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Illegal and unsustainable fishing, fossil fuel exploration, the climate crisis and disease are pushing marine species to the brink of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, with populations of dugongs, abalone shellfish and pillar coral at risk of disappearing for ever.

Marine life is facing a “perfect storm” of human overconsumption, threatening the survival of some of the world’s most expensive seafood, according to the conservation organisation, which publishes the most up-to-date information on the health of wildlife populations on Earth.

From South Africa to Australia, 20 of the world’s 54 abalone species are now threatened with extinction, according to the first IUCN scientific assessment of the species group. In east Africa and New Caledonia, dugongs – marine mammals that largely feed on seagrass – are close to extinction, damaged by oil and gas exploration, bottom-trawling, chemical pollution and mining.

The information comes as countries negotiate this decade’s biodiversity targets for protecting the planet at Cop15, with draft proposals to take radical action on species extinction this decade.

“Today’s IUCN red list update reveals a perfect storm of unsustainable human activity decimating marine life around the globe. As the world looks to the ongoing UN biodiversity conference to set the course for nature recovery, we simply cannot afford to fail,” said Dr Bruno Oberle, IUCN director general. “We urgently need to address the linked climate and biodiversity crises, with profound changes to our economic systems, or we risk losing the crucial benefits the oceans provide us with.”

Those at risk include the endangered Omani abalone, found off the Arabian peninsula, which has disappeared from more than half its range due to pollution from agricultural and industrial runoff, which causes harmful algal blooms. On the west coast of South Africa, poaching by criminal networks, many connected to the international drugs trade, has devastated populations of the perlemoen abalone.

In the western Indian ocean, fewer than 250 mature dugongs are left, with fewer than 900 in New Caledonia.

“Strengthening community-led fisheries governance and expanding work opportunities beyond fishing are key in east Africa, where marine ecosystems are fundamental to people’s food security and livelihoods,” said Evan Trotzuk, who led the east Africa red list assessment of the mammals.

“Further, the creation of additional conserved areas where dugongs live, particularly around Bazaruto Archipelago national park [in Mozambique], would also empower local communities and other stakeholders to find, implement, and benefit from solutions that halt long-term declines in dugong abundance, as well as in seagrass extent and quality,” he said.

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Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.The IUCN has moved pillar coral’s status from vulnerable to critically endangered following a dramatic drop in its population. Photograph: Francoise Cabada-Blanco/IUCN

The pillar coral, found from the Caribbean to the Yucatan peninsula, was also part of the most recent round of IUCN red list assessments and has been moved from vulnerable to critically endangered after its population shrank by more than 80% across its range since 1990. The decline was caused by disease, bleaching from the climate crisis and fertiliser runoff.

There are 150,388 species that have been assessed by scientists for the IUCN red list, of which 42,108 are threatened with extinction. More than 1,550 of the 17,903 marine animals and plants analysed are at risk of disappearing for ever, with global heating affecting at least 41% of threatened marine species.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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A cat-sized predator known as a pine marten has started to make a comeback in the south of England after teetering on the brink of extinction. It is hoped that doing so will help restore some balance to the forests between red squirrels and grey squirrels. The good news comes after scientists found evidence pine martens are breeding in the New Forest.

A relative of stoats and otters, the animals were once widespread across the U.K. before hunting drove them to near extinction in the 1900s.

Conservation Efforts

With funding from Defra, over the last two years, researchers at Forestry England have been setting camera traps in the New Forest after reports began to surface of pine martens in the area. Now, those involved with the conservation efforts have revealed that they’re confident the population, while still small, is breeding and growing steadily. To back this up,
more than 100 videos of the mammals were captured in 2022, including some showing kits playing together.

PHOTO: PIXABAY/PARKSTONEPHOTOGRAPHY

Making a Comeback

“From the data we’ve got and the early records, it’s a growing population. We’re definitely confident they’re establishing and increasing in number and spreading to the suitable habitat,” senior ecologist for Forestry England Leanne Sargeant said. “Restoring this lost species back to its native habitat is a real positive because it is a species that should have been here all along. It is man that’s caused its extinction, so we are restoring that status back to its natural state.”

