In Armenia’s capital this week a fight between politicians broke out – not the mass brawl in its parliament that was so widely documented on social media – but between delegates from nearly 200 countries.
The world’s nations have been gathered in Yerevan for nearly two weeks negotiating, and arguing, over a new agreement on nature.
Early on Saturday morning, hours after talks were due to finish, they finally agreed the key parts of a new action plan.
“And that’s it. Perfect,” said the meeting president, Hambardzum Matevosyan.
Four years earlier the same countries had signed a landmark deal committing to “halt and reverse” the decline of nature.
That global deal in 2022 – the Global Biodiversity Framework – contained 24 targets including putting 30% of the world’s land and seas into protection by the end of the decade.
They agreed that action was urgent.
The world is currently in a sixth mass extinction event with species becoming extinct at 100 times the natural rate because of human activities, scientists say.
But according to the UN this week,, external the world is on track to achieve just one of those two dozen targets.
As part of this week’s deal, countries acknowledged they were falling behind.
“While not particularly exciting or detailed, it’s good news that countries could reach agreement,” said Catherine Weller, from environmental charity Fauna & Flora.
“We cannot just plod on to 2030 without a course correction; nature is critical to all life on Earth: to our economies, to our wellbeing,” she added.
This was echoed by Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts, who told BBC News: “We are still seeing an appalling loss, threatening the collapse of ecosystems globally. We run out of words really about how serious this is.”
But he added “the better news is there are so many examples worldwide about how… to turn things around”.
Countries have put 623 million acres (252m hectares) of degraded land into protection, external – an area bigger than Greenland.
Just last month the WWF praised conservation efforts which had achieved the recovery of key species including elephants, green sea turtles and tigers.
Countries have recognised the main barrier to accelerating those efforts is money.
In 2022, they agreed they would put $30bn (£22.4bn) towards nature recovery efforts by the end of the decade, and mobilise a further $170bn from private sources.
But years later many nations have been redirecting international aid to defence budgets and to deal with repeated energy shocks, such that pledges are not at the rate required to reach those targets, according to the UN. , external
At this meeting, more than $1bn was pledged, with half of that coming from philanthropists including Leonardo DiCaprio’s Re:wild organisation.
