Can COP 15 Save Our Planet's Biodiversity?

Short Wave

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🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

This week, the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) wrapped up in Montreal, Canada. Nations from around the world came together to establish a new set of goals to help preserve the planet's biodiversity and reduce the rate of loss of natural habitats. The last time biodiversity targets were set was in 2010, at COP 10. In the 12 years since, the world collectively failed to meet any of those biodiversity benchmarks.

Aaron Scott talks to Giuliana Viglione, an editor at Carbon Brief covering food, land and nature. She shares what she saw on the ground at COP 15, what the new goals for 2030 are, and why she has more hope that progress will be made this time around.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey Shortwaveers, this is Aaron Scott. Earlier this week,
0:08.8	COP15 wrapped in Montreal with a big agreement and here to tell us about it is
0:13.2	Juliana Viglione, an editor at Carbon Brief covering food, land, and nature.
0:18.0	Welcome to Shortwave, Juliana. Thanks for having me.
0:21.3	So COP15 is the US conference focused on biodiversity and it is not to be
0:27.0	confused with COP27, which is the climate conference that recently happened in
0:31.2	Egypt. COP27 had just constant media coverage and there were
0:36.6	presidents and other heads of state that flew in. COP15, not so much.
0:42.0	Juliana, do you have a sense of why this COP just seems, I don't know, less
0:47.1	popular? Yeah, it's really interesting and I think like as a whole
0:51.0	biodiversity loss just gets a lot less attention than climate change. And I think
0:56.1	one of the issues with biodiversity in particular is it's much less
1:00.3	handgable, right? Like we can hear about there's a million species that are at
1:05.6	threat of extinction. But we see the effects of climate change every day.
1:09.9	They're happening to people all around the world. We see them in heatwaves,
1:15.1	we see them in floods. And so it's much less visceral, right?
1:18.8	The loss of a species of insect that you've never heard of in a country that
1:24.4	you've never been to. But it's also sort of a self fulfilling
1:28.2	prophecy, right? Like the world leaders don't come. So then the media
1:32.2	doesn't cover it. So then no one hears about it. So then the politicians
1:36.0	don't care. And the world leaders don't come. And it just sort of goes
	...

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