“Historic”, “strong”, “transformational”: the Kunming-Montreal Agreement was very well received on Monday in environmental and scientific circles. In the end, the 23 targets of the global framework differ little from those long negotiated by countries in recent years, even before the opening of the UN conference on biodiversity (COP15) held in Montreal.
“It’s an agreement which is satisfactory insofar as it is very close to the initial agreement, so all the figures have been kept. In some cases, such as with land restoration, there is even an increase in ambition levels,” says the Homework Anne Larigauderie, the administrative secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a sort of “IPCC of biodiversity”.
Protected areas, pesticides, releases of fertilizers into the environment, food waste: precise reductions, expressed in percentages, are part of the final agreement. Of course, other aspects of the agreement are more vague and risk suffering from the subjective interpretation of less zealous governments. The “sustainable” use of wild species, for example, is not subject to any numerical framework. Nor is plastic pollution – it should be noted, however, that this must be the subject of another UN agreement by 2024.
A few details tickle observers, who are generally satisfied. In addition to 23 targets, four “goals” are also an integral part of the Kunming-Montreal Accord. However, in one of these objectives, the milestones initially planned for 2030 to counter the risks of extinction which weigh on the species have finally been erased. All that remains are the aims for 2050, a horizon that is still very distant. “We are a little freewheeling on these issues,” laments Ms. Larigauderie.
Nevertheless: the vast majority of scientific and environmental groups that followed the work of COP15 see the agreement as a significant achievement. The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Biodiversity meanwhile welcomed the “powerful choice of words about respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities” in the final agreement.
“I believe we can celebrate a truly ambitious and transformative agreement,” Marco Lambertini, chief executive of the World Wide Fund for Nature, said at a press conference Monday morning. His voice was sometimes choked with emotion. “We have agreed that it is time to decouple our economic growth from the destruction of the environment,” he added, praising the “epic work” of the conference presidency, China. , and the host country, Canada.
In terms of agriculture, the text imposes a 50% reduction in the “risks” associated with pesticides. According to Ms. Larigauderie, this is good news: in fact, some products are much more toxic than others. This wording will ensure that agrochemical companies will have to attack the heart of the problem, that is to say, to reduce the total toxicity of pesticides that make their way to ecosystems, and not only to reduce the use of the least concentrated substances.
Global Biodiversity Fund
On the financial front, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) reacted positively to the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Accord. It is this organization which will be in charge of establishing a new global fund for biodiversity, which the rich countries promise to endow with tens of billions of dollars a year. Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO of the GEF said he was “honored and extremely delighted” with this mandate, which he intends to accomplish “as quickly as possible”.
Parading on the podium of the press conferences in the afternoon, certain organizations obviously expressed critical comments about the agreement concluded during the night. Some of them were particularly worried about the fact that the text was adopted by the Chinese presidency “en bloc”, without reviewing the opinions of each of the countries in plenary.
Climate change – one of the major causes of the loss of biodiversity, along with the destruction of habitats, pollution and the overexploitation of species – has not been the subject of particularly ambitious new measures in Montreal. The Sierra Club Foundation of Canada welcomes the agreement, but regrets that the text does not “recognize the threat posed by the exploitation of fossil fuels”, like the Bay du Nord project in Canada.
Sustainable land management
Beyond the sums invested by the governments, will the agreement be able to provoke the reform of the practices of the big companies which destroy nature? A target provides for the sustainable management of territories where agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry are practiced, but without specifying a quantified objective.
Sabaa Khan of the David Suzuki Foundation believes the text is biting enough to achieve this. “In the framework, there are signals for investors. We are talking about eliminating harmful subsidies for biodiversity, it will influence economic systems, ”she said to the Homework. The objective in this regard is also titanic: to reduce harmful subsidies by at least 500 billion US dollars by 2030.
According to Ms. Khan, the Kunming-Montreal Agreement will be neither more nor less than the “strategic plan” for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. ‘a transformational approach,’ she stresses. “Everything we need for this societal transformation, in terms of fundamental principles, is found in the framework [signé à Montréal]. Now it’s a matter of accountability, transparency and implementation. »