Big win for biodiversity overshadowed by World Cup

Heading to another major United Nations environmental conference so soon after the climate equivalent had ended in Egypt felt rushed, even for someone who's been in the fray since the first climate summit in Berlin in 1995.

This time the stakes were even higher. Could the world deliver a 10-year global framework to halt and reverse alarming, human-induced biodiversity declines and give nature its own historic "Paris moment?"

Ahead of the UN biodiversity conference in Montreal, we at The Nature Conservancy compiled a scorecard of what we felt needed to be reflected in the Global Biodiversity Framework to create that moment.

The goals included a '30x30' pledge to protect 30% of the Earth and prevent mass extinction, plugging a $700 billion (€659 billion) annual gap in global biodiversity funding, reducing or repurposing $500 billion in harmful subsidies for activities like unsustainable farming practices and ensuring recognition of the rights and ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples.

Talks go into extra time, but score major goal for biodiversity

I'm delighted that after much hard work and hand-wringing by negotiators and civil society advocates, we reached a deal at 4 a.m. on Monday. The goals set before Montreal for a successful framework were nearly uniformly met. In an unusual dynamic, they improved over the last day of negotiations instead of being watered down.

As a conservation finance aficionado, who has devoted a lot of writing to funding problems, it was especially gratifying to see momentum build behind new biodiversity financing initiatives in countries as diverse as Canada, Mongolia and Gabon, together with the buzz we saw around debt-for-nature swaps at the climate conference in November.

But perhaps the most transformative of the measures agreed in Montreal will be a commitment by countries to ensure large companies and financial institutions measure and report on their nature-related "risks, dependencies and impacts." Businesses will have to reduce the harm they do to wildlife over time.

That's a powerful signal to the markets of the urgent need to recalibrate business models and investment strategies to fit a global economy evolving toward a nature-positive and carbon neutral future.

Messi takes the praise the biodiversity World Cup should have received

Perhaps if the Montreal deal hadn't followed so closely after the most exciting final in FIFA World Cup history, we'd be seeing levels of celebration closer to what followed in the wake of the Paris climate accord.

But now the real work starts. None of this progress will count for anything unless what was agreed makes it into national policy. The framework needs to become, like climate, a priority across government rather than something that ends up siloed in environment ministries.

The now defunct 2010 Aichi biodiversity targets had ambition but lacked a realistic finance plan and an accountability mechanism. This time we have all three. But we only have until the end of this decade to halt and reverse the dramatic loss of biodiversity — Earth's life support system. The race to save nature is every bit as urgent as the climate crisis, and the two crises are inextricably linked.

Speaking on behalf of all those who were in the room in the early hours of Monday — I think we can allow ourselves the hope that the new Global Biodiversity Framework proves a historic turning point in humanity's relationship with the natural world.

Andrew Deutz led the delegation for The Nature Conservancy at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal. TNC is a global environmental organization based in the United States. 

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on DW, and is published by special syndication arrangement.