After four years of fractious talks, nearly 200 countries, including India, approved a historic Paris-style deal on Monday to protect and reverse dangerous loss to global biodiversity following an intense final session of negotiations at the UN COP15 summit here in Canada.
The UN Development Programme said the “historic agreement” meant people around the world could hope for real progress to halt biodiversity loss.
The main points include:
- Maintaining, enhancing and restoring ecosystems, including halting species extinction and maintaining genetic diversity
- “Sustainable use” of biodiversity – essentially ensuring that species and habitats can provide the services they provide for humanity, such as food and clean water
- Ensuring that the benefits of resources from nature, like medicines that come from plants, are shared fairly and equally and that indigenous peoples’ rights are protected
- Paying for and putting resources into biodiversity: Ensuring that money and conservation efforts get to where they are needed.
Furthermore, the framework also calls for increasing the amount of money sent to poor countries to at least $20 billion every year by 2025 which could be increased by $10 billion each year by the end of the decade. However, the document only calls for identifying subsidies by 2025 which can be reformed or phased out and work on reducing them by 2030.
The draft comprised four broad goals and 22 targets addressing the protection of nature and sharing its benefits which included, the management of wildlife, working on the restoration of habitats and using less plastic.
