https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2835-5982
When I began graduate school in 2002, in an ecology and evolution programme, I believed my research would change the world, but after decades of working to detect and correct human impacts on the environment and feeling like I’m climbing a neverending mountain, I finally feel like we are nearing the peak and change is coming. In the last 1.5 years, the world has come together to create collective strategies to address climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation of the world’s oceans in three historic agreements: the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework and the High Seas Treaty.
Climate
The Paris Agreement came into force in November 2016 as the first legally binding international treaty to address climate change issues, but it wasn’t until November 2021 that the Paris Rulebook was finalized. Today, 193 states plus the European Union have joined the Paris Agreement. In November 2022, the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) concluded with a historic decision to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund for those affected by climate change.
Biodiversity
In December 2022, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held, at which participants agreed to the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework. This framework includes four goals and 23 targets to be met by 2030. The framework has now been ratified by 195 countries plus the European Union. This historic global framework was designed to safeguard nature and halt or reverse biodiversity loss, putting nature on a path to recovery by 2050.
Oceans
Surprising many, in March 2023, after almost 20 years of talks, the United Nations member states have agreed on a legal framework for parts of the ocean outside national boundaries in the High Seas Treaty. Once the treaty becomes law (after it has been ratified in the national parliaments of at least 60 countries), it can demand that new proposed ocean activities be subject to stringent environmental impact assessments.
When I saw Rena Lee, the president of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, start crying as she announced that the High Seas Treaty was complete, I cried too because, on paper at least, we now have complete strategies for action on the three planetary crises of our era: the climate emergency, biodiversity loss and devastation in the marine environment.
These global agreements provide all of us with a common framework where we have collectively agreed on what we want the future to look like and how we plan to get there, in principle.
Where we are today is a credit to all of you. Those hours doing uncomfortable fieldwork and the even more uncomfortable hours writing your papers have been essential to show empirically what has been happening to species over time, to show the world that there are new species out there and to give us all hope that species can recover and that new biodiversity discoveries can help us thrive. So, keep doing your research, documenting the good and the bad, and suggesting management strategies, and we will be right here supporting you to get your message out.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.