Commentary: How to make COP15 a success

MONTREAL, Canada, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- A crucial United Nations (UN) conference on biodiversity is going to feature a high-level negotiation on Thursday, with the hope of building more consensus on a final deal to protect nature.

As COP15, formally known as the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, enters a defining moment, stakeholders must bear in mind that global teamwork matters for delivering a successful outcome at COP15, and thus setting the world on a path of reversing biodiversity loss.

Biodiversity loss, like climate change, is a global challenge in urgent need of worldwide solution. No country can stand alone against this test.

Relevant parties are required to agree on an ambitious but also realistic post-2020 global biodiversity framework as scheduled to bring real changes to the current situation.

In this process, lessons should be learnt with regards to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets which expired in 2020 and had not been fulfilled before the deadline. Resource mobilization and global monitoring mechanisms must be set up in the new action plan to ensure its full implementation.

More importantly, the world must act fast. Statistics show that biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate as a result of human activities.

One million plant and animal species face extinction within decades -- a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than would have been the result of natural causes, warned the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in 2019. Globally, 97 percent of the ecosystem has been degraded, according to the United Nations.

Humans rely on biodiversity to survive. If actions are not taken now, human society itself will be teetering on the brink.

It is also essential that no one be left behind in biodiversity protection. Developed countries must provide financial and technical support for the countries of the Global South to protect nature.

Only if all parties participate in this joint global action and shoulder their due share of responsibilities can a brighter future for biological diversity become a reality.

China holds the presidency of COP15. The second phase of COP15, scheduled on Dec. 7-19, follows the phase-one meeting held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, with the continued theme of "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth."

Just as Huang Runqiu, COP15 president and China's minister of ecology and environment, has said, a successful COP15 outcome can stand the test of time.

"When in the year 2030, both developed countries and developing countries find their goals and commitments being fulfilled, we can call it a real success," he said.