This should have been the last stop before the 15e United Nations world conference (COP15) on biodiversity. But the discussions which end on Tuesday March 29 in Geneva (Switzerland) finally progressed at a much slower pace than expected, giving rise to frustrations and concerns about the rest of the process. At the end of their work, the some 2,000 delegates who met for two weeks failed to agree on a draft text that could be, as it stands, negotiated and then adopted by the Heads of State. and government to put an end to the destruction of life.
In Geneva, representatives of more than 150 countries met for the first time after two years of remote discussions. Postponed three times due to the Covid pandemic, COP15 opened in formal fashion in October 2021 in Kunming, China, and the actual negotiations are now expected at the end of August – the official dates have still not been announced. announced by Beijing. “We had clearly underestimated the need for delegates to express themselves, recognizes Basile van Havre, the co-chair of the working group in charge of drafting the future global framework. It slowed down the process and we didn’t go as far as hoped. »
75% of the earth’s surface has already been altered by man
COP15 should enable the adoption of a new roadmap aimed at halting the erosion of biodiversity by 2030. The stakes are crucial: species are disappearing at an unprecedented rate, more than a million is threatened with extinction and 75% of the earth’s surface has already been altered by man. Experts and observers hope that this meeting will arouse an awareness and a start similar to those caused by the Paris climate agreement concluded in 2015.
In Geneva, the discussions did not reflect this sense of urgency, sometimes giving the impression of starting from scratch. The draft global framework presented in July, resulting from the online working sessions and articulated around four major objectives for 2050 and 21 targets for 2030, served as a basis for the discussions. But instead of reaching consensus on these milestones, delegates put many proposals back on the table. “The Co-Chairs had submitted a draft global framework written in simple and effective language and they expected it to be further strengthened and improved, notes Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity. Instead, a lot of stuff has been added and each sentence is now ten or twelve lines long with lots of stuff in parentheses! »
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