In Montreal, Canada, representatives from 188 governments met to agree on a new set of goals to guide global action through 2030 to halt and reverse nature loss at the Conference of the Parties 15 (COP 15) summit, held in December 2022. This was the second part of COP 15 as the first part of it was held in Kunming, in China, in 2021. The entire COP 15 could not be held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 restrictions.
On this occasion, countries resolved to take steps towards arresting the Great Extinction due to climate change because if urgent action is not taken, there would be existential threat to a million or more species. Though the targets and goals for global action had been set long back, countries could not yet achieve them fully. Therefore, given the threat to plants and animals, the summit promised to take urgent action to protect and restore world’s biodiversity.
Global Biodiversity Framework
The Montreal Conference has delivered a new agreement called the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) which comprises four goals and 23 targets, to be achieved by 2030.
The GBF consists of four overarching global goals—(i) halting human-induced extinction of threatened species and reducing the rate of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050; (ii) sustainable use and management of biodiversity to ensure that nature’s contributions to people are valued, maintained, and enhanced; (iii) fair sharing of the benefits from the utilisation of genetic resources and digital sequence information on genetic resources; and (iv) adequate means of implementing the GBF be accessible to all the concerned parties, especially developed countries and small island developing States.
Targets of GBF by 2030 The GBF targets to achieve the following:
- Conserving and managing effectively at least 30 per cent of the world’s land, coastal areas, and oceans. (Currently, only 17 per cent of the land, and about eight per cent of the marine areas are under protection.)
- Restoring 30 per cent of terrestrial and marine ecosystems
- Reducing the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance to near zero and achieving high ecological integrity
- Reducing food waste to half
- Phasing out or reforming subsidies that would harm biodiversity, by at least US$ 500 billion per year besides, scaling up positive incentives for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use
- Mobilising at least US$ 200 billion per year from public and private sources for biodiversity-related funding
- Raising international financial flows from developed to developing countries to at least US$ 30 billion per year
- Monitoring, assessing and transparently disclosing risks and impacts on biodiversity by transnational companies and financial institutions through their operations, portfolios, supply, and value chains.
Key Takeaways from the Summit
Conservation, protection, and restoration The delegates of the participating countries committed to protecting 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent coastal and marine areas by 2030. This is expected to be done by fulfilling the goal, called 30-by-30. Indigenous and traditional territories would also count towards this goal, as many countries and campaigners pushed for this during the talks. It was also decided to restore 30 per cent of degraded lands and waters throughout the decade, which is up from an earlier target of 20 per cent. Futher the world would strive to prevent destroying intact landscapes and areas with a lot of species and bringing it ‘close to zero by 2030’.
Money for nature The participating countries aim to ensure US$ 200 billion per year is channelled to conservation initiatives, from public and private sources. Wealthier countries are expected to contribute at least US$ 20 billion of this fund every year by 2025, and at least US$ 30 billion a year, by 2030. This package was initially objected to by the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Big companies to report impacts on biodiversity Big companies should analyse and report how their operations would be affected by biodiversity issues and how their operations would affect biodiversity. All the parties agreed to this disclosure about their operations, supply chains, and portfolios. This reporting would progressively promote biodiversity, reduce the risks posed to business by the natural world, and also encourage sustainable production.
Harmful subsidies Parties to the conference committed to identify subsidies which would deplete biodiversity by 2025, so that they can be eliminated, phased out, or reformed. It was also agreed to slash those subsidies by at least US$ 500 billion a year, by 2030, but agreed to increase the beneficial ones for conservation.
Pollution and Pesticides The countries pledged to reduce the risks associated with pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half by focusing on other forms of pest management. The Kunming-Montreal agreement would focus on reducing the negative impacts of pollution to levels that are not regarded as harmful to nature. However, no quantifiable targets have been set for the countries.
Monitoring and reporting progress All the countries agreed that the aims would be supported by due monitoring of progress in the future. National action plans would be set and reviewed, following a similar format that is currently in use for greenhouse gas emissions, under UN-led efforts to curb climate change.
What India said at CoP-15
India has stated that the successful implementation of a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) would depend on the ways and means that are put in place for an equally ambitious ‘resource mobilisation mechanism’. India reiterated the need for the creation of a new and dedicated mechanism for the provision of financial resources to developing-country parties. Such a fund should be operationalised at the earliest for ensuring an effective implementation of the post-2020 GBF by all the countries. The most important challenge is the resources needed for the implementation of the GBF and this cost falls disproportionately on the countries that could least afford them. India has stated that the goals and targets set in the GBF should not only be ambitious but also realistic and practical.
India did not agree on reducing the agriculture-related subsidy and redirecting the savings for biodiversity conservation, as there are many other national priorities. A large number of rural population in India is dependent on agriculture and allied sectors and the government provides a variety of subsidies such as seed, fertiliser, irrigation, power, export, credit, agriculture equipment, and agricultural infrastructure for supporting the livelihoods of farmers, mainly small and marginal. Food security is of utmost importance for developing countries, therefore, prescribing numerical targets in pesticide reductions is unnecessary. Hence, it must be left to countries to decide, based on national circumstances, priorities, and capabilities.
India has also stated that biodiversity conservation requires ecosystems to be conserved and restored holistically, and in an integrated manner. Hence, ecosystem approaches for conservation of biodiversity need to be adopted rather than going for nature-based solutions. India emphasised that GBF must consider science and equity and the sovereign right of countries over their resources. The GBF must also recognise the responsibility of the developing countries towards poverty eradication and achieving sustainable development.
Convention on Biological Diversities (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been an outcome of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The signatories to their CBD hold meeting every two years to work on a global plan to check biodiversity loss and restoration of natural ecosystems. The Montreal meeting was the 15th edition of the Conference of Parties (CoP) to the CBD. In 1994, an internationally legal binding framework, called the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), was adopted by the UN to address the problem of desertification. It is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management.
Thus, the CBD, UNFCCC and the CCD are all environmental conventions which seek to address the issues of climate change. Climate change has been one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, while changes in land and ocean use have an impact on climate change. Land degradation has been a cause as well as effect in both climate change and biodiversity loss.
The CBD deals with the conservation and restoration of ecosystems, sustainable use of natural resources, and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of these resources.
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