The Irish Times view on the Cop15 summit on biodiversity

Nature’s precarious state has been the backdrop to the Cop15 biodiversity conference in Montreal, which is entering its final days. Executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Mrema put it starkly: loss of biodiversity is at unprecedented levels due to human activities, with 97 per cent of ecosystems altered, 75 per cent of land and 85 per cent of wetlands degraded and 50 per cent of coral reefs having disappeared. The picture on accelerating species loss is equally grim.

As a consequence, distress is often detectable among negotiators, participants at side events and activists. It comes with disbelief; how could governments have accepted for so long the decline of nature as an acceptable price of progress? It is a hard lesson for polluting economies and equally applies to Ireland, where habitat decline and water quality deterioration continue, with intensive agriculture most to blame.

Cop15′s difficulties are compounded by a lack of awareness of the need for biodiversity action compared to acceptance of the case for ramped-up climate action, though they are interrelated emergencies. Without healthy nature, containing global temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees is impossible. A walkout by developing countries during discussions on “resource mobilisation”, the vital funding needed, flagged that an agreement without substance will not wash.

A strong outcome would nail down protection of 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030 with detailed actions to ensure “a nature positive” world. This is what science requires; it is nature’s equivalent of the climate goals of 1.5 degrees and net-zero emissions by 2050. There should be tangible targets to ensure a collective response, backed by resource mobilisation directed mainly at poorer countries, robust delivery mechanisms and verifiable indicators of progress.

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Co-hosts China and Canada have parked differences on other issues to set out a potentially historic outcome but guile, while maximising political flexibility, will be essential if there is to be a meaningful agreement.