A global agreement on Biodiversity cannot wait anymore.

The biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, Cop15 in Kunming, China, where world leaders were expected to strike a deal to halt and reverse the destruction of ecosystems by reaching a Paris-style agreement for nature was postponed until 2021 and now is likely to be delayed a fourth time as a result of the Omicron variant.

In the meantime, during the pandemic, the destruction of the world’s forests increased sharply. Dangerous levels of greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere as humans consume beyond planetary boundaries while the world’s governments have missed every single target they have set for themselves on averting the destruction of Nature.

“We’ll get it done. Come hell, high water … or Covid. When and how, I don’t know,” says Basile van Havre, co-chair of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) working group responsible for crafting the Cop15 agreement.