After two weeks of intense debate at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, delegates from around the world agreed on Monday to adopt Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
The new framework is a commitment by 196 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to agree on key issues, including four goals and 23 targets, resource mobilization and Digital Sequence Information, or DSI.
The agreement includes a commitment to raise at least $200 billion per year by 2030 in financial flows from "all sources", including public and private sectors, to "progressively" close the finance gap of $700 billion per year.
It also will increase the expected annual financial assistance from developed countries through 2030 to help developing nations with their biodiversity goals.
The international financial flows from developed to developing countries -- in particular least developed countries, small island developing states and countries with economies in transition -- are set to raise at least $20 billion per year by 2025, and $30 billion per year by 2030.
It aims to conserve at least 30 percent of the Earth's land and ocean resources by the next decade. It also calls for having restoration completed or underway on at least 30 percent of degraded terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine ecosystems.
Furthermore, it promises to reduce government subsidies that are harmful to nature by at least $500 billion per year, addresses the rights of indigenous people, and calls for gender equity in the implementation of the framework.
Agreement on adopting the milestone Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework came after four years of discussions and two weeks of intense negotiations. It is the first global framework on biodiversity since the Aichi Biodiversity Targets were adopted 12 years ago.
The second part of COP15 follows the first phase of the meeting in Kunming in October 2021. China remains the president of the conference with the theme, "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth."
