Covid lockdowns on host frustrate scientists as there is no date in sight for key UN conservation convention after two years of delays
China has been asked to set a date for a key UN nature summit this year, amid growing frustration with Beijing and professional considerations that we are sleeping this cataclysmic climate extinction.
After two years of delays, governments were due to meet in Kunming, China, for Cop15 in April to negotiate the decade’s goals to halt and oppose the progressive destruction of ecosystems and wildlife for human civilization. The summit was expected to be a “Paris moment” for biodiversity, with China presiding over a UN primary environmental agreement for the first time.
But after successive pandemic-like delays, and now a Covid-19 outbreak that the Chinese government is suffering to control, there is no date for the summit despite dire clinical warnings about a sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.
At a meeting of the United Nations Office of the Convention on Biological Diversity on Thursday, China was unable to provide a date for the event, which it said could take place by the end of August.
Oscar Soria, crusade director at online activism site Avaaz, said: “It’s that China can’t give answers [about the cop15 date]. This sends the wrong message: that it is not vital and can be postponed, even if we are in an ecological emergency and cannot wait.
“The effects of this conference will have an effect over the next 10 years. We see very pessimistic symptoms that this policeman is not going anywhere,” he said. “The logistics of the Cop are as vital as the substance of the Cop: a poorly organized Cop means that the delegates are in a bad mood and will not be productive. “
With major Chinese cities blocked and strict border restrictions still in place, holding a first foreign event in Kunming, yunnan province, southwest China, is unrealistic.
The UN will now expand a number of venues of choice for Cop15 and make a decision before the final circular of pre-Cop15 negotiations in Nairobi at the end of June. The United Kingdom, France, Canada and Turkey are imaginable destinations if the occasion permits. Moved, as the Guardian understands, although China would retain the presidency of the summit.
A user at Thursday’s meeting, who did not need to be identified, said the possible relocation raised the possibility of an unprecedented standoff if China did not agree to the event moving outside its borders.
The draft targets of the biodiversity agreement to be negotiated at Cop15 include proposals for 30% of land and seas, reduce chemical runoff from agriculture and repair at least a fifth of degraded terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems.
Doug Flynn, a specialist in biodiversity finance, said: “It seems that the political procedure is being ignored, that it is not treated with the seriousness it deserves. Every time you carry it out, you weaken it because you have less time to apply it and make it happen. . . Political procedure is essential because it sets the rules of the game. Politics is the toughest tool we have in this fight.
“For those who have been in the industry for so long, it’s like we’re sleeping through this cataclysmic climate extinction,” he said. you want to change. “