EU Commission chief hails ‘historic’ COP15 biodiversity accord

After two weeks of fraught negotiations, world nations gathered in Montreal adopted on Monday (19 December) a new package to address the loss of biodiversity and restore natural ecosystems.

Representatives of 195 countries and the European Union agreed on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in the early hours of Monday during the last day of the UN biodiversity conference (COP15), after negotiations had continued overnight.  

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen welcomed a “historic” international deal on saving the world’s biodiversity, calling it “a roadmap to protect and restore nature”.

“This agreement provides a good foundation for global action on biodiversity, complementing the Paris Agreement for Climate,” the European Commission president said in a statement.

“Now the world has a double track of action for a sustainable global economy by 2050.”

Mapping out action for the next decade to reverse destruction that scientists say threatens a million species, the proposal called on wealthy countries to increase financial aid to the developing world to $20 billion annually by 2025, rising to $30 billion per year by 2030.

It also called on countries to “ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30% of terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas” are effectively conserved and managed.

The text includes language safeguarding the rights of Indigenous people as stewards of their lands, a key demand of campaigners.

Disagreements centered mainly on the financial aspect, with some African countries refusing to back the deal, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, which asked for the creation of a special biodiversity fund for developing countries. 

The framework was eventually adopted under the supervision of the Chinese COP15 presidency. It contains global targets aiming to protect and restore nature, reduce pollution and limit the environmental footprint of human activities. 

“Tonight, we make history,” reacted EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius. 

Von der Leyen, for her part, said it was “very positive” to have measurable targets aiming at the protection of 30% of land and sea and the restoration of 30% of degraded land.

With this agreement, the world has a “roadmap to protect and restore nature”, she added.

The European Parliament delegation to COP15 also greeted the new framework. 

“This is a big success for nature conservation and gives hope for the future of our Earth’s ecosystems and species,” said Green MEP Ville Niinistö, chair of the European Parliament delegation to COP15, after the adoption of the framework. 

Niinistö argued that these results are not perfect, but are the best possible results now achievable on a global scale. “To make these ambitious targets into reality, everyone on all levels – international, EU, national and local – must now do their part to ensure these targets are also reached,” he added. 

Goals and targets

The Global Biodiversity Framework contains four main goals and 23 targets that countries are expected to achieve by 2030 and 2050. 

These include the protection and restoration of at least 30% of the world’s lands and seas by 2030, halting the extinction of known threatened species and reducing the extinction rate tenfold by 2050. 

On finance, the agreement envisages the phasing out of harmful subsidies by at least $500 billion per year and the mobilisation of $200 billion per year in domestic and international biodiversity-related funding from public and private sources by 2030. 

Alongside this, it asks for an increase in financial flows to developing countries to at least $20 billion per year by 2025, and to at least $30 billion per year by 2030. Large and transnational companies and financial institutions will be required to monitor, assess, and disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity. 

There are also targets that protect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. 

No binding targets

Environmental groups criticised the text for lacking ambition, and urged governments to consider the new biodiversity framework “as a floor, not a ceiling” for global action. 

“The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is a compromise, and although it has several good and hard-fought elements, it could have gone further to truly transform our relationship with nature,” said Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

One area where more ambition would be needed, according to NGOs, is the chosen date of 2050 for the fulfilment of some of the targets, considered too late to address the pressing biodiversity crisis.

“World leaders seem to be planning around multi-decade horizons, when we only have eight years,” warned Ioannis Agapakis, an environmental lawyer at ClientEarth. 

Another concern is that, since the framework is not legally binding, it cannot be used to hold countries accountable if they fail to meet the targets, which could cause delays or weaknesses in implementation. 

Participating states have indeed agreed on a monitoring mechanism, which will make it possible to evaluate the progress made and revise policies, while a global review will be carried out at mid-term, but no binding mechanism is set in place. 

“Now that we have an agreement in place, what matters is implementation,” said João Albuquerque, a Portuguese MEP who was part of the European Parliament’s COP15 delegation. 

“We need robust monitoring and review mechanisms to make sure progress is made and the set goals and targets reached,” he added, reminding that the previous global biodiversity goals, the so-called Aichi targets, were not achieved.

“It is crucial that this time we get it right,” Albuquerque said in reference to the 20 biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010 that were never fulfilled.

[Edited by Frédéric Simon]

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