A third of the earth to be kept for nature by 2030. What deals were done at COP15?

The lesser known, but no less important, biodiversity-based COP15 concludes today with a historic deal to keep 30% of the earth natural by 2030.

Called “30 by 30”, the end-of-decade target to conserve a third of land, fresh water and oceans (a step up from the 17% land and 10% marine areas currently protected) follows two weeks of negotiations between nearly 200 nations at the UN summit in Montreal.

On the agreed to-do list (formally titled the Kunming-Montreal agreement) are 23 targets, including a 30% restoration pledge to be led by Indigenous peoples, a plan to halt human-induced extinction of threatened species, and the reduction of pollution, habitat destruction and climate change. It also includes plans to stamp out invasive species, as demonstrated by the show trial of the cockroach UN delegate.

The agreement replaces the 2010 Aichi biodiversity targets, which achieved little. No goals were met, and no single country ticked off all its targets.

Going forward, countries are expected to set aside $298 billion in public and private money for biodiversity. There is also an expectation that harmful subsidies (the big bucks that propel biodiversity loss) will drop by at least $745 billion a year.

From 2025, developed nations will contribute a base level of $30 billion a year to poorer nations (double the dollar value of what they give now). That’s set to rise to $45 billion a year come 2030.

The closing deal took seven hours to resolve (although some delegates from African nations have claimed no such resolution was met), with the finer details of funding causing tensions between developed and developing nations.

Negotiators from Cameroon, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo argued the deal was finalised by force, not consensus, as China’s environment minister and COP15 president Huang Runqiu simply declared it a done deal.

Officials from host nation Canada said that, abrupt as it may be, the agreement “fit with the UN definition of adoption”.

Conspicuously absent from deliberations were the United States (and the Vatican). Although present at the summit with a formal delegation, the Biden administration was there to watch only. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity has been alive and well for 30 years. The US has never managed to muster a two-thirds majority in the Senate to ratify itself as a party to the agreement.

All this as the world gears up for its sixth mass extinction.