BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Global environmental leaders gather Monday in Cali, Colombia to assess the world’s plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to protect plants, animals and critical habitats. The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed a historic global treaty to protect biodiversity. The accord includes 23 measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.
“We hope that (COP16) will be an opportunity for countries to get to work and focus on implementation, monitoring and compliance mechanisms that then have to be developed in their countries and in their national plans,” said Laura Rico, campaign director at Avaaz, a global activism nonprofit. All evidence shows dramatic decline in species abundance and distribution, said Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity at The Nature Conservancy. “A lot of wild species have less room to live, and they’re declining in numbers,” Krueger said.
“And we also see rising extinction rates. Things that we haven’t even discovered yet are blinking out.” The world is experiencing its largest loss of life since the dinosaurs, with around 1 million plant and animal species now threatened with extinction, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
In the Amazon rainforest, threats to biodiversity include the expansion o.
