UN nature summit: States urged to boost ambition and finance

Kuala Lumpur — Governments should take advantage of the third postponement of a UN biodiversity summit tasked with striking a global deal to protect nature by boosting ambition and finance for conservation and restoration, environmentalists say.

About 195 countries were expected to agree on the text of a new pact to safeguard the planet’s plants, animals and ecosystems —similar to the Paris climate accord — at UN talks scheduled for October in the southern Chinese city of Kunming.

But a lack of face-to-face meetings due to the Covid-19 pandemic means the summit, initially scheduled for October 2020, will now be held in two parts, officials announced on Wednesday.

A virtual session will be held this October and final in-person negotiations from April 25 to May 8 next year in Kunming.

“Given the urgency of the biodiversity crisis, the decision to delay talks is not ideal,” said Li Shuo, a policy adviser at Greenpeace China. “But in light of the global pandemic and the need for face-to-face negotiations, it is an inevitable choice.”

The decision should not mean a “negotiation holiday”, he said, as much work is still needed to complete the new pact.

The first part of the COP15 conference in October should be a high-level opportunity that gives impetus to the process, “not another show of nicely sounding rhetoric that hardly unlocks any contentious issues”, Li said.

Better conservation and management of natural areas, such as parks, oceans, forests and wildernesses, are seen as key to protecting the ecosystems on which humans depend and limiting global warming to internationally agreed targets.

But forests are still being cut down — often to produce commodities such as palm oil and beef — destroying biodiversity and threatening climate goals, as trees absorb about a third of planet-warming emissions produced worldwide.

In 2020 a UN report showed governments had fallen short on global targets set in 2010 to protect biodiversity, though conservation efforts suggested the destruction of nature can be slowed and even reversed.

UN officials and observers working to secure the new global agreement warned earlier this year of the limitations of relying on virtual talks.

They cited connectivity problems for developing countries, while negotiators and observers in Asia-Pacific struggled to cope with sessions outside their time zones.

Officials also called for stronger political leadership from host nation China.

Georgina Chandler, international policy officer at the UK-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said countries that had been sitting on the fence must come forward in October and show they “fully back a strong outcome”.

The draft text for the nature pact includes a core pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030.

But environmentalists have criticised low levels of funding committed by rich countries to help developing nations do this, while many leaders are still relying on natural resources to bolster their economies and lift people out of poverty.

Global annual spending to protect and restore nature on land needs to triple this decade to about $350bn by 2030 and rise to $536bn by 2050, a UN report said in May.

Isaac Rojas, forests and biodiversity coordinator at Friends of the Earth International, said the COP15 delay would enable more participation and negotiations on sticking points.

“It will ensure a better (global) framework, greater ownership and therefore better implementation,” he said.

Charles Barber, a biodiversity adviser at the US-based World Resources Institute, said it would be important for negotiators to meet in person before the final Kunming summit, with an interim gathering tentatively set for Geneva in January.

Brian O'Donnell, director of the US-based Campaign for Nature, said there was “no pause button for biodiversity loss”.

“Human destruction of nature continues unabated, and governments do not need to wait for a global deal to take action and redirect finance to urgently protect our planet,” he said.

Thomson Reuters Foundation