What’s happening in Yerevan these days has huge implications: the fate of billions of people suffering from biodiversity loss depends on what progress will be made in Yerevan in the next two weeks. Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), on Monday stated this at the plenary session of the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the CBD, being held in the capital of Armenia.

Four years ago, in Montreal, the world came together and adopted an ambitious blueprint for living in harmony with nature: the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It was a turning point for multilateral cooperation on environmental protection. At that time, the international community united around a shared vision and 23 targets, the mission of which is to halt and restore biodiversity loss by the year 2030, the UN official said.

It is necessary to align national efforts with global ambitions, financial flows with the needs of nature, and consumption and production processes with the limited resources of our planet, Schomaker noted.

There are only four years left until 2030. In order to further intensify respective actions, it is necessary to create conditions for a much broader engagement of the global community, she added.

No country, no economy, and no society is immune from the consequences of biodiversity loss. At the same time, it is also quite obvious that measures aimed at protecting nature are truly effective, the UN official stated.

At the same time, all decisions made must be anchored in the latest scientific data. The Yerevan conference also provides an opportunity to discuss policy coordination and harmonization, including through strengthening cooperation, which will be a powerful impetus for progress. However, even the most literate decisions adopted at this conference will remain only on paper if the necessary conditions for their implementation are not created, Schomaker concluded.