•Another critical part of the agreement is a target to protect and conserve at least 30 per cent of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030.
•The agreement also adopted a demand by developing countries to stop biopiracy.
Image: UN CBD
A historic agreement to protect nature was reached Monday, and includes a critical demand by Kenya for rich countries to contribute $200 billion to the plan every year.
The pact adopted at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity talks has 23 targets that 196 member countries of the CBD treaty have committed to fulfil by 2030.
The funds will be disbursed through a special kitty that will be created in the existing Global Environment Facility, which is based in Washington DC.
This target will be realised by raising international financial flows from developed to developing countries to at least US$20 billion per year by 2025, and to at least US$30 billion per year by 2030.
Increased funding was a key demand by African negotiators chaired by Nature Kenya director Dr Paul Matiku.
Another critical part of the agreement is a target to protect and conserve at least 30 per cent of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030. The “30x30” target marks the largest land and ocean conservation commitment in history.
Unep director Inger Anderson said success will be measured by the rapid and consistent progress in implementing the agreement.
“For far too long humanity has paved over, fragmented, over-extracted and destroyed the natural world on which we all depend. Now is our chance to shore up and strengthen the web of life, so it can carry the full weight of generations to come,” she said.
The conference was chaired by China and hosted by Canada in Montreal.
The agreement also adopted a demand by developing countries to stop biopiracy. The new pact will ensure host countries and communities are paid if genetic resources from their locality are exploited for scientific purposes.
An example is when foreign scientists sequenced a bacteria from Kenya’s Lake Ruiru to create a popular diabetes drug and never paid any royalties.
Such digital sequence information on genetic resources has many commercial and non-commercial applications, including pharmaceutical product development, improved crop breeding, and the monitoring of invasive species.
COP15 delegates agreed to establish within the GBF a multilateral fund for the equitable sharing of benefits between providers and users of DSI, to be finalised at COP16 in Turkey in 2024.
The African negotiations for this topic were led by Kenyan scientists Dr Benson Mburu of the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (Nacosti) and Prof Douglas Miano of the University of Nairobi.
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO and chairperson of the Global Environment Facility, promised to quickly operationalise a fund to receive all the agreed finances.
“The decision also includes a number of important elements on access, adequacy, predictability, equitable governance, and financing from all sources. Please be assured of my commitment to work with the GEF Council, countries and partners," he said.
Other global targets include the reduction by half both excess nutrients and the overall risk posed by pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals.
Rich countries also committed to progressively phase out or reform by 2030 subsidies that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion per year while scaling up positive incentives for biodiversity’s conservation and sustainable use.
UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner also said the agreement means people around the world can hope for real progress to halt biodiversity loss.
“The adopted text includes multiple important targets that frame the actions we must now take to halt runaway biodiversity loss, how we fund this and how progress will be monitored and reported. The global community has come together and agreed on an ambitious pathway. Now, we must carry forward this vision,” Steiner said.
The agreement also obligates countries to monitor and report every five years or less on a large set of "headline" and other indicators related to progress against the GBF's goals and targets.
Other global targets include preventing the introduction of priority invasive alien species, and reducing by at least half the introduction and establishment of other known or potential invasive alien species, and eradicate or control invasive alien species on islands and other priority sites
The agreement also obligates countries to monitor and report every five years or less on a large set of "headline" and other indicators related to progress against the GBF's goals and targets.
Headline indicators include the percentage of land and seas effectively conserved, the number of companies disclosing their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity, and many others.
The CBD will combine national information submitted by late February 2026 and late June 2029 into global trend and progress reports.
This story was produced as part of the 2022 CBD COP15 Fellowship organised by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.