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.
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“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).
