UN biodiversity summit opens in Colombia with calls for action, finance

The delegates have their work cut out for them, with just five years left to achieve the target of placing 30 per cent of land and sea areas under protection by 2030.
A report by Greenpeace on Monday found that only 8.4 per cent of the global ocean has been designated a Marine Protected Area (MPA).
“We are six years from the end of 2030 and yet almost no progress has been made towards protecting 30 percent of the world’s ocean. At the current rate, we won’t hit 30 per cent protection at sea until the next century,” said Greenpeace policy advisor Megan Randles.
CBD executive secretary Astrid Schomaker told delegates Monday that 34 of the 196 countries signed up to the UN’s biodiversity convention have so far submitted National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans to achieve the UN goals.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which keeps a red list of at-risk animals and plants, more than a quarter of assessed species are threatened with extinction.
Monitored wildlife populations have decreased by 73 percent on average between 1970 and 2020, according to the Living Planet Index, the most comprehensive measure of vertebrate population trends worldwide.
A key goal of the meeting is to agree on a mechanism for sharing the profits and other benefits of genetic information taken from plants and animals, for medicine for example, with the communities they come from – often in lower-income countries.
Every new drug discovered in a tropical forest is worth tens of millions of dollars to a pharmaceutical company, according to scientific estimates.