Governments risk another decade of failure on nature loss if they do not implement a landmark agreement in full, the UN’s acting biodiversity chief has warned, 12 months after the deal was struck.
As anticipation begins for the next summit – which was confirmed last week to be hosted by Colombia – the legacy and implementation of the last, historic agreement remains uncertain.
Colombia’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, says that Cop16 is “going to be a great opportunity for one of the most biodiverse nations in the world”, adding: “This event sends a message from Latin America to the world about the importance of climate action and the protection of life.”
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Looking back to in Montreal where, in the early hours of 19 December, governments signed a , it is worth remembering that the world has to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems.
However, there have been significant efforts to make sure the 2020s are different, amid increasingly alarming warnings about the health of the planet and the risk further damage poses to human society. Cop15’s 23 targets included protecting 30% of the planet for nature, reforming billions in damaging subsidies and restoring huge areas of degraded ecosystems.
At the , the biodiversity deal – known as the Kunming-Montreal framework – received a boost after it was referred to in the final text. It means that countries will need to consider the biodiversity agreement while developing their next round of nationally determined contributions before Cop30 in Brazil in 2025, raising hope that biodiversity and climate will be treated as interlinked issues. The importance of nature, halting deforestation by 2030 and the role of Indigenous communities were also recognised in the text in Dubai.
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Despite the positive momentum, David Cooper, the UN’s acting biodiversity chief, says focusing on one high-profile target to protect 30% of Earth for nature without action on agriculture, harmful subsidies and pollution could risk another decade of failure.
“If we focus on the target to protect 30% of Earth alone without looking at the other elements of the framework, we risk repeating the experience and to a large extent the failures of last decade’s targets,” says Cooper. “It’s really important that we look at all of the drivers of biodiversity loss and their underlying causes which other targets address, such as things like subsidies, financial investments and consumption patterns.”
Two million species are at risk of extinction, , threatened by habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, the climate crisis and direct exploitation. With the climate expected to become the primary threat to life on Earth as the planet continues to heat, Cooper says it is vital to limit global warming to 1.5C.
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“Halting and reversing biodiversity loss simply cannot be done if we don’t act on climate change,” he says. “If we get close to 1.5C, the ability of ecosystems to help with climate change mitigation and adaptation is dependent on the integrity of those ecosystems. It is not just about carbon. Natural carbon stores in soils, plants, peatland and forests very much depend on functioning ecosystems.”