“This COP is our chance to start protecting and repairing the web of life,” the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme said at the opening press conference.
Amid high security and tight COVID-19 measures, governments of the world started gathering at Montreal’s Palais des congrès on Tuesday, with a lofty goal: save nature by 2030.
However, preliminary negotiations held over the previous three days produced little progress on the “global biodiversity framework” that countries are hoping to sign.
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“We are all united by a profound link to nature on which our survival depends on this planet,” federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told reporters at an opening press conference.
About 20,000 delegates from almost 200 countries are gathering for two weeks to negotiate an eight-year plan to preserve and restore biodiversity.
Biodiversity — essentially nature, from insects, plants and animals to the forests, streams and oceans they live in — is under threat due to deforestation, overfishing, invasive species, industrial farming, pollution and climate change, experts say.
Around the world, an estimated one million animal and plant species face extinction this century.
Though Canada-China relations have been rocky in recent years, the two countries have put aside some of their differences to jointly hold the conference, known as COP15, after severe lockdowns in China led organizers to seek a new venue.
Sitting beside Guilbeault was Huang Runqiu, China’s minister of ecology and environment, serving as president of the meeting.
Thanking Canada for hosting, he told reporters biodiversity is at a crossroads. “This is a historic moment — urgent action is required.”
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, told reporters biodiversity underpins human existence.
“It is the food we eat; the water we need, we use, we drink; the clear air we want to breathe; the goods and services we have; the climate regulation, and the list goes on.”
Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said the world must come together in Montreal.
“We need to agree to make peace with nature,” she said. “We can’t afford to continue thrashing a path through the fragile web of nature and biodiversity, to clear the way for human development.
“This COP is our chance to start protecting and repairing the web of life.”
Guilbeault was pressed on the fact that Canada didn’t meet the targets set in the last international biodiversity agreement, signed in 2010.
“We didn’t achieve our targets before because we didn’t give ourselves the means to do it, and frankly (that’s) true of what we’re seeing internationally” as well, he said in response to a question.
Guilbeault said the Trudeau government has now committed “a record level of investment” on the environment.
“When we came to power in 2015, Canada wasn’t even protecting two per cent of its oceans and coastline,” he said. “We’re at 15 per cent now. So basically in the next seven years, we have to redo what we did over the past seven years.”
Negotiators in Montreal are hashing out a series of goals.
Among the targets envisioned: preserving 30 per cent of the world’s land and water by 2030, and accepting the fair and equitable sharing of benefits of genetic resources — in medicine, for example. Developed countries typically benefit more from such resources than the developing countries where they often originate.
Trillions of dollars will be needed, experts say, with governments, the private sector and philanthropy required to spend up to $700 billion annually.
However, negotiators face major hurdles before countries can agree to the ambitious goals scientists say are needed to protect and restore biodiversity.
Consensus is required and preparatory meetings that ended Monday produced few results, officials admitted Tuesday.
At a separate press conference, Guido Broekhoven from the World Wildlife Fund said the preliminary negotiation results were “meagre.”
“After three days of intense negotiations … parties failed to agree on even some of the most fundamental elements of the framework text.”
Broekhoven, the WWF’s head of policy research and development, added: “There are actually two versions of the document on the table. Parties kept going back and forth between the two versions. There are still discussions about the structure of the framework, with negotiations about whether certain sections should be integrated or kept separate.”
Until COP15 concludes on Dec. 19, negotiators and other delegates will be in an international bubble at the Palais des congrès.
A three-metre-high security fence surrounds the convention centre, with officers from three police forces — local, provincial and federal — standing guard at entrances, checking IDs. On Tuesday morning, a group of officers who appeared to be from a tactical squad were at the ready a block away.
Police say it’s the biggest security operation in the city in at least 20 years, with Montreal police alone expected to spend $25 million.
Multiple protests are planned by the Anti-Capitalist and Ecologist Coalition, with thousands of CEGEP and university students set to strike in opposition to COP15.
The people behind the protests say international biodiversity efforts are a sham, fuelled by business interests that will “accentuate the exploitation of the territories of Indigenous Peoples as well as the destruction of ecosystems.”
COP15 organizers are also taking measures to protect the health of delegates who have come from every corner of the world.
When they pick up conference badges, delegates must show proof of vaccination before being given an anti-COVID kit that includes 20 KN95 masks, 25 rapid tests and hand sanitizer.
Masks are mandatory at the conference. And before entering, every delegate must present a negative COVID test.
On Tuesday afternoon, an opening ceremony is scheduled to take place.
It is to include a ceremonial welcome from Tadodaho Sid Hill, traditional chief of the Onondaga Nation.
That event will also include addresses from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and China’s ecology and environment minister.
ariga@postmedia.com
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