- Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads
- Gauff fights back to reach China Open final
- Recovering Stokes ruled out of first Pakistan Test
- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
- Padres pitcher Musgrove needs elbow surgery
- Supreme Court lets stand rules to curb mercury, methane emissions
- Boston beat Denver in NBA exhibition season opener, but Jokic says omens are good
- Chagos diaspora angry at lack of input on islands' fate
- Biden says 'not confident' of peaceful US election
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- Lukaku stars as Napoli beat Como to hold Serie A top spot
- Ohtani set for MLB playoff debut as Dodgers face Padres
- Pogba's drug ban cut to 18 months from four years
- Devine leads New Zealand to big win over India in Women's T20 World Cup
- Bosnia floods kill 16 people
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Prosecutors seek dismissal of rape charges against French rugby players
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- Bolivia's Morales says claims he raped a minor are a 'lie'
- MLB Reds hire two-time champion Francona as manager
- Daniel Maldini receives first Italy call-up for Nations League
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- Ancelotti points finger at Madrid's 'lack of intensity'
- Haiti reeling after 70 killed in gang attack
- Five Czech kids in hospital over TikTok 'piercing challenge'
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- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
- Odegaard injury has forced Arsenal to be 'different', says Arteta
- Ratcliffe refuses to guarantee Ten Hag's Man Utd future
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Mauritius to hold legislative election on November 10
- Britain qualify for America's Cup final after 60-year wait
- IMF asks Sri Lanka to protect hard-won gains
- Morata returns to Spain Nations League squad after injury
- Irish regulator to probe Ryanair use of facial recognition
- Public allowed to see video evidence in France mass rape trial
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- Under-fire Ten Hag 'together' with Man Utd hierarchy
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UN holds biodiversity talks on deal to stave off mass extinction
Global efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution, protect a third of wild spaces, and ultimately live "in harmony with nature" will dominate UN biodiversity negotiations starting Monday, held in person after a two-year pandemic delay.
Almost 200 countries are due to adopt a global framework this year to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30 percent protected by 2030.
The aim is also to safeguard the "services" nature supplies: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that yields the food we eat.
The meeting in Geneva will set the stage for a crucial UN biodiversity summit, initially due to be held in China in 2020 and postponed several times. It is now expected to take place at the end of August.
Geneva is a chance to strengthen a draft global biodiversity agreement "that many observers feel currently lacks the teeth needed to meaningfully address interconnected biodiversity and climate crises that cannot be solved in isolation", according to the Nature Conservancy.
Campaigners have for years called for a deal on halting biodiversity loss similar to what the Paris Agreement outlined for the climate.
Previous efforts to halt this devastation have fallen short, with countries failing, for example, to meet almost all the biodiversity targets set in 2010.
But despite often being overshadowed by the efforts to combat climate change, the plight of the natural world is no less catastrophic.
Intensive agriculture is depleting the soil and fouled waterways, oceans are overfished, plastics and other pollutants are invading ecosystems and threatening our health.
And now climate change is a growing threat that could compound all of these problems.
Last month, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that nine percent of all the world's species will likely be "at high risk" of extinction even if warming is capped at the ambitious Paris target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In 2019, a report by UN biodiversity experts said one million species could disappear in the coming decades, raising fears that the world is entering its sixth era of mass extinction in the last half-billion years.
"We only know of about 10 percent of the species that exist on Earth. Some disappear without even having been described, nor ever seen by any human being," Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), told AFP.
- Ambition -
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is aiming to reverse that trend with its global framework.
This round of negotiations began in Rome in February 2020 and was swiftly brought to a halt by the Covid-19 pandemic, though online sessions continued and a draft text was finished in 2021.
It is hoped the in-person meeting in Geneva will move the process closer to a global deal at the UN's COP15 summit in China.
"Will we be able to settle everything? That's the big question," Basile van Havre, one of the two co-chairs of the negotiations, told AFP.
The draft outlines some twenty targets for 2030, including the high-profile ambition to protect at least 30 percent of the Earth's land and water habitats.
It also outlines objectives on reducing the amount of fertilisers and pesticides discharged into the environment and cutting at least $500 billion per year of subsidies harmful to Nature and ecosystems.
But as it stands, Guido Broekhoven of WWF said, the text is "not ambitious and comprehensive enough to address the current biodiversity crisis".
Observers will judge whether the mechanisms put in place -- such as monitoring and enforcement -- correspond to the targets set, said Sebastien Treyer, director general of the IDDRI think tank.
There will also be significant attention on the "mobilisation of financial resources", which are of particular importance to the Global South, he said.
Even the goal of the so-called High Ambition Coalition to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 might not be enough, observers said.
"If we do not tackle the indirect causes (of biodiversity loss), in particular production and consumption, there will always be strong erosion," said Juliette Landry, a researcher at IDDRI.
V.Dantas--PC