On December 19th 2022, 190 nations across the globe, through a sweeping UN (United Nations) agreement, have planned to protect thirty per cent of earth’s marine and land resources from being jeopardised in future. The secondary objective is also to stop the declining biodiversity and extinction of several species, including flora and fauna.
The deal or the agreement will focus on 23 conservation targets. The most prominent one will be placing many land and sea areas under protection. It is also called 30X30.Additionally, the countries will protect the remaining seventy per cent of the planet from losing areas of high importance to biodiversity and ensure that big businesses disclose biodiversity risks.
There are several reasons for the loss of biodiversity. Human Beings and their activities are the main contributors. Land resources are being exploited in the name of agriculture. Sea resources are used by unregulated fishing and mining. Other factors include hunting, climate change, pollution and logging.
The agreement will cover and address all these issues in detail. A large amount of biodiversity lives in the countries of the Global South (Africa, Asia and Latin America). However, nations in this grouping lack the financial resources to restore ecosystems, reform harmful agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry practices; and conserve threatened species.
Developing countries pushed hard for more money, with dozens of countries from Latin America, Africa and South East Asia walking out of meetings on Wednesday in protest that they weren’t being heard. The Democratic Republic of Congo, along with several other African countries, also spoke in protest.
Joseph Onoja, a Nigerian biologist, has stated that the former developed nations and colonial powers had grown rich by exploiting the land and other natural resources of developing nations and now, when countries of the Global South are using resources, developed nations are telling them to preserve these in the name of conservation. He has severely criticised the Global North (Europe, America, Australia) but has supported biodiversity conservation.
The previous 10-year agreement failed to achieve a single global target, according to the body that oversees the Convention on Biological Diversity. This UN treaty underpins the old deal, and the new one reached here on Monday.
But negotiators said they had learned from their mistakes, and the new pact includes provisions to make targets measurable and to monitor countries’ progress. Anne Larigauderie, an ecologist and the executive secretary of the intergovernmental scientific platform on biodiversity, known as IPBES, praised the overall agreement as ambitious and quantified.
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