Sargeant added that her group is also working to try to reintroduce pine martens back to other wooded areas in the south of England. “We’re looking at the feasibility of pine marten reintroductions along the south coast. There’s some joint projects in the South Downs and Kent. It would be ideal to have a sort of reintroduction project in areas like Wiltshire, Somerset, or Dorset where we could link across into the Forest of Dean and the Welsh populations – or possibly down in the southwest like Exmoor and Dartmoor.”

PHOTO: PIXABAY/VICUNA

Grey Squirrel Populations

Sharing with The Telegraph, Sargeant explained, “There’s plenty of evidence coming from Scotland and Northern Ireland where red squirrels are doing really well where Pine martens have re-established. Pine martens are causing grey squirrels to have a wider dispersal area. As soon as we can get on top of grey squirrels, we could establish red squirrels back across a wider area. It is not a fact that the pine marten is suddenly going to eat every grey squirrel in the South of England, but they will have some impact.”

This article by Rebecca West was first published by The Animal Rescue Site. Lead Image: PHOTO: PIXABAY/PINEMARTEN.

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Justin Trudeau has urged China, Russia, Brazil and other large countries to massively expand protected areas for nature at Cop15 while putting Indigenous rights at the heart of conservation, as momentum gathers behind a controversial target to conserve 30% of Earth.

On Wednesday, the Canadian prime minister committed C$800m (£510m) of funding over seven years for Indigenous-led conservation projects in his country across an area the size of Egypt, starting a “story of reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples.

He made the announcement in Montreal, where governments started negotiating this decade’s UN targets for protecting biodiversity yesterday. Canada is co-hosting the summit with China amid tensions between the countries.

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What is biodiversity and why does it matter?

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Biodiversity – short for biological diversity – is the variety of life on Earth, from the tiniest bacteria to the largest mammals. The air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat all rely on it – without plants there would be no oxygen and without bees to pollinate there would be no fruit or nuts.

Scientists are still trying to understand how the web of life fits together and, despite advances in technology, we can still only guess at the true number of species on our planet. But Earth is experiencing the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs, and humans are to blame. The way we mine, pollute, hunt, farm, build and travel is putting at least one million species at risk of extinction, say experts. The sixth mass extinction in geological history has already begun, some scientists assert, with billions of individual populations being lost.

The five biggest threats to biodiversity are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of natural resources; the climate crisis; pollution and invasive species.

The extinction of animals, insects, plants, and all living things has huge knock-on effects. Species have to work together in harmony in order to thrive and provide the essential services humans need to survive. The services provided by ecosystems are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars. About half of global GDP – equal to $42tn (£37tn) – is dependent on the healthy functioning of the natural world, according to the UN.

The world has so far failed to meet any UN targets on halting the loss of nature but new targets will be set at the Cop15 biodiversity summit in Montreal in December 2022.

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Name-checking China, Russia, Brazil and the US, Trudeau said ensuring that the biggest countries expanded conservation areas was vital for a successful agreement at Cop15, and urged them to get behind a “Canada level of ambition” for the final text.

A new draft of the agreement was published after pre-negotiations over the weekend, with at least 22 targets and four goals being discussed. Proposals including those on human wildlife conflict, trophy hunting, repurposing subsidies, nature restoration and expanding protected areas are under consideration.

“We are putting forward a new model around conservation with Indigenous-led protections with government participation, and even drawing in private sector and philanthropic initiatives because it is powerful,” Trudeau told a media roundtable attended by the Guardian after the Indigenous-led funding announcement.

“Indigenous communities leading on this is a really good thing. What we’re able to do here is not just show a story of conservation, but a story of reconciliation, about recognising that it’s these partnerships that are going to be essential going forward,” he said.

Indigenous peoples have been found repeatedly to be the best guardians of biodiversity, and conservation projects led by Indigenous people have seen success in reviving ailing populations globally, including a recent effort to save endangered caribou in western Canada.

“It’s relatively easier for a small country to sign on to [expanding protected areas to 30% of land and sea]. But getting the big ones on board is really important,” Trudeau said. “One of the focuses that I wanted us to have at this Cop was making sure we’re engaging and calling out as much as possible those countries with the big sweep of land and coastal areas to make a difference.”

