The world’s leaders, Environment Ministers and thousands of people representing all strands of society have been gathered in the Canadian city of Montreal over the past two weeks to finalise a new global deal for nature, the so-called Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The meeting, dubbed ‘COP15’, which has been chaired by the government of China and hosted by Canada, was the culmination of three years of intense talks between governments under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

The negotiators have spent well over fifty hours in Montreal reviewing and negotiating every word of the text, the final version of which finally received the seal of approval in the early hours of 19th December 2022.

But does the agreement represent the ‘transformative change’ the world has been anticipating? Will it prove to be the catalyst for halting and reversing the catastrophic decline in nature caused by our destructive activities?

Responding to the adoption of the framework, Born Free’s International Policy Specialist Adeline Lerambert said: “In the final analysis, while the Global Biodiversity Framework by no means contains everything we would have wanted to see, it does represent a recognition by the global community that wildlife is in dire crisis, and that we need to seriously change our relationship with nature for its sake and for our own.

“Our advocacy efforts over the past three years and during the conference itself, alongside those of the like-minded organisations and individuals with which we work, have helped ensure the inclusion of many of our key priorities for reducing wildlife exploitation and trade and protecting animal (and by extension human) health and well-being, albeit with less emphasis on the need for bold and urgent action than we would have liked. At the very least, the framework provides us with a set of goals and targets against which we can hold governments to account.”

In order to gain the consensus required under the UN Convention’s rules, politics has inevitably intervened, compromises have been struck, and some aspects of the text are vague or weak as a result. The process by which progress towards achieving the objectives of the agreement will be assessed is also far from comprehensive and will require further rounds of negotiations leading up to COP16 in Turkey in two years’ time.

Key issues of contention have included how and by whom biodiversity protection and recovery should be funded, and how the benefits arising from biodiversity and genetic resources can be equitably shared between regions, countries and communities. Nevertheless, the 196 governments that are party to the Convention have agreed on some positive steps for nature, wildlife and people.

Born Free’s Head of Policy Dr Mark Jones added: “Whether the framework will prove to be the catalyst that enables the Convention to achieve its vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’ by 2050 will depend on how committed governments across the world prove to be to its comprehensive and robust application. At Born Free we will continue to do all we can to persuade governments to implement, and indeed go well beyond, the measures they have agreed here in Montreal to halt and reverse nature’s decline. The future of all life on earth, including our own, depends on it.”

The measures that governments have agreed to implement are contained within four long-term goals for 2050, and 23 action-oriented targets to be initiated straight away and completed by 2030.