be negotiated.

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Reuters

July 12, 2021
KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Securing an ambitious new global pact to protect nature at a U.N. biodiversity summit later this year will require stronger political leadership from host nation China, officials and observers have warned.

About 195 countries are expected to agree the text of a new treaty to safeguard the planet’s plants, animals and ecosystems, similar to the Paris climate accord, at U.N. talks scheduled for October in the southern Chinese city of Kunming.

But the prospects of sealing a deal at the COP15 summit - already postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic - are dwindling unless in-person talks can happen, U.N. officials say.

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Campaign For Nature

July 12, 2021
Officials released today “Draft 1” of a global biodiversity framework--known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)--that includes three elements critical to addressing catastrophic biodiversity loss and the extinction crisis: a target to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, a target to retain intact natural areas, and a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ rights over their lands, territories and resources.

Nature is in a state of crisis, which poses a threat as serious as climate change to the future of humanity. Evidence shows that the ongoing and rapid loss of natural areas across the world poses a grave threat to the health and security of all living things.   

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