A tall order

Biodiversity targets will be hard to achieve

The 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, held at Montreal in Canada, has managed to conclude an agreement that looks impressive on paper but might prove tough to implement despite mooting an elaborate financing mechanism to do so. The historic deal, styled after the Paris climate accord, aims essentially to restore 30 per cent of the degraded terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine ecosystems, and halt further loss of important biodiversity hotspots, by 2030. This is a tall order, considering that at present only about 17 per cent of the terrestrial,