China must play a leading role if the world is to draw up a new and more effective strategy to halt the collapse of life on Earth, according to senior delegates at the close of this week’s UN biodiversity conference.
With the US absent, Europe distracted and Brazil tilting away from global cooperation, the onus has shifted towards Beijing, the diplomats said after two weeks of slow-moving talks on how to maintain the natural infrastructure on which humanity depends.
China will host the next high-level negotiations, in 2020, which will be the most important in more than 10 years. This is the deadline for nations to agree on fresh global targets for the protection and management of forests, rivers, oceans, pollinators and other wildlife.
Conservationists hope this “new deal for nature and people” becomes as much of a priority as the Paris climate accord and helps to reverse the current wave of extinction, which is at the highest rate the world has seen since the age of the dinosaurs.
Over the coming two years, China should champion the cause of nature as France championed the cause of climate in the run-up to the Paris deal in 2016, urged the diplomats.
“China is very important. It can be a great leader,” said Hesiquio Benítez Díaz, Mexico’s director general of international cooperation, who helped organise the previous global biodiversity conference. “We’re reaching the point of no return for many species. It’s really bad, but people don’t see this issue.”
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