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Nearly Every Country Signs On to a Sweeping Deal to Protect Nature [1]

['Catrin Einhorn']

Date: 2022-12-19

Overall, the deal lays out a suite of 23 environmental targets. The most prominent, known as 30x30, would place 30 percent of land and sea under protection. Currently, about 17 percent of the planet’s land and roughly 8 percent of its oceans are protected, with restrictions on activities like fishing, farming and mining.

The United States is just one of two countries in the world that are not party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, largely because Republicans, who are typically opposed to joining treaties, have blocked United States membership. That means the American delegation was required to participate from the sidelines. (The only other country that has not joined the treaty is the Holy See.)

President Biden has signed an executive order that would similarly place 30 percent of United States land and waters under protection, but any legislative efforts to support that goal are expected to face strong opposition when Republicans take control of the House in January.

Understand the Latest News on Climate Change Card 1 of 6 The future of the Amazon. Some Brazilian scientists studying the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Amazon fear that the rainforest, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, may become a grassy savanna in a matter of decades — with profound effects on the climate worldwide. Biodiversity agreement. Delegates from roughly 190 countries meeting in Canada approved a sweeping United Nations agreement to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 and to take a slew of other measures against biodiversity loss. The agreement comes as biodiversity is declining worldwide at rates never seen before in human history. The start of a new age? A panel of scientists took a step toward declaring a new interval of geological time: the Anthropocene, or age of humans. The amended timeline of Earth’s history would officially recognize that humankind’s effects on the planet had been so consequential as to bring the previous geologic period to a close. A tiny nation’s diplomatic moves. Rising sea levels threaten the very existence of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu and its population of just over 300,000 people. The country’s president now wants a top international court to weigh in on whether nations are legally bound to protect others against climate risks. Transition to renewables. Worldwide, growth in renewable power capacity is set to double by 2027, adding as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, according to the International Energy Agency. Renewables are poised to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by early 2025, the agency found. A landmark deal at COP27. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of climate talks by agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the greenhouse gases from wealthy nations. The deal represented a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at the U.N. summit in Egypt.











Countries also agreed to manage the remaining 70 percent of the planet to avoid losing areas of high importance to biodiversity and to ensure that big businesses disclose biodiversity risks and impacts from their operations.

Now, the question is whether the deal’s lofty targets will be realized.

A previous 10-year agreement failed to fully achieve a single target at the global level, according to the body that oversees the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations treaty that underpins the old agreement and the new one reached here on Monday. But negotiators said they had learned from their mistakes, and the new pact includes provisions to make targets measurable and to monitor countries’ progress.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/climate/biodiversity-cop15-montreal-30x30.html

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