Nature isn’t protected and biodiversity decline isn’t reversed by COP15 promises alone ...
What the COP15 agreement should mean for the built environment
Has COP15 Montreal delivered?
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is done. Now it’s time to get to work. Nature isn’t protected and biodiversity decline isn’t reversed by promises.
Governments appear to have signed a once-in-a-decade deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, but the agreement seems to have been forced through by the Chinese president, ignoring the objections of some African states.
Early this morning at the UN Biodiversity conference COP15 in Montréal, Canada, the EU joined 195 countries in the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This framework contains global goals and targets aiming to protect and restore nature for current and future generations, ensure its sustainable use as well as spur investments for a green global economy. Together with the Paris Agreement on climate, it paves the way towards a climate-neutral, nature-positive and resilient world by 2050.
The agreement is a solid framework with clear, measurable goals and targets, with complete monitoring, reporting, and review arrangements to track progress complemented by a robust resource mobilisation package
So what for the built environment, what can we expect in the very near future, and what should we be doing as morally responsible organisations and individuals.
Regen/Notes highlighted
being nature positive by 2030. This is next net-zero and should sit alongside and ideally be integrated with any carbon net zero plans.
🏠 Building projects to have a nature-positive objective.
30x30 - a commitment to increasing protected wild areas to 30% by 2030. We cannot protect nature overnight, but we can protect one place at a time
🏠 At least 30% of a project area to be set aside and protected for nature
mandatory nature disclosures for businesses.
🏠 Mandatory project nature disclosures and commitments for built environment organisations
public and private investment in nature-based solutions (and that’s not just using natural materials such as timber, but solutions that are symbiotic with nature)
🏠 Biophilic-based solutions for the built environment
repurposing environmentally harmful grants and subsidies into restorative subsidies
🏠 Harmful construction related grants repurposed to restore to the environment
PETAL INTENT
The intent of the Place Petal is to realign how people understand and relate to the natural environment that sustains us. The built environment must reconnect with the ecology of place and the unique characteristics found in every community so that story can be honored, protected and enhanced. The Place Petal clearly articulates where it is acceptable for people to build, how to protect and restore a place once it has been developed, and how to encourage the creation of communities that are once again based on the pedestrian rather than the automobile. In turn, these communities need to be supported by a web of local and regional agriculture that encourages the consumption of local, fresh and seasonal food.
ECOLOGY OF PLACE
… to protect wild and ecologically significant places and encourage ecological regeneration and enhanced function of the communities and places where projects are built.