Legal & Regulatory News

COP15 finishes with a landmark agreement focused on the protection of natural habitats

On 19 December 2022, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal (known as COP15) concluded with a landmark agreement to guide global action on protecting the natural world through to 2030.

188 government representatives adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), addressing biodiversity loss, the restoration of ecosystems and long-term protection of indigenous rights. The GBF also includes concrete measures to halt and reverse nature loss, with commitments to put 30% of the planet and degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.

The GBF incorporates 23 targets to achieve by 2030, including:

• halting human-induced extinction and reducing the rate of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050;
• sustainable use and management of biodiversity to ensure that nature's contributions to people are valued, maintained and enhanced;
• fair sharing of the benefits from the utilization of genetic resources, and digital sequence information non genetic resources; and
• adequate means of implementing the GDP be accessible to all parties.

Much like at the COP27 submit, finance was at the core of COP15 where it was requested that a Special Trust Fund be created in order to help finance developing nations GBF commitments.

Click here to view the agreements.