COP15: Here’s what to expect from this year’s UN biodiversity summit

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Editor's note: After the damp conclusion of the COP27 climate summit last month, all eyes are now on another important environment-related event.  COP15, or the 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, kicks off today in Montreal, Canada, and is scheduled to end on 19 December. The convention is a lesser-known cousin of the climate change convention that governs summits like COP27. Both conventions were signed at the historic Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The one on biodiversity has 196 signatories, including India—the US is not one of them. The convention aims to stop the ongoing catastrophic loss of animal and plant species, the sixth extinction event in the Earth’s history and the worst since the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. It has a vision: By 2050, humans should live “in harmony with nature”. I know this sounds like a worn-out narrative about nature preservation. Words like biodiversity always send my mind to a numb, quiet place. Don’t we have enough to worry about with climate change and plastic pollution and …