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The United Nations must get its new biodiversity targets right

Global goals to reduce biodiversity loss will be revised this year. All eyes are on China, which must ensure the new targets are measurable and meaningful.

Concerned URL	https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00450-5
Source	Nature-Editorial 18 February 2020
Release date	20/02/2020

Most measures of biodiversity suggest that things are going badly wrong. Some one million plant and animal species face extinction, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). And French President Emmanuel Macron last week called the battle for biodiversity and climate change “the fight of the century”.

A decade ago, countries united to create a 10-year plan, sub-divided into 20 targets, for protecting and conserving natural systems. The plan, also known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, expires at the end of this year — and most of the targets will not have been reached. Between 24 and 29 February, representatives of the international community will meet in Rome to discuss a new plan. A lot is at stake, and it’s vital that the world unites behind the effort.

The meeting will consider a draft of an updated set of global goals, which must be agreed by the summer. Then, in October, world leaders will gather in Kunming, China, for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. China will be in the chair, the first time it will lead on a conference of the parties to one of the ‘big two’ global environmental conventions.