Parliamentarians call on PM to attend Biodiversity COP 15 in person

A cross-party group of parliamentarians wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to show leadership and attend the biodiversity COP 15 conference in Canada, which will now take place in December - little over a year after the landmark COP26 climate summit in Glasgow happened. The MPs and Peers noted that after two years of delay we are in a perilous position, with 77% of the worlds land and 87% of our oceans altered by human activity, placing more than a fifth of species at risk of extinction.

Highlighting the importance of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will replace the failed Aichi targets, the letter asked the PM to lead internationally and to ensure that the necessary finance was mobilised for the new framework to be implemented globally, and that incentives, or subsidies, which are harmful to biodiversity be redirected towards nature positive activities. Parliamentarians emphasised that to tackle the climate crisis we also have to tackle the biodiversity crisis.