Global biodiversity deal is a major step forward to save life on land

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) welcomes the landmark agreement reached by countries this week to save the diversity of life on our planet.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed on Monday, 19 December 2022, in Montreal, Canada, during the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15), has four goals and 23 targets to be achieved in the next eight years.

By 2030, the countries agreed to conserve 30 percent of land and waters. They also agreed, by that year, to restore at least 30 percent of degradedecosystems .
Many of targets in the new Framework support practices that could keep the land healthy, including cutting global food waste in half and reducing the risk posed by pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals.

A major part of the package is a commitment to significantly step up funding for biodiversity, mobilizing at least $200 billion per year by 2030, and raising international financial flows to at least US$20 billion per year by 2025, increasing to at least US$30 billion by 2030.

As UNCCD stated at the opening of CBD COP15, the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own, is threatened by the way land resources – soil, water and biodiversity – are mismanaged and misused today.

The adoption of new targets and agreements will only make full sense if we implement them in a coordinated manner, at all levels….Land is the operative link between biodiversity and climate change – by focusing our actions on restoring the health and productivity of terrestrial ecosystems, we can simultaneously protect habitats, capture and store carbon, and improve the living conditions of local communities.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw

The second edition of the Global Land Outlook (GLO2) released in April 2022 showed that up to 40 percent of all ice-free land is already degraded, and urged the international community to restore one billion hectares of degraded lands by 2030 and “to urgently rethink our global food systems, responsible for 80 percent of deforestation, 70 percent of freshwater use, and the single greatest cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss.”

“We cannot afford to have another “lost decade” for nature and need to act now for a future of life in harmony with nature. The GLO2 shows pathways, enablers and knowledge that we should apply to effectively implement the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework,” commented Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary, UN Convention on Biological Diversity, at the GLO2 launch.