The Cop15 summit comes weeks after the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, publicly rebuked Trudeau at the G20 and a scandal over allegations that China interfered in Canada’s 2019 federal election.

Trudeau said Canada was keen to work with Beijing on climate and biodiversity, but said his country had agreed to co-host Cop15 after the talks were moved from China this year on the understanding they would raise the ambition of the final text.

“We’ve always said that we are going to challenge China on human rights and rule of law,” he said. “But there are areas where we’re going have to cooperate with China and work collaboratively. The climate is always the example of that. And if we can do it on biodiversity … then this is good for the world.

“I think you can look at the deliverables out of the first part of the Kunming Cop15 to see that there was ambition, but I guess Canada’s level of ambition is stronger and higher and bigger,” he said.

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The 30×30 initiative – to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030 – is backed by a coalition, led by the UK, France and Costa Rica, of more than 100 countries, but has received significant pushback from some Indigenous groups and human rights organisations, who say it raises the prospect of land grabs and further violence against communities scientifically shown to best protect nature.

On the first day of formal negotiations, the idea of what constitutes a “protected area” was facing significant scrutiny. The EU was accused of trying to water down the target by arguing that extractive industries such as mining and drilling should be allowed in protected areas, provided they did not negatively affect biodiversity

An Lambrechts, head of the Greenpeace International delegation to Cop15, said: “If the EU successfully waters down 30×30, it will pave the way for areas protected under 30×30 becoming areas protected on paper but not in reality.”

Within the 30×30 agreement, the EU wants 10% under strict protection, but within the remaining 20% it would allow extractive industries such as mining and drilling, provided this did not have a negative impact on biodiversity.

Ladislav Miko, from the European Commission, who is a special biodiversity envoy from the Czech Republic, said not allowing any extractive industries under 30×30 was “hardly realistic”. He said there would be an environmental impact assessment to work out if the activity in question would damage biodiversity. “Generally speaking, it is excluded, but it is dependent on the status of the protected area,” he said.

Negotiations at Cop15 are scheduled to run until 19 December.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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This time has to be different. In the history of UN biodiversity agreements, governments have never made good on targets they have set for themselves. We have all heard the dramatic warnings: the abundance of life on Earth is rapidly declining and some scientists warn of a sixth mass extinction. But real action is yet to follow from world leaders.

How do we halt the decline of nature?

“This is our third go at [agreeing biodiversity targets]. A lot of learning has gone into understanding what happened the previous two times, and what worked and what did not,” UN environment chief Inger Andersen told the Guardian ahead of Cop15, taking place in Montreal, Canada this December.

“Right now we are on this trajectory of losing one million of our 8 million species on this planet. That’s clearly not a trajectory we want to be on. We need to change the actions that we need to do as human beings: we need to eat and live in ways that are nature positive.”

So, what next?

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The dismal record on delivery has driven disillusionment with the biodiversity Cop process, which already plays second fiddle to its sister climate convention. To make sure the eventual agreement has teeth – known as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework – negotiators are focusing on implementation alongside ambition this time.

High-profile targets on protecting 30% of the Earth, eliminating billions of dollars of environmentally harmful subsidies and reducing the spread of invasive species may dominate the headlines about the eventual agreement, but it is follow-through on details at a national and local level that will really change things.

A few things are needed to make sure the agreement at Cop15 is implemented, say observers. First: numerical targets that are quantifiable and measurable. All parts of society must know the exact percentage of land that will be restored or the precise amount of pollution governments will stop. There must be milestones we can all monitor so we can name and shame those who are not true to their word. Bad targets are imprecise, hard-to-quantify and will lead to the inaction we have already seen.

Second, we must improve the quality of data we have about our planet. Humanity’s understanding of life on Earth and its ecosystems are still flawed and there are major gaps. Projects like the Land & Carbon Lab at World Resource Institute (WRI) are trying to fill in the details on peatlands and nature-based solutions. Datasets on deforestation have proved invaluable for monitoring the health of key ecosystems like the Amazon and the Congo basin rainforests. But we need more.

