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Nearly 200 countries agreed to take steps over the next 10 years to protect the world’s diversity of animals and plants.
Under the agreement reached Monday in Montreal, the countries, led by China and Canada but which didn’t include the U.S., agreed to conserve 30% of their land, inland waterways and coastal and ocean areas. They also agreed to limit the risks of pesticides and cut nutrient runoff from farms.
Signatories to the deal said it would mark a big step toward protecting the planet’s biodiversity if countries met their targets by 2030.
The agreement represents “a first step in resetting our relationship with the natural world,” said
Inger Andersen,
the undersecretary general of the United Nations and executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.
Yet the deal wasn’t legally binding, and countries may not have the tens of billions of dollars needed to take concrete action. Countries have failed to abide by similar agreements in the past.
Brazil and Indonesia were among countries that signed onto the new agreement but asked for funding. The Vatican wasn’t part of the deal, in addition to the U.S.
The deal could help improve the planet’s future, said Basile van Havre, a co-chair for the working group that negotiated the agreement language, but “it’s going to be difficult, painful and costly to get there.”
The U.S. sent a delegation to Montreal to participate in discussions but it didn’t sign the pact because it isn’t a signatory of a 1992 international treaty encouraging biodiversity conservation. Though Bill Clinton signed the treaty shortly after becoming president, the Senate didn’t ratify it.
The U.S. will work to reach the framework’s targets, a State Department spokesman said. U.S. officials have said they supported a 30% conservation target.
The U.S. is probably more in compliance with agreement goals than most member countries, said Kilaparti Ramakrishna, director of the marine policy center at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
The deal, known as the Kunmin-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, is aimed at curbing the decline or disappearance of species, known as biodiversity loss.
The world has been losing species of plants and animals in recent years, which many scientists attribute to factors including overfishing, farming practices and destruction of habitats due in part to climate change and industrial and agricultural development.
Under the framework, nations agreed to nearly two-dozen targets for trying to reduce the biodiversity loss, including restoring at least 30% of land, water, coastal and marine ecosystems where it is more difficult for species to survive and reproduce.
Countries signing the deal also pledged to reduce nutrient runoff from farming and other practices by at least half and minimize the introduction of invasive species.
Governments also pledged to ensure that transnational companies disclose their impact on biodiversity, and that wild species harvesting and trade is done safely and legally, to reduce the risk of pathogens spilling over between species.
—William Mauldin contributed to this article.
Write to Aylin Woodward at aylin.woodward@wsj.com
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