In Focus: New goals and vision for biodiversity conservation

At 1:58 pm on December 20, 2022, Beijing time, the second part of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) came to a successful conclusion, with the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), including four goals and 23 targets for achievement by 2030.

Driven by human activities, Earth’s creatures are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs. One million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades. Therefore, this agreement adopted in the second part of CBD COP15 is encouraging, drawing a new blueprint for global biodiversity governance by 2030 and beyond.

Now, let’s go back to 2020. 2020 marked a critical year for biodiversity, when the 2011-2020 Strategic Framework for Biodiversity and its Aichi Targets expired. The Aichi Biodiversity Conservation Targets (known as the Aichi Targets for short), the first 10-year biodiversity conservation targets in the world, were adopted in the 10th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity held on October 2010. Unfortunately, none of the 20 Aichi Targets that were   planned to be completed in 10 years, had been fully met in the end.

As the second part of CBD COP15 ended with landmark biodiversity agreement, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), emphasized that implementation is now key: “Success will be measured by our rapid and consistent progress in implementing what we have agreed to. The entire UN system is geared to support its implementation so we can truly make peace with nature.”

In the future, global biodiversity conservation will focus on the implementation of this new framework, the performance of all parties, and etc. The next eight years will be a critical period for biodiversity conservation, as well as a period for the implementation of this ambitious framework.

This month’s issue focuses on the second part of CBD COP15 and GBF issues. We look forward to achieving our goals and vision for biodiversity conservation, guided by four long-term goals and 23 targets for achievement by 2030.