Finally, countries must report the biodiversity equivalent of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are updates from governments in the UN climate process on how they are meeting their Paris targets. For nature, they are called National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). Despite the awkward name, Anderson says they will be key.

“The National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans that countries will report back on how are sort of like NDCs for the biodiversity convention. They will help us add up how we are doing against clear and definable targets. They will be critical so we can measure how we are doing,” she says.

This piece first appeared in Down to Earth, the Guardian’s climate and environment newsletter. Sign up here to read more exclusive pieces like this and for a digest of the week’s biggest environment stories every Thursday

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“They have a nice black eyebrow, but I especially liked the fluffy white hairs on their cheeks.” For Congolese primatologist Gaël Elie Gnondo Gobolo, seeing Bouvier’s red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus bouvieri) for the first time “was an unexpected moment, like being in a dream”.

No one knew the monkey still existed in the Republic of the Congo. Assessments for the IUCN in 2008 and 2016 classified it as critically endangered, with a note saying it was “possibly extinct”. There had been no recorded sightings since the 1970s until Lieven Devreese, a primatologist from Belgium, led a two-month expedition in 2015. Gnondo Gobolo was a biology student at Marien Ngouabi University in Brazzaville, Congo’s capital, at the time and accompanied him.

Devreese hoped not only to find the Bouvier’s red colobus but also to take the first photograph of the species. The expedition, with financial support from four European organisations (Primate Conservation Inc, GaiaZOO, Apenheul, and La Vallée des Singes), headed to northern Congo and the 457,200-hectare (1,130,000-acre)Ntokou-Pikounda national park.

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What is the Lost and found series?

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Scientists estimate that there are more than eight million different forms of life on Earth – but one million of those are thought to be threatened with extinction and many more have died out over the course of history.

Some plants and animals are lost and never seen again. But some reappear years later, often thanks to the efforts of scientists and conservationists working in the field. 

This series celebrates those rare moments of hope when life clings on against the odds – and highlights the crucial work being done to preserve the planet’s extraordinary biodiversity. 

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“It took us a day travelling down the river to reach the village of Ntokou, where we got permission to enter the forest and found a team of local Mbendjele trackers and eco-guards who know the area,” says Devreese. “To enter the park, we travelled for a day in a pirogue up the Bokiba River. Because it was near the end of the rainy season, the river had inundated large tracts of forest. We had to wade through waist-deep mud and cross a swamp covered with spiny raffia palm leaves.

“One of the teams of Mbendjele people found the monkeys and came back to alert us. It took 45 minutes of walking through virgin rainforest at high speed to get to the location, hoping the tracker who stayed with the monkeys hadn’t lost sight of them.

“It was very intense and exhausting, tackling all kinds of stinging lianas, not to mention the heat and lack of water, because we’d only planned to be out in the forest until noon. I felt great relief when I heard the chattering of the red colobus monkeys nearby. Then we saw an adult female with an infant clinging to her belly through an opening in the canopy. Finding them was a special experience.”

The team observed about 20 monkeys in the lower canopy. “Being able to take the first photograph of this species was proof that there’s still much to learn and discover in these forests,” says Devreese.

The monkeys made a big impression on Gnondo Gobolo, who is now a community assistant in Ntokou-Pikounda park.

“There are 18 different species of red colobus monkey, of which the Bouvier’s red colobus have beautiful black hands and feet,” he says.

“I’ll always remember their curious behaviour when we found them in the forest. We were able to observe them for almost an hour, and at one point an adult female with her infant that we had in our view closed her eyes to take a quick nap. Unfortunately, this fearless behaviour towards people poses a serious threat to them.”

The Bouvier’s red colobus monkey was thought extinct until it was rediscovered in 2015 in the Ntokou-Pikounda national park, the Republic of the Congo. Photograph: Jaap van der Waarde/WWF

Since the rediscovery, Bouvier’s red colobus has been reclassified as endangered. Proof they still exist has aided conservation efforts, with WWF and the government of the Republic of the Congo agreeing to co-manage Ntokou-Pikounda park.

“The joint WWF-government team works with Indigenous people and local communities to manage this exceptional expanse of tropical rainforest,” says park director Victor Mbolo.

