COP15, held in Montreal last year, produced some big wins for nature.
One of the most important outcomes was the adoption of a new agreement: the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
The GBF was adopted on 19 December 2022 by 188 countries to guide global action on nature.
The newly adopted framework will now set the global biodiversity action agenda for the next two decades. It is made up of 4 global goals to be achieved by 2050 and 23 global targets to be achieved by 2030.
These are broken up into four broad topics in alignment with the goals, including:
- biodiversity conservation and restoration
- nature’s contribution to people
- access and benefit sharing
- tools and solutions for mainstreaming and implementation.
A cornerstone of the GBF is the target to conserve 30 percent of the world’s land and 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030, widely known as the 30×30 pledge.
Australia has signed up to this agreement. We are one of 17 countries in the world described as ‘mega diverse’ and our government has been actively engaged in the negotiations that led to the adoption of the GBF. The agreement now provides a guiding framework to inform our domestic biodiversity conservation priorities going forward.
You can download a copy of the agreement here.
And you can read more about the Australian Government’s position on the GBF here.