By appointing six ministers as special envoys for the most sensitive issues, China hopes to save the deadlocked negotiations on a new world agreement on nature. In confidential talks, the troubleshooters should level the remaining obstacles on the way to the most important environmental agreement since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, as announced by Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu as President of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal on Thursday.
Runqiu named State Secretary in the German Development Ministry, Jochen Flasbarth, as one of two mediators in the particularly sensitive issue of mobilizing sufficient funds for the implementation of the agreement. Flasbarth wrote on Twitter that he and Rwandan Environment Minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya would do everything in their power to reach an agreement over the next few days.
A duo of ministers was also appointed to resolve the dispute about what percentage of the earth’s surface should be protected and restored in the future, as well as to find a compromise on the issue of access to genetic information on various animal, plant and microbial species.
He is determined to reach an agreement on all remaining issues by Monday at the latest, Runqiu said. The special representatives should report daily. China’s President Xi Jinping also urged progress in a video message. “We must advance the global process of protecting biodiversity,” Xi said. A failure of the COP – the first major UN project under Chinese leadership – would mean embarrassment for the up-and-coming country.
The negotiating delegations from numerous developing countries left the consultations in protest
By midnight on Monday, the ministers of the 196 member states of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity – all countries in the world with the exception of the USA and the Vatican – are to adopt the new international treaty on nature. According to the current status, the agreement contains 22 goals with which the extinction of species and the unchecked destruction of habitats should be stopped by 2030 and nature should be put on a path to recovery.
The goals include the drastic reduction of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture as well as an end to plastic pollution, more sustainable food production and the preservation of the remaining wilderness areas on all continents. Science, environmental organizations and many states expect a Montreal agreement to be as important for nature and climate protection as the Paris climate agreement, which was agreed almost exactly seven years ago to the day after dramatic negotiations.
The dispute over funding for nature conservation in developing countries has grown into a serious threat to the success of the conference in recent days. The negotiating delegations of numerous developing countries had demonstratively left the deliberations on Tuesday night and Wednesday in protest against what they saw as being too rigid an attitude on the part of the industrialized countries. At the heart of the dispute is the demand by the developing countries for new financial commitments and the establishment of their own biodiversity fund, through which the financial transfers to finance the agreement should flow.