Seeing such solid results from the rediscovery is the reward for days wading through swamps, says Gnondo Gobolo. “I feel profoundly happy to have contributed to the success of the mission. These monkeys require special protection. For me, they represent the pride of Congolese biodiversity and Ntokou-Pikounda park.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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Wednesday, 7 December

• Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge of C$800m (£510m) over seven years to support Indigenous-led conservation projects was preceded by a ceremony led by the First Nations Elder, Ka’nahsohon Kevin Deer. It made a change from the day before when Trudeau was interrupted by Indigenous protesters at the opening ceremony.

• The UN secretary general António Guterres spoke powerfully about the need to protect the rights of environment protesters, saying “human rights must be at the centre of all environmental concerns and namely, the work of the [UN convention on biodiversity] CBD”.

• A new draft text of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is littered with more than 1,000 brackets, which will need dealing with over the next two weeks. The text has been described as a “mess”, with many concerned about the amount that still needs to be done.

Masks are back …. in more ways than one. A Cop15 delegate plays with a VR headset. Photograph: Andrej Ivanov/AFP/Getty Images

• Despite more than 20 targets being negotiated, the 30×30 goal to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030 is stealing the limelight. As delegates arrived at Montreal airport, there was no escaping the slew of posters promoting the ambition.

• Both Canada and China have given delegates welcome bags – the former contained a snood, and the latter, a silk scarf and tea. Masks are also back and each day delegates are taking Covid tests in order to get into the conference centre.

• The EU representative Ladislav Miko criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying it brings about “long-term environmental degradation”. Russian delegate Denis Rebrikov responded by saying the subject should be outside the scope of the biodiversity summit. “It’s hard to avoid the impression that these countries are deliberately trying to sabotage the adoption of a global framework,” he said.

• It’s currently 3C in Montreal and some delegates are struggling with the cold. One was seen wearing a thick coat and woolly hat with headphones over the top in the main plenary hall.

While things were hotting up in the Palais des congrès, hats were de rigeur for anyone braving the outside in Montreal. Photograph: Christinne Muschi/Reuters

Tuesday, 6 Dec

• The opening ceremony of Cop15 negotiations finally took place after more than two weeks of delays due to the pandemic. Trudeau, Guterres, and the Chinese environment minister and Cop15 president Huang Runqiu spoke at the event. Guterres said humanity has become a “weapon of mass extinction” and governments must end the “orgy of destruction” at Cop15.

• There was good news elsewhere, with the EU announcing a ban on all products judged to have contributed to deforestation. The world’s second-largest importer of agricultural product has agreed a law to prevent companies from selling to the EU soy, beef, coffee and other commodities linked to the loss of tropical forests around the world.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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The number of bird species seriously threatened in Wales has doubled in the last 20 years, with the rook, swift and greenfinch added to the red list.

A report from a coalition of conservation groups places 60 species on the red list, accounting for a quarter of the species in Wales – more than ever before.

The addition of the once common rook, beloved of artists and poets including Dylan Thomas, was a particular shock.

There has been a 63% decline in its numbers in Wales since 1995, compared with a 20% decline across the UK as a whole, with more intensive farming methods believed to be a major cause.

Thomas wrote about the rook in poems such as Being But Men: “Letting our syllables be soft/For fear of waking the rooks” and Poem In October: “With water praying and call of seagull and rook/ And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall.”

Anne Brenchley, the chairperson of the Welsh Ornithological Society, said: “While it is not surprising that this latest assessment of the status of our Welsh birds continues to show that species particularly associated with farmland are still in trouble, there are some far more worrying trends. Who would have thought that familiar and widespread birds such as the greenfinch, rook and swift would now be on the red list?”

The rapid decline in numbers of breeding rooks means they have jumped from the green to the red list since the last assessment in 2016. The reduction in the number of swifts could reflect a reduced availability of nesting habitats in Wales.

The greenfinch, a once-familiar garden bird, has moved from amber to red after a population crash caused by a severe outbreak of the parasite-borne infection trichomonosis.

Since the previous assessment, the corn bunting and corn crake have been declared extinct as breeding birds in Wales.

