The world now has a plan to save biodiversity. What’s next?

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One day after adopting a landmark plan for preserving and restoring global biodiversity, participants at COP15 in Montreal were coming to grips with how to turn the document’s lofty intentions into meaningful action.

To a large extent the answer will depend on the political leaders to whom the negotiators report – and to public perceptions of how much is at stake.

On Monday, the final day of the United Nations conference on biodiversity, those who steered the negotiations on the new Kunming-Montreal framework positioned it as the best achievable outcome that balanced the diverse interests of the 188 countries that participated in the meeting.

Because the conference was delayed for more than two years by the COVID-19 pandemic, the decadal framework will be in effect for little more than seven years. Yet, to succeed, it must serve as a crucial transition period between generations of harmful overexploitation of nature and a sustainable future.

That will require swift buy-in from signatories to the UN Convention on Biodiversity – the 196 countries that are bound by the new framework – as they look to square their national conservation goals with the 23 specific targets that make up the heart of the deal.

Among them is the “30-by-30″ target, which requires countries to protect 30 per cent of their lands and territorial waters for nature by 2030. Even the United States, which is not a signatory to the convention, has pledged to meet that goal.

Other targets cover everything from financial commitments to conservation, benefit sharing between countries, efforts to recover degraded landscapes, improvements to agricultural practices, curbing the spread of invasive species and much more.

“If we were to assemble in seven years, in 2030, and we would have accomplished everything that is in this agreement, it will be a very different planet,” said Basile van Havre, an official with Environment and Climate Change Canada who, for the past four years, has co-chaired the international working group that laid the groundwork for the document.

COP15 delegates adopt historic agreement to protect nature’s biodiversity

While many details that might have led to a stronger framework were jettisoned in order to reach a consensus by the end of the meeting, the final document still represents a major change that will affect a wide range of sectors and activities, Mr. van Havre said.

He added that part of the challenge in managing this will not just be a matter implementing the complex framework in isolation but in considering how it can best fit with other priorities and targets related to the environment.

“We need to think about how to integrate all those various pieces so that it is simple for the agricultural world, for resource extraction, for the infrastructure people,” Mr. van Havre said. “They don’t want to deal with biodiversity on Monday, climate on Tuesday and another thing on Wednesday. They want an integrated set of requirements so they can adapt and change.”

While climate change and biodiversity loss are interlinked crises, the presence of climate change in the framework document is modest. Target 8 stresses the importance of minimizing the effects of climate change on ecosystems but not the necessity of conserving landscapes to store carbon in order to meet climate goals.

Elsewhere there is mention of the need to optimize investments in a way that jointly benefits biodiversity and climate efforts but only as one of seven subtargets related to financing.

Justina Ray, president and senior scientist of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, said on Sunday that she would have wished to see a much stronger connection drawn between the two, in order to help motivate actions on protecting carbon-rich landscapes at home.

“Canada has a huge role to play in using ecosystems as climate mitigation tools,” Dr. Ray said. “If they don’t then any direct emissions reductions they do will be undermined by the development of some of our precious ecosystems, like peat lands.”

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist turned advocate and global chief scientist for Nature United, a conservation organization, said some of the disconnect can be put down to a desire by delegates not to reduce nature to something that only has value as a buffer against climate change.

But she added that biodiversity loss has yet to reach the same level of public urgency as climate change in part because it is perceived as more remote.

While the effects of climate-linked disasters, such as wildfires and floods, are now a recurring theme, the consequences of biodiversity loss are often less immediate and not experienced or recognized in the same way.

“Many of us who live in urban areas or farms are surrounded by a lack of biodiversity in our lives, to the extent that we don’t understand how our lives depend on the biodiversity of the planet,” Dr. Hayhoe said.

Ultimately this has consequences for the success of the framework, since public awareness is what spurs politicians to act.

Francis Ogwal, a Uganda-based development leader who co-chaired the working group with Mr. van Havre, said that it has no longer become surprising to see world leaders speaking easily and knowledgably about climate change. Yet, he said, there is less talk on biodiversity loss from politicians despite the consequences of nature loss for humans.

“Is it because they don’t know about it or is it because we have not challenged them to talk about it?” Mr. Ogwal said.