This December, the race to protect the planet's biodiversity will be front and center when representatives from countries around the world gather in Montreal, Canada, for the United Nation's Biodiversity Conference, referred to as COP15. You may have heard of COP27, the UN Climate Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which wrapped up in November. Despite sharing the name COP (Conference of Parties), the two events are designed to focus on different areas of policy and specific points of negotiation. COP15 stands for the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties for biodiversity. It runs for two weeks, starting December 7 in Montreal, Canada. COP15—along with previous meetings—is centered around the Convention on Biological Diversity, a 1992 international agreement on how nations should use and protect the world's natural resources. The agreement has been ratified or accepted by 196 countries. The United States is not part of that list, though US government representatives will participate in Montreal.
The text above comes from The Nature Conservancy. As this major international conference comes to a close, it is a significant summit you might never know is happening from reading our newspapers. The Guardian carried an op-ed by an exasperated anonymous negotiator at the talks. “Even by the glacial standards of UN biodiversity negotiations, Cop15 has been slow. We have been in Montreal for more than a week and I am flabbergasted at the lack of progress,”
CREDIT: The Nature Conservancy
