- 60 killed in Colombia guerilla violence
- 'Invincible' Gauff revels in Melbourne heat to reach quarters
- Indonesia's Mount Ibu erupts more than 1,000 times this month
- Sumo to stage event in Paris as part of global push
- Deadly strikes on Gaza after Israel says ceasefire delayed
- Badosa 'loves Coco' but is gunning for 'revenge' in Melbourne quarters
- Sabalenka, Gauff on Melbourne collision course as Alcaraz moves on
- Alcaraz into Australian Open quarters after Draper retires
- Sabalenka uses fighting spirit to banish Australian Open blues
- Sabalenka, Gauff on Melbourne collision course after reaching quarters
- Swiss rider Ruegg wins opening UCI World Tour event in Australia
- Mitchell scores 36 as Cavs bounce back, Celtics downed
- Sabalenka a happy snapper at Australian Open
- Gauff turns up heat on Bencic to reach Australian Open quarters
- Commanders stun Lions in NFL thriller, Chiefs advance
- Protesters storm S. Korea court after president's detention extended
- TikTok notifies US users of shutdown as Trump seeks last-ditch solution
- Ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war to begin at 0630 GMT
- Wuhan keen to shake off pandemic label five years on
- Sabalenka imperious as Djokovic, Alcaraz on Melbourne collision course
- 'Generational problem': Youth still struggling in pandemic's shadow
- Vaccine misinformation: a lasting side effect from Covid
- Sabalenka blows away Andreeva to reach Melbourne quarter-finals
- Hope, fear at Paris rally for Gaza hostages
- Separated by LA wildfires, a happy reunion for some pets, owners
- France's Moutet 'collapsed in shower' before Australian Open match
- In US, teleworkers don't want to turn back
- Covid's origins reviewed: Lab leak or natural spillover?
- Trump arrives in Washington ahead of Monday's inauguration
- Steady Straka takes four-shot lead in PGA Tour's American Express
- Kelce, Mahomes double-act leads Chiefs past Texans in NFL playoffs
- Barcelona's Balde complains of racist abuse in Getafe draw
- Frustrated Barca fail to capitalise on Atletico La Liga slip
- More Kenyan police land in Haiti to bolster security mission
- McGlynn leads youthful USA to friendly win over Venezuela
- Barcelona stumble to frustrating Getafe draw in title setback
- Lukaku fires Napoli six points clear at Atalanta, Juve sink Milan
- Milder winds help LA firefighters as Trump vows to visit
- S. Korean court extends impeached president's detention, angering supporters
- Wirtz has Leverkusen on Bayern's heels to keep repeat title 'dream' alive
- Arsenal must take blame for Villa fightback: Arteta
- Nunez late show extends Liverpool's lead, Arsenal held by Aston Villa
- Russian attacks kill six across Ukraine, Kyiv says
- Northampton, Leinster claim Champions Cup pool top spots
- Arsenal's title bid rocked by Villa fightback
- Superb Wirtz keeps Leverkusen on pace with leaders Bayern
- Detention extended for S. Korea's impeached president
- Thousands attend funeral of Liberian ex-warlord Prince Johnson
- Barcola strikes as PSG fight back to beat Lens
- Juventus into Serie A Champions League spots with victory over AC Milan
UN holds biodiversity talks on deal to stave off mass extinction
Global efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution, protect a third of wild spaces, and ultimately live "in harmony with nature" will dominate UN biodiversity negotiations starting Monday, held in person after a two-year pandemic delay.
Almost 200 countries are due to adopt a global framework this year to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30 percent protected by 2030.
The aim is also to safeguard the "services" nature supplies: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that yields the food we eat.
The meeting in Geneva will set the stage for a crucial UN biodiversity summit, initially due to be held in China in 2020 and postponed several times. It is now expected to take place at the end of August.
Geneva is a chance to strengthen a draft global biodiversity agreement "that many observers feel currently lacks the teeth needed to meaningfully address interconnected biodiversity and climate crises that cannot be solved in isolation", according to the Nature Conservancy.
Campaigners have for years called for a deal on halting biodiversity loss similar to what the Paris Agreement outlined for the climate.
Previous efforts to halt this devastation have fallen short, with countries failing, for example, to meet almost all the biodiversity targets set in 2010.
But despite often being overshadowed by the efforts to combat climate change, the plight of the natural world is no less catastrophic.
Intensive agriculture is depleting the soil and fouled waterways, oceans are overfished, plastics and other pollutants are invading ecosystems and threatening our health.
And now climate change is a growing threat that could compound all of these problems.
Last month, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that nine percent of all the world's species will likely be "at high risk" of extinction even if warming is capped at the ambitious Paris target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In 2019, a report by UN biodiversity experts said one million species could disappear in the coming decades, raising fears that the world is entering its sixth era of mass extinction in the last half-billion years.
"We only know of about 10 percent of the species that exist on Earth. Some disappear without even having been described, nor ever seen by any human being," Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), told AFP.
- Ambition -
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is aiming to reverse that trend with its global framework.
This round of negotiations began in Rome in February 2020 and was swiftly brought to a halt by the Covid-19 pandemic, though online sessions continued and a draft text was finished in 2021.
It is hoped the in-person meeting in Geneva will move the process closer to a global deal at the UN's COP15 summit in China.
"Will we be able to settle everything? That's the big question," Basile van Havre, one of the two co-chairs of the negotiations, told AFP.
The draft outlines some twenty targets for 2030, including the high-profile ambition to protect at least 30 percent of the Earth's land and water habitats.
It also outlines objectives on reducing the amount of fertilisers and pesticides discharged into the environment and cutting at least $500 billion per year of subsidies harmful to Nature and ecosystems.
But as it stands, Guido Broekhoven of WWF said, the text is "not ambitious and comprehensive enough to address the current biodiversity crisis".
Observers will judge whether the mechanisms put in place -- such as monitoring and enforcement -- correspond to the targets set, said Sebastien Treyer, director general of the IDDRI think tank.
There will also be significant attention on the "mobilisation of financial resources", which are of particular importance to the Global South, he said.
Even the goal of the so-called High Ambition Coalition to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 might not be enough, observers said.
"If we do not tackle the indirect causes (of biodiversity loss), in particular production and consumption, there will always be strong erosion," said Juliette Landry, a researcher at IDDRI.
T.Perez--AT