World bio-diversity meet starts in Montreal

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By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, Dec. 8: Governments around the world will spend the next two weeks in Montreal, Canada to discuss the goal to tackle the biodiversity crisis.

The 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity referred to as COP15 started on Wednesday and ends on December 19. World leaders will agree on a new set of goals to guide global action through 2030 to halt and reverse the natural loss.

Nepal is also a part of this global event with other 196 countries. Officials from Nepal are participating in the conference to raise issues related to biodiversity and the fragility due to climate change. The Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoFE) is leading the conference from Nepal and will deliver the message to COP 15. The Environment and Biodiversity Division Chief under MoFE Joint Secretary Megh Nath Kafle is leading Nepal’s delegation.

According to Ganesh Panta, an ecologist at the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, Nepal is progressing in biodiversity conservation through the management of protected areas and forests. “We have formulated various policies and programmes in regard to biodiversity conservation and achieving success in its management through participatory, sustainable and science-based approach,” he said.

While the conference sounds similar to COP27, the recent UN Climate Conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh, the two meetings focus on different but related issues. COP15 aims to achieve a historic agreement to halt and reverse the natural loss.

“Nature loss has far-reaching consequences. Damaged ecosystems exacerbate climate change by releasing carbon instead of storing it. Rampant development is putting animals and humans in closer contact, increasing the risk of diseases like COVID-19 spreading. A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report found that about 60 per cent of human infections are estimated to have an animal origin.

The recent COP27 addressed action under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to these changes. Whereas COP15 focuses on the living world through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a treaty adopted for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and related issues, UNEP said.

According to UNEP, humanity’s existence relies on having clean air, food and a habitable climate, all of which are regulated by the natural world. A healthy planet is also a precursor to resilient economies. More than half of the global GDP – equal to $41.7 trillion – is reliant on healthy ecosystems.

Local population extinctions caused by climate change have been widespread among plants and animals, detected in 47 per cent of 976 species examined and associated with increase in the hottest yearly temperatures, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said.

According to IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report: Working Group II, climate change and its impact are another reason why this COP is important. ‘Climate change has altered marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems all around the world and all biodiversity hotspots are impacted, to differing degrees, by human activities,” it said.

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