Even the terms cause headaches: biological diversity, biodiversity crisis.

Very abstract, very complex, very demanding.

As if there weren't enough other global crises and calls for turning points.

How adventurous, even illusionary, does it seem that the already fractured community of states agreed on a rescue plan for “living in harmony with nature” at the World Conference on Nature in Montreal!?

Katja Gelinsky

Business correspondent in Berlin

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Elizabeth Maruma Mrema recommends that skeptics take a conscious look the next time they go to the supermarket: the fruit and vegetable department, the shelves with baked goods and canned food, the meat counter and the refrigerated walls for dairy products.

"If you take away everything that depends on intact biodiversity, there is not much left," states the top UN diplomat for biodiversity soberly.

For people with numbers, the renowned environmental lawyer from Tanzania adds a few key figures: 50 percent of global economic output and millions upon millions of jobs depend on nature.

But three-quarters of land ecosystems are in poor condition and two-thirds of the sea is polluted.

One million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction in the coming decades.

Mrema is the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and thus chief organizer of the World Conference on Nature in Montreal.

The success of the conference depends on getting the message across: “The water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the carbon storage we need to fight climate change.

Without all of that, we have no life.” She continues passionately: “By destroying nature, we are ultimately committing suicide, killing our own children and grandchildren and the planet with it.”

Representatives from 196 states

Getting the international community to change course is a Herculean task, even for a veteran of environmental diplomacy like Mrema.

She has been working for the UN for more than two decades, and Bonn was also one of her places of work.

From 2009 to 2012 she was Executive Director of the so-called Bonn Convention for the Protection of Migratory Wild Animals and Their Habitats.

Mrema then moved to Nairobi, where she held various management positions at the UN Environment Programme.

Since 2020 she has been primarily responsible for the most important multilateral treaty for the protection of biological diversity.

Mrema's secretariat, which supports and encourages the contracting states to implement the agreements in the biodiversity convention, is based in Montreal.

Nevertheless, the World Conference on Nature is anything but a home game for the Executive Secretary, not least because China holds the presidency.

Because of the restrictive Chinese corona policy until recently, the summit to save nature was finally moved to Canada.

Representatives from 196 countries are gathered in Montreal.

Thousands of observers, activists and representatives of non-governmental organizations as well as representatives of business and the financial sector are accompanying the negotiations on site.

Indigenous peoples and local communities are also well represented.

The ministers responsible for environmental protection and nature conservation arrived this week.

On December 19th, the time has come: With a new global framework, the loss of biodiversity is to be stopped by 2030 and a change of course that is compatible with nature and resources is to be initiated.