OPINION | Biodiversity Goal Can Be Achieved in the Southern Ocean
Opinion by Pascal Lamy and Genevieve Pons
According to a UN press release, the Sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 16) will take place October 21-November 1, in Cali, Colombia. Parties to the Convention will review the state of implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted last year at COP15. More information here. It will be broadcast live on UN Web TV.
– COP16, the much-anticipated follow-up talks to the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreement, which aims to reverse an alarming loss of nature on land and sea, opens in Cali, Colombia.
Sometimes described as the “Paris Agreement for nature”, this legal framework agreed under the Chinese Presidency of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity’s 15th COP, calls on the international community to reverse the biodiversity crisis, including by protecting 30 percent of the world’s land and 30 percent of its marine areas by 2030.
But, two years later, the world remains alarmingly off track. In the marine realm, for example, only 8.35 percent of the world’s ocean is currently protected. It is inconceivable that the 30X30 commitment will be met without a rapid expansion of protections in the high seas and Southern Ocean, which encompass nearly two-thirds of the global ocean.
Now time is running out.
Credit: ASOC
Source: ipsnews.net
