The good news: Every country on Earth except the United States and the Holy See just committed to 23 targets intended to put the world on a path toward living in harmony with nature by 2050.
The bad news: The tepid agreement is two years late and $670 billion short of what’s needed.
Global leaders have agreed to protect and restore a third of the Earth's natural areas, and eliminate or redirect $500 billion from environmentally harmful subsidies to fund the deal...
Governments globally are providing at least $1.8 trillion per year that’s contributing to the destruction of ecosystems, climate change and species extinction, according to research from a group called the B Team and Business for Nature.1
Excerpt, referencing Earth Track's study on EHS, done in conjunction with The B Team and Business for Nature:
"A few decades ago, huge subsidies meant vast swathes of the country’s marginal land was cleared for grazing, fertilizer was overused, and the sheep population boomed to the point where surplus meat had to be destroyed.
While the Climate Home News didn't credit Earth Track in it's article, our analysis of environmentally harmful subsidies played a central role in CHN's discussion of both the challenges to, and potential from, EHS reform during the COP15 deliberations. Excerpt below:
"With one week left to strike a “once-in-a-generation” deal to protect nature in Montreal, Canada, governments are split over how to stop subsidising harmful activities like unsustainable fisheries and agriculture.
Negotiators have proposed targets to protect roughly one-third of the planet as part of UN talks aimed at striking a global deal to reverse the destruction of nature...
As well as setting out conservation goals, the draft text proposes tripling the amount of international finance by 2030, pledging $200bn annually to increase global biodiversity. This would include increasing contributions from developed economies to developing economies to at least $20bn per year by 2025, and $30bn per year by 2030.
The UN development chief has warned against “illogical” and “perverse” subsidies to industries estimated at $1.8tn that harm the planet, as the body pushes for a global deal to reverse the widespread destruction of nature...
Speaking to the Financial Times from Montreal, Achim Steiner, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said government subsidies were contributing to biodiversity loss by encouraging unsustainable farming and fishing practices.
