From Dec 7 to 19, delegates from around the world met at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (also known as COP15), in Montreal, Canada. After two weeks of intense debate at COP15, delegates agreed on Dec 19 to adopt a landmark plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. “Finally, we reached our destiny. We adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” Huang Runqiu, COP15 president and China’s minister of ecology and environment, announced on Dec 19.
The new framework is a commitment by 196 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve at least 30 percent of the Earth’s land and ocean area by the next decade. It also will increase the expected annual financial assistance from developed countries through 2030 to help developing nations with biodiversity protection.
The aim of COP15 is to ensure biodiversity loss is changed by 2030, and that humans are able to live in harmony with nature by 2050.To realize these objectives can be very challenging. At COP10 in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, the parties agreed on the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets (爱知生物多样性目标). But, as of now, none of the 20 objectives has been fully realized.
It is important to turn consensus into effective actions. Yet, as recent talks have shown, an aspect of effective international action on stopping climate change is the cooperation of developed countries. Developed countries, however, have fallen short of their responsibility as they have failed to fulfill the obligations according to the COP convention to provide funding and technology to poorer nations who lack the means to combat climate change.
To solve this problem, the framework creates a new biodiversity fund within the UN’s existing Global Environment Facility. This came about as a compromise between developing nations, which wanted a new fund, and developed countries, which did not. In addition, a global youth initiative (倡议) was also released, hoping young people to be leaders and advocates for biodiversity conservation.
【小题1】What is the aim of COP15?| A．To save at least 30 percent of the Earth’s land and ocean area by next decade. |
| B．To stop biodiversity loss and promote harmony between man and nature. |
| C．To strengthen the cooperation between developed and developing countries |
| D．To provide funding and technology to poorer nations to fight climate change. |
| A．To show the parties didn’t fulfill the obligation |
| B．To show the objectives were too high to realize |
| C．To show it is difficult to realize the objectives of COP 15 |
| D．To show Japan didn’t hold the meeting successfully. |
| A．Statistic. | B．Emotion. | C．Intervention. | D．Agreement. |
| A．International cooperation is important. |
| B．A new framework is made in the COP15. |
| C．Joint efforts are needed to fight climate change. |
| D．Historic COP 15 deals are released on biodiversity. |
