Montreal: The gathering nations at the biodiversity summit have agreed to four goals and 23 targets, said an announcement issued early Monday morning.
Included in the goals are protecting 30 percent of the world’s land, water, and marine areas by 2030, as well as the mobilization of at least $200 billion US per year in domestic and international biodiversity-related funding from all sources, by 2030, both public and private.
“Many of us wanted more things in the text and more ambition, but we got an ambitious package….” Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault reportedly said. “We have an agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, to work on restoration, to reduce the use of pesticides. This is tremendous progress.”
The new agreement is titled the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework after the official host cities in China and Canada.
“We have in our hands a package which I think can guide us as we all work together to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and put biodiversity on the path to recovery for the benefit of all people in the world,” Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu reportedly told delegates before the package was adopted to rapturous applause just before dawn. “We can be truly proud.”
According to the United Nations three-quarters of the world’s land has been altered by human activities and one million species face extinction this century as a result, a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected.
Among the most contentious issues has been the financing as delegates from 70 African, South American, and Asian countries walked out of negotiations Wednesday, but they returned several hours later.
“All the elements are in there for a balance of unhappiness, which is the secret to achieving agreement in UN bodies,” Pierre du Plessis, a negotiator from Namibia who is helping co-ordinate the African group, told The Associated Press before the vote. “Everyone got a bit of what they wanted, not necessarily everything they wanted.”
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