Negotiations to reach an agreement to protect biodiversity were opened on Monday (14) in Geneva with the aim of closing the pact before the end of the year.
Almost 200 countries are involved in these discussions to, among other goals, protect 30% of the planet’s surface.
The meeting in Geneva is an intermediate step before the convening of the Conference of the Parties (COP15), based in China and which has been postponed several times because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The world is ready to take urgent action to protect nature,” explained the secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, quoted in the statement.
“We don’t have time to waste. Together we have to reach a truly historic agreement that will clearly set us on the path to a life in harmony with nature”, he added.
The trading round will last until March 29.
It is the first face-to-face meeting of the negotiators since February 2020 and the last one before COP15, which was due to take place in mid-April in the Chinese city of Kunming.
However, a new postponement is already in sight due to the new outbreaks of the Covid-19 pandemic in China. In Geneva, new dates are already proposed, according to the CBD secretariat.
A statement by UN biodiversity experts (IPBES) revealed in 2019 that in the coming decades up to one million species could disappear.
Intensive agriculture depletes land, oceans are depleted by overfishing, plastics and other pollutants threaten human health, and climate change changes ecosystems.
The world framework negotiated in the CBD wants to reverse the trend, after the failure of States to enforce their established commitments.
