COP15: UN calls for ‘peace pact with nature’ – Saudi Gazette

COP15: UN calls for ‘peace pact with nature’ – Saudi Gazette

MONTREAL — "Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction," the head of the United Nations has warned at the start of a high-level nature summit in Canada.

Governments are meeting in Montreal to agree targets to reverse the loss of nature.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said we have a chance to stop the "orgy of destruction" which has put a million species at risk of extinction.

"It's time to forge a peace pact with nature," he added.

Biodiversity is the sum of all living things on the planet and the way they are connected in a complex web of life that we rely upon for food, clean air and water.

In Montreal nearly 200 countries will try to agree on a way to put the world on a path to restoring nature by the end of the decade.

The stakes are high with the COP15 UN summit seen as a chance to do for biodiversity what the Paris agreement has done for the fight against climate change.

The two issues are intertwined, with warnings that a failure to secure a good outcome on protecting nature will make it far harder to fight climate change.

"The idea of biodiversity can be quite complicated for people, but it's basically