The future of many upland, grassland and wading birds, including the curlew, redshank and lapwing, remains a concern. Work commissioned by National Resources Wales suggests breeding curlew could be on the verge of extinction in the country.

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There is some good news. The red kite, which soars magnificently among the mountains of mid-Wales, has been moved to the green list for the first time. Another species that has moved from amber to green is the avocet, which has benefited from wetland restoration.

Julian Hughes, RSPB Cymru head of species, said: “We are losing many of Wales’ most well-loved and familiar birds, underlining the seriousness of the nature emergency we face.”

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All procrastinators know the feeling: an enormous task is not close to being finished, time is slipping away and the pressure to act has become impossible to ignore. But despite the mounting unease, there is still not yet enough pressure to take action, and it is unclear if there ever will be.

At the Palais des congrès de Montréal convention centre at Cop15, after more than two years of delays, there is a sense that governments tasked with agreeing this decade’s targets for protecting life on Earth are in just such a situation.

These summits are rare events. The last meeting of this kind took place 12 years ago in Japan, a few months into David Cameron’s first term as the UK’s prime minister, the same year One Direction was formed, Spain celebrated its first World Cup victory and an Icelandic volcano disrupted air traffic in Europe.

The nature summit is a long way from the sunshine, coral reefs and intermittent food and water supplies of Cop27 in Egypt just two weeks ago, the quirks of an authoritarian dictatorship replaced by the bite of a Canadian winter and poutine.

There are good reasons for optimism: nature has shot up the international agenda during the pandemic. From Emmanuel Macron to Xi Jinping, world leaders say they want an ambitious deal to stop the loss of biodiversity. Montreal produced one of the most successful environmental agreements in history on the ozone layer in 1987, which continues to recover slowly.

Cop15 could be a punctuation point in history where everything finally starts to change and humanity plots a path to living in harmony with nature – if the tendency toward procrastination can be overcome. One million species are at risk of extinction and limiting global heating to 1.5C is on the line, but many negotiators have the look of a university student who has left their dissertation to the final few days of their course.

Many negotiators have the look of a student who has left their dissertation to the final few days of the course

Next week, ministers will arrive in Canada to inspect what the negotiators have been doing for the past two years at meetings in Rome, Geneva, Nairobi and countless Zoom calls. In all UN environment talks, ministers arrive at the point when most of the agreement is finished and the difficult bits need to be sorted out.

Unless something changes radically, an awesome pile of documents awaits Thérèse Coffey, the UK secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, and her fellow environment ministers: a Frankenstein’s monster of ideas and suggestions from 196 countries on the 22 draft targets and four goals the world should agree to protect its biodiversity that they will have a just few days to bring into coherent life.

At the time of writing, negotiators have a week to work through more than 1,400 brackets – which reflect disagreement in a UN negotiation.

“I think the ministers are going to sack us all,” says one negotiator in the halls of the convention centre. “At the moment, it’s a horror show.”

Most university students who have left it late do not run the risk of embarrassing a superpower. But in Montreal, negotiators have no such luck. China is in charge of this Cop, which was meant to be held in Kunming in 2020, but was finally moved because of the country’s zero- Covid policy.

Before the pandemic, the Chinese government had been sounding out the French on how to capture the magic that led to the Paris climate agreement. This side of the pandemic, they are having to work with Canada – a few weeks after Xi and Justin Trudeau clashed after months of bilateral tensions – to get the bare minimum over the line. As Denmark learned at the climate Cop15 in 2009, it will be seen as the hosts’ fault if they do not succeed.

Publicly, the UN, NGOs and governments are quick to say that everything is fine: China is doing a great job and has shown fantastic leadership throughout the process. Part one of Cop15, which took place last year in Kunming last year, was entirely ceremonial, and they have been good enough to move the summit.

Privately, it is a different story. There is sympathy for Chinese organisers who have endured several three-week quarantines and little time with their families. But many are not convinced by the political buy-in.

“China is absent, has already de facto checked out and will play an irrelevant and ceremonial role. I was told by my friends in Beijing that the Communist party leaders are not interested in this conference: ‘We had our photo opportunity last year, now we leave the Canadians to wash the dishes’,” says one observer.

