World still falling short on nature pledges: not a single target met
Almost four years after the 2022 Montreal agreement on protecting biodiversity, none of its targets has been fully achieved. Experts warn that at the current pace most pledges will not be met by 2030.
Countries around the world are still lagging behind the nature protection goals they agreed on in 2022 in Montreal, Canada. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, none of the agreement's targets has yet been fully achieved, and experts believe most pledges will probably not be fulfilled by 2030. That means the decline of biodiversity could continue.
What countries promised
The Montreal plan calls for protecting at least 30% of the planet's land and sea areas by 2030, restoring a significant share of degraded ecosystems, and reviewing environmentally harmful subsidies worth at least 500 billion US dollars, phasing them out gradually. The newspaper notes that since the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was established in 1992, the world has not reached any of its previously set global nature targets.
State of nature and obstacles
Scientists warn that roughly one million species face extinction. One example cited is from this August, when more than 3,000 dead fish were found in the River Wensum in England. The deaths are believed to have been caused by pollution that entered the river after heavy rain, at a time when heat had already reduced oxygen levels in the water.
Insufficient funding is one problem: several countries have cut support for international conservation projects in recent years, despite earlier pledges to increase it. At the current rate, the United Kingdom could reach only three of 23 targets by the end of the decade. Political disputes also slow implementation; the European Union's Nature Restoration Regulation was adopted only after lengthy debate and a softening of the original requirements.
October conference in Yerevan
At the UN biodiversity conference COP17 in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, countries are assessing progress and looking for ways to speed up action. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said good intentions alone are not enough and has criticised fossil fuel subsidies.
Experts also point to positive examples: several countries have expanded protected areas, large marine protected areas have been created in French Polynesia, and Kazakhstan is running wildlife restoration projects, including efforts to bring back the Caspian tiger population. Still, the specialists surveyed by The Guardian stress that the main problem is not a lack of new targets but the failure to turn existing promises into action.
