A Worldwide Gift of Birds and Biodiversity

NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL OF MAINE • December 22, 2022

Many bird species found here in Maine will benefit from the signing of a new global biodiversity agreement at the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) on December 19, in Montreal. There were four main themes:
• An explicit goal of protecting 30% of lands and waters by 2030 (the “30 by 30” plan that a number of countries, including the U.S., have been championing);
• Recognition of the rights of Indigenous people and their leadership in conservation and land-use decisions;
• Vastly increased funding for biodiversity conservation including from wealthy nations to those that contain much of the world’s biodiversity, and;
• Support of nature-based climate solutions that conserve biodiversity while maintaining carbon storage to mitigate climate change.
In the coming years, conservation organizations will ask us all to help remind our leaders of the goals that the nations of the world adopted together in 2022.