As countries prepare to negotiate a new global agreement to protect Earth’s environment, the head of the United Nations warned there was no time to lose.
“Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told delegates to the COP15 biodiversity summit at an opening ceremony on Tuesday in Montreal.
“This conference is our chance to stop this orgy of destruction,” he said.
More than 1 million species, especially insects, are now threatened with extinction, vanishing at a rate not seen in 10 million years. As much as 40% of Earth’s land surfaces are considered degraded, according to a 2022 U.N. Global Land Outlook assessment.
Negotiators hope that the two-week U.N. summit yields a deal that ensures there is more “nature” — animals, plants, and healthy ecosystems — in 2030 than what exists now. But how that progress is pursued and measured will need to be agreed by all 196 governments under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
