The European Union is committed to a high level of ambition to protect and restore global biodiversity and will promote a 10-point plan at the UN to increase funding for biodiversity worldwide.
Member States’ ambassadors to the EU gave the green light on Wednesday 14 September for the EU Council to authorise the European Commission to approve, on behalf of the EU, a non-binding agreement to this effect on 21 September in New York. The formal decision will be adopted without debate at an EU Council meeting.
This plan, as seen by EUROPE, is a “political vision” which the EU wants as many countries as possible to support. It is expected to be signed at the joint high-level event organised by the Leaders Pledge for Nature, the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and the Global Ocean Alliance on the margins of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly.
This commitment will be based on key principles and will be a call to action to halt and reverse the decline of biodiversity by 2030, mobilising the whole of society. Signatories will commit to strengthening financial and non-financial means of implementation to transform their economic and financial sectors, to integrate biodiversity into all policies and programmes and “safeguard the well-being of people and the planet”.
In addition to increased funding and transparency, the text promotes the allocation of a significant share of climate finance to nature by all countries.
This policy vision is an initiative of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, an intergovernmental group of over 90 countries, co-chaired by Costa Rica and France and the UK, advocating for a global agreement for nature and people to ensure the protection and conservation of at least 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.
It is intended to build momentum for the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (Montreal, December), which is expected to adopt a framework for global biodiversity.
See the draft 10-point funding plan: https://aeur.eu/f/336 (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)