World leaders pledge more support for nature

World leaders pledged further financial support to nature at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York on Tuesday [20 September].

Leaders from 93 regions and the European Union reaffirmed their commitment to reverse biodiversity loss and secure a 'nature-positive' world by 2030, adding their support to the global campaign to protect and conserve at least 30% of all land and oceans by 2030. A World Economic Forum report from 2021 concluded that around 17% of the world's land is currently under protection. However, for oceans this figure falls to just 7%, with a mere 3% highly protected, highlighting that a lot of work remains to be done.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was among those to promise greater commitment to tackling the global biodiversity crisis, announcing that €1.5 billion per year would be dedicated to international biodiversity funding – more than doubling its current commitments.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged €1.5 billion per year to protect global biodiversity (Olaf Kosinsky / commons.wikimedia.org).

Government officials will soon gather in Montreal, Canada, for COP15, the UN biodiversity summit, in order to adopt a framework to protect nature.

Mr Scholz said that the December conference "needs to be a turning point for our conservation efforts", adding that "we want to send a strong signal for an ambitious outcome of the biodiversity COP15" with regard to this week's funding announcement.

Several world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, repeated their commitments to preserve at least 30% of their land and sea territory by 2030 at the meeting. "Canada is making historic progress to reach our commitment," Trudeau said. "We will continue to mobilise global support to reach this target and protect biodiversity around the planet."

More than half of the world's GDP depends heavily on the natural world, according to a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum. Economists suggest that the world needs be spending as much as $967 billion each year to reverse biodiversity decline by 2030 – in excess of $800 billion a year more than it does at present.