COP15: the less well-known environmental conference sister

On Wednesday, 7th December, the world governments will meet in Montreal, Canada, for COP15. But wait, didn't COP just happen?

Yes, the more famous one did. COP27, which took place in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, was centred around halting climate change, specifically keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels and finding an international consensus on how it can be done.

COP15 is the much-delayed biodiversity sister, which is far less talked about because it does not have an annual conference and a single punchy goal to go with it. The conference, which has been postponed since 2020 due to COVID, is centred around the commitments to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and it has three main aims that the conference proposals and targets all seek to address: sustainable use of biodiversity, sharing benefits from genetic resources (getting access to natural resources, such as plants of a specific country, and the traditional knowledge that might come with its usage for research and development), and conservation. According to scientists, the Earth is experiencing the sixth mass extinction and the largest one since the time of the dinosaurs. Therefore, there is no time to waste in protecting the biodiversity of our planet.

Some of the ideas proposed for COP15 are a draft target to protect 30% of land and sea from development and usage globally, limiting the spread of invasive species and monitoring the impact of nature from major businesses. Similarly to COP27, a balance between nature-rich and nature-poor countries will have to be negotiated, something like the loss and damage fund that was established in Sharm El Sheikh to help countries most impacted by climate change to deal with its effects. Such a fund is vital, because the countries that have historically contributed the least to the global environmental crisis often feel most harshly the penalising effects of restrictions on their economic development, as well as the consequences of warming global temperatures on their populations and landscapes.

As the talks commence in just a few days on how to reverse the biodiversity crisis, bring in the question at hand to your class. COP15 are proposing saving 30% of land and sea as protected areas for future generations, but some scientists claim we would be required to put 50% of the Earth aside to regain balance with nature on our planet. What would that look like? What could it provide, or return, to our planet, and who would be left out?