A landmark global deal to protect nature is struck
At a UN summit in Montreal, nations agreed to protect 30 percent of the planet's land and seas by 2030.
Nations struck a landmark agreement to protect the natural world at a United Nations biodiversity summit in Montreal this December, committing to safeguard 30 percent of the planet's land and oceans by 2030 in what supporters hailed as a potential turning point for life on Earth.
The deal, sometimes compared in significance to the Paris climate agreement, set out a framework of goals and targets to halt and reverse the catastrophic loss of biodiversity driven by human activity. Its headline commitment, known as "30 by 30," aimed to place nearly a third of the planet under some form of protection or conservation within the decade, up from a far smaller share today.
Beyond protected areas, the agreement included targets to restore degraded ecosystems, reduce pollution and the risks from pesticides, reform environmentally harmful subsidies, and mobilise funding for conservation, including support for developing nations and recognition of the vital role of Indigenous peoples as stewards of much of the world's remaining biodiversity.
The agreement came against a backdrop of alarming decline, with scientists warning of a mass extinction driven by habitat loss, overexploitation, pollution and climate change.
As with all such agreements, the true test would lie in implementation, and campaigners cautioned that previous biodiversity targets had been missed. But the Montreal deal set an ambitious global benchmark and a shared sense of direction, offering hope that the world might begin to turn the tide on the destruction of the natural systems on which all life, including humanity, depends.