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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Patrick Greenfield

Cop15 negotiators have left their homework to the last minute – can they scrape a pass?

Police officers walk past a sign as they patrol outside the Palais des congrès de Montréal during the opening of Cop15,  the two-week U.N. biodiversity summit.
Police officers patrol outside the Palais des congrès de Montréal during the opening of Cop15, the UN biodiversity summit. Photograph: Christinne Muschi/Reuters

All procrastinators know the feeling: an enormous task is not close to being finished, time is slipping away and the pressure to act has become impossible to ignore. But despite the mounting unease, there is still not yet enough pressure to take action, and it is unclear if there ever will be.

At the Palais des congrès de Montréal convention centre at Cop15, after more than two years of delays, there is a sense that governments tasked with agreeing this decade’s targets for protecting life on Earth are in just such a situation.

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