Biodiversity on 30% of Earth’s surface to be protected by 2030
States must implement promises made in Montreal
Our planet is currently undergoing a mass extinction event. Human activities are threatening biodiversity and the very foundations of our own life on Earth. This is a concern for all of us and requires a coordinated global response. This response is taking the form of international environmental law.
Within the framework of the Convention on the Protection of Biological Diversity (CBD), negotiations for a new agreement have been ongoing for several years.
On 19 December 2022, a breakthrough has been achieved a the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. The event, that had been scheduled to be held in China in 2020 had to be moved several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has delayed work under the CBD. Under China’s presidency, it was eventually held in Montreal where the secretariat of the CBD is located.
The most important outcome of CPO15 is “30 by 30”: it is planned that by 2030, 30% of the planet will be protected. This is an important event and it is now up to states to ensure that this goal will actually be achieved by implementing the agreement. The Kunming-Montreal agreement is not legally binding per se, meaning that the burden of implementation will be solely on the states. Some African states have been reported to have already indicated a reluctance in achieving this globally important goal.
30 by 30 means that by the year 2030, 30% of all sea and land areas will be given some protected status. The focus will be on measures that protect biodiversity. To put this number in perspective: even in Finland, which has large national parks and protected wilderness areas, only 14 % of the land and 11 % of the marine areas are protected. In many other countries, the protected areas are much smaller. Achieving this goal will be a challenge and in practice, not large and sparsely populated countries will play an important role in this effort, but also localized small-scale efforts that are aimed at protecting biodiversity.
While the spatial approach of protecting 30% of all land and sea areas is the most prominent outcome of COP15, the international community agreed on a range of goals that are to be met by 2030: the loss of biodiversity is to be halted and 30% of all degraded ecosystems are to be restored by 2030. This alone would be a major achievement and it will be require significant international efforts to reach this goal. In addition, states are expected to reduce food waste, excess nutrients, pesticides and dangerous chemicals by half by the end of the decade, to combat overconsumption, reduce harmful subsidies by 500 bn USD per year, spend at least 200 bn USD per year on biodiversity protection and 30 bn USD per year (20 bn USD per year by 2025) on financial transfers to economically disadvantaged countries by the end of the decade.
Other goals agreed to in Montreal include efforts to reduce invasive species and to bring transnational corporations on board in the fight for biodiversity protection, for example by tackling harmful practices in supply chains.
The goals set in Montreal can be achieved, but they will require huge efforts on the international, national, and local levels. So far, the track record of states in the context of environmental protection has not always given reason for optimism. It is not enough to rest on the success achieved in Montreal, and to hope that national governments will do what is necessary. The agreement achieved this week may not be legally binding in the classical international legal sense of the term, but it is a promise made by governments to humankind as a whole. These governments speak for the people they represent and it is up to the people to hold their governments to account for their actions and inactions. The Montreal Agreement provides clearly measurable goals and governments will have to implement measures that will make their realization realistic. Ensuring that this happens is a duty for every citizen in whose names these promises were made.