In the early hours of the morning in Montreal today, after two weeks of negotiations at COP15, a historic deal has been made: the world has agreed to a global biodiversity treaty!
 
It’s called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and its goals aren’t expressed in degrees of warming but rather in land and water protected: 30% by 2030 globally.

Source: Breaking news!

As this BBC article explains, the main points of what will be known as the GBF include:

• Maintaining, enhancing and restoring ecosystems, including halting species extinction and maintaining genetic diversity
• “Sustainable use” of biodiversity – essentially ensuring that species and habitats can provide the services they provide for humanity, such as food and clean water
• Ensuring that the benefits of resources from nature, like medicines that come from plants, are shared fairly and equally and that indigenous peoples’ rights are protected
• Paying for and putting resources into biodiversity: Ensuring that money and conservation efforts get to where they are needed.

As Andrew Deutz, our The Nature Conservancy Global Policy Director, says: “In a World Cup metaphor – it really did feel like a championship game heading into extra time in knife-edge fashion.
 
The big difference is that while Messi and teammates now get to luxuriate in a hard-fought victory – for the global biodiversity community, the next phase of hard work already beckons: mainstreaming the framework’s architecture into country-level policy that will deliver meaningful progress where it matters most, across the imperiled ecosystems that represent our planet’s collective life-support system.” 

In this season of giving, every one of us has just received the best possible gift for any living thing who depends on this planet for the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the resources we need.