Countries around the world are currently gathered in Montreal, Canada, for the UN biodiversity summit—COP15—to agree on new global nature goals for 2030, which will replace the current ones agreed upon in Japan in 2010. IPBES Denmark is represented by Anders Sanchez Barfod, associate professor at Aarhus University, and Lars Dinesen, coordinator at the Danish IPBES office.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity was established in 1992 with the goal of halting biodiversity loss. COP15 is the first summit on biodiversity since it became clear that the previous goals to slow the loss of biodiversity—the so-called Aichi Targets, or the 2020 targets—had not been achieved. Prior to that, the 2010 goal of slowing the loss of biodiversity had also not been achieved.
In other words, at COP15 in Montreal, Canada, we find ourselves at the culmination of two decades of spectacular failures, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized in his opening remarks, in which he highlighted that one-quarter of the world’s known species are generally threatened; that 70% of the planet’s ecosystems are degraded, and that, quite simply, we are “treating nature like a toilet.” This makes it all the more important to reach agreement on new goals for 2030. The summit’s agreement texts, which are based on several years of preparation, include 22 goals for nature and biodiversity.
One of the most important goals in the text is to protect biodiversity across 30% of the land and marine areas. A goal that, from a Danish perspective, seems a world away from the current situation at home, where, according to analyses in the Biodiversity Council’s first report, only 2.3% of Denmark’s land area and 12% of its marine area are protected natural areas.
Financial Struggles and Silver Linings
One of the major topics of discussion at the conference right now is how much money should flow from North to South. An early draft states that $200 billion per year must be secured for biodiversity efforts in developing countries. At the same time, far more public funding goes toward activities that harm biodiversity in agriculture, fisheries, and the energy sector. Consequently, global actors such as the OECD and UNEP are strongly urging that action be taken very soon to address this obvious dilemma and ensure that massive amounts of aid go toward biodiversity-positive initiatives—or at the very least, do not harm biodiversity.
COP15 runs from December 7 to 19 and is currently in its final stages, with ministers from a wide range of countries in attendance. Despite many stumbling blocks in the negotiations, there is also a major ray of hope. Leading players in the private sector and financial institutions have begun to take shared responsibility. Over three hectic days during the conference, a wide range of private companies and international financial institutions participated.
In a first, finance ministers are also contributing to the discussions. The representatives from the private and financial sectors who are present are unequivocally articulating clear, measurable, ambitious, long-term, and in many cases binding goals. The fact that the private sector and financial institutions are now taking the biodiversity crisis very seriously and are helping to raise the bar for ambition is a new and exciting development.
