Some of the worst effects of climate change have been on display in recent weeks, but natural disasters like hurricanes, heat waves and flooding are made worse by another way humanity is altering the planet. The loss of nature.

Biodiversity loss just gets a lot less attention than climate change,

and I think one of the issues with biodiversity in particular is it's much less tangible.

Julianne Viglione is an editor at the website Carbon Brief.

She covers Food, Land, Nature.

Biodiversity is the variety of all living things on the planet, how they interact and depend

on each other, like a butterfly pollinating a flower, a coral reef sheltering of fish.

But more than a million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction,

many within decades because of human activities. And that delicate fabric of life is at risk.

I mean from a sort of global view right

biodiversity is the health of our planet and so we should care about that

as as beings on this planet.

And it's really the fault of humanity that we're in this situation.

We rely on biodiversity for everything. We rely on it for our food, for clean water, for clean air.

It was nearly two years ago during the UN Biodiversity Convention in Montreal that nearly 200 nations agreed to take several steps

to STEM biodiversity loss.

The agreement covered a range of pressing issues from managing human wildlife conflict to reducing subsidies for industries

that harm the natural world.

Viglione reported on the Montreal Conference and she spoke with NPR about the process of getting so many

leaders with different priorities to agree on a framework.

It was a real roller coaster, like a few days before the end we were starting to hear

whispers of like well what if they don't reach an agreement here? Like what's

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