It is hard to know the full truth. China is playing a noticeably withdrawn and limited role, even by its own standards. At Cop27, their negotiators would speak with the international media. This time, their environment minister Huang Runqiu – the Cop15 president in the Alok Sharma role who is meant to cajole countries into agreement – does not go beyond selected questions and lengthy statements about how much China has done for Cop15.

It does not bode well for the difficult decisions that await negotiators and ministers in the coming days. But it appears that Canada is aware of this, working away to guide the agreement. Everything and nothing are still possible.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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The “fate of the entire living world” will be determined at the Cop15 UN biodiversity summit, according to leading scientists.

They said the gathering of the world’s nations, which began on Wednesday in Montreal, is “vastly more important than Cop27”, the recent high-profile UN climate meeting. “We say this because of the many dimensions of anthropogenic global change … the most critical, complex and challenging is that of biodiversity loss,” the researchers said.

The current rapid loss of wildlife and natural places is seen as the start of a sixth mass extinction by many scientists and is destroying the life-support systems on which humanity depends for clean air, water and food. Protection of the natural world, such as rainforests, is also vital in ending the climate emergency.

Cop15 aims to ensure the protection of 30% of the planet by 2030, as well as the redirection of $500bn in agricultural subsidies that support the destruction of nature.

The warning from scientists came in an editorial in the journal Science Advances, written by Prof Shahid Naeem at Columbia University, US; Prof Yonglong Lu at Xiamen University, China; and Prof Jeremy Jackson at the American Museum of Natural History.

They said an earlier 10-year plan, known as the Aichi iodiversity targets, failed to meet any of its goals by its 2020 deadline, despite being backed by 196 nations. “Failure is not an option this time as Earth’s terrestrial, marine, and freshwater systems begin to collapse under the pressure to meet the needs of a global population that will soon approach 10 billion,” the researchers said.

However, they added that there were some reasons for optimism, including wide and growing support for the “30×30” protection plan and the fact that the drivers of biodiversity loss are well understood, giving clear direction for action.

The five ways we’re killing nature and why it has to stop – video explainer

The destruction of wild places for farming and mining is the key cause of biodiversity loss, along with the overexploitation of wild animals and plants on land and in the seas and pollution. The climate crisis and the spread of invasive species around the world also contribute. The UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen, has called these drivers the “the five horsemen of the biodiversity apocalypse”.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, opened the summit with a stark message: “Without nature, we are nothing. Nature is our life-support system, and yet humanity seems hellbent on destruction.

“With our bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” he said. “[Cop15] is our chance to stop this orgy of destruction, to move from discord to harmony.”

Along with the “30×30” target, other draft goals for the Cop15 agreement include reducing the rate of introduction of invasive species by 50%, cutting pesticide use by at least two-thirds, halting the flow of plastic pollution and making it compulsory for big businesses to disclose their impact on nature.

In the editorial, Naeem and his colleagues said: “A comprehensive body of scientific evidence has highlighted how global change, including climate change, is ultimately tied to biodiversity conservation.” For example, they said, healthy forests and oceans can absorb huge amounts of climate-heating carbon dioxide.

They said a leading study of the effect of Covid-19 lockdowns showed how “the reduction in traffic, industrial noise and pollution, and human-wildlife contact led to a wide range of positive impacts on nature around the world”, with “animals quickly responding to the reductions in human presence”. However, a reduction in conservation work also led to illegal hunting and habitat destruction.

“The take-home message was that stemming biodiversity loss can be achieved not only by just reducing human pressures but also by enhancing human activities in research, restoration and conservation,” the researchers said.

They said the Cop15 agreement would have to recognise the rights of Indigenous peoples and secure long-term funding from wealthier nations to achieve the targets, because many of the most biodiverse places are in low-income countries.

French diplomat Laurence Tubiana, an architect of the Paris climate agreement, said: “We need a global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. This will direct targets, laws, policies and funding at all levels and regions, much like the 2015 Paris agreement has started doing for climate action. In seven years, the momentum is clear to see. We need the same momentum to protect all life on Earth.”

Prof Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “We need a ‘Paris moment’ in Montreal. Only if we protect and regenerate Earth’s nature, can we really protect Earth’s climate.”

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