In the early hours of Monday morning, 19 December, the day after the football World Cup final in Qatar, the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - COP15 under the Chinese presidency and without heads of State - ended in Montreal with an agreement on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). It brought to a close 4 years of painstaking negotiations to try to contain the risk of the sixth mass extinction - negotiations that have long stalled over funding (see EUROPE 13079/11).
In adopting the ‘Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’, 188 out of 196 Parties to the Convention, plus the United States and the Vatican, agreed on a set of measures deemed essential to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
Main objectives and targets. Key targets include protecting and restoring 30% of the world’s terrestrial and marine areas by 2030 (the ‘30x30’ target) and mobilising at least $30 billion a year by 2030 for the most vulnerable developing countries in a Global Biodiversity Fund. This is a far cry from the $100 billion a year that developing countries have been demanding to match the amount they have been promised since 2009 for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
According to the agreement, however, the parties would aim to gradually increase funding to close the gap, which the UN has estimated at $700 billion a year.
‘A good basis’ for working towards a sister agreement to the Paris Agreement. Like the UN, which spoke of a ‘historic agreement’, the EU immediately welcomed “a historic result”, as did European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“This agreement provides a good basis for global action on biodiversity, complementing the Paris Climate Agreement. The world now has a dual pathway to a sustainable global economy by 2050”, she said in a statement.
According to her, “the global community now has a roadmap for protecting and restoring nature and using it sustainably - for present and future generations. And investing in nature also means fighting climate change”.
In fact, the agreed text corresponds, in essence, to the position defended by the EU, which, like the UN, dreams of a future biodiversity agreement similar to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (see EUROPE 13069/9, 13049/2).
The same satisfaction was expressed by the political groups in the European Parliament (EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA, ECR and ex-GUE/NGL now The Left) who had negotiated the compromise that formed the basis of the European Parliament’s position in 2020 (see EUROPE 12405/4, 12403/15).
They said they were “extremely pleased”, as did César Luena (S&D, Spanish) and Martin Haüsling (Greens/EFA, German). Agnès Evren (EPP, French) recalled that MEPs expect “binding targets”.
Some of the detailed objectives and targets for 2030
The Montreal agreement identifies 4 objectives and 23 targets, the main ones being:
- the effective conservation and management of at least 30% of the world’s land, inland waters, coastal areas and oceans, focusing on areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and services;
- mobilising at least $200 billion per year in domestic and international biodiversity financing from all sources, both public and private, by 2030;
- increasing international financial flows from developed countries to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and countries with economies in transition, to at least $20 billion per year by 2025 and at least $30 billion per year by 2030;
- reducing to near zero the loss of areas of high importance for biodiversity, including ecosystems of high ecological integrity;
- halving global food waste and significantly reducing overconsumption and waste generation;
- halving the excess nutrients and overall risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals;
- phasing out or reforming subsidies that harm biodiversity by 2030, to the tune of at least $500 billion per year, while strengthening positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity;
- preventing the introduction of priority invasive alien species, reducing by at least half the introduction and establishment of other known or potential invasive alien species and eradicating or controlling invasive alien species on islands and other priority sites;
- requiring large companies and transnational financial institutions to transparently monitor, assess and disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity across their operations, supply and value chains and portfolios.
A framework for monitoring progress. A monitoring framework would measure progress and a review would be carried out at least every 5 years based on a broad set of ‘core’ indicators (e.g. the percentage of land and sea effectively conserved, the number of companies disclosing their impact on biodiversity) and other indicators.
The CBD would combine national information submitted by the end of February 2026 and the end of June 2029 to produce global reports on trends and progress. The text stresses the importance of mobilising governments and society as a whole.
Turkey will host the next COP. Within the GBF, the creation of a multilateral fund for the equitable sharing of benefits between providers and users of genetic resources has been decided, to be finalised at COP16 in Turkey in 2024. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)