Ottawa: In order to support global conservation, environmental leaders from 185 nations gathered in Vancouver, Canada, on Thursday. The United Nations requested donations to help achieve goals like protecting 30% of land and coastal areas by 2030.
The United Kingdom contributed 10 million pounds ($12.60 million), and Canada pledged 200 million Canadian dollars ($147.20 million).
"Things are going well so far. The first projects funded by the new fund should begin next year, so we are now requesting additional pledges from nations and other sources, according to David Cooper, acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
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The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund must receive $200 million from at least three donors by December, according to the advocacy group Avaaz, in order to be deemed operational.
Director of Avaaz Oscar Soria stated, "The time for half-measures has passed." The meagre $40 million needed to launch the fund can surely be raised by donors.
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The meeting takes place eight months after governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, also known as the "Paris Agreement for Nature," which references the historic United Nations agreement to combat climate change from 2015 in its discussion.
One of the 23 goals of the framework is to get the public and private sectors to contribute $200 billion annually to conservation efforts by 2030, with developed nations contributing at least $20 billion annually by 2025.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a mechanism established under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, manages the fund that was announced on Thursday. Over the past 30 years, the GEF has given more than $23 billion to thousands of projects.
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More than a third of the funds will be allocated to the world's least developed nations and small island states, with up to 20% of that amount intended for projects run by indigenous people, according to a statement from the GEF.