Civil Organisations Want To Express At COP15 Biodiversity Meeting

To coordinate and amplify their voices. According to the media, hundreds of organisations recently joined forces to form the "COP15 Collective" ahead of the December 7-19 conference in Montreal.

Protests, public debates, and film screenings are the other side of the COP15 summit, where NGOs are mobilising to raise awareness of the need to protect biodiversity and lobbying for a major deal to do just that.

The group’s spokeswoman, Anne-Celine Guyon, told AFP, "It’s no longer just a question of being an environmentalist." Everyone is around the table; everyone wants to do something, and it’s super encouraging."

As the report stated, around sixty events are planned around the conference in Montreal. Among them are humorous and artistic workshops, an immersive wall projection on the impacts of oil drilling whales, meetings that are open to all, etc.

After the pandemic disrupted student gatherings over the past two years, COP15 will be "an important meeting to reconnect and renew relationships," says 20-year-old Albert Lalonde, a project manager with the David Suzuki Foundation.

Eddy Perez, another spokesperson for the collective, said, "Despite the fact that no government leaders are planning to attend except Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, all are hoping the CPO15 summit achieves a political momentum similar to the Paris agreement with the adoption of an ambitious global framework."

A recent Greenpeace poll showed that, in Canada, eight out of ten people believe the government should lead by example by making strong commitments to protect nature.

"People are getting the message that this is important, that we are going through a crisis, and that there are thousands of species that are in danger on our planet," believes Marie-Josee Beliveau of Greenpeace's Canadian branch.

Full of hope for this "crucial meeting," she said negotiators should know "a very mobilised civil society" is closely following the talks.

Anne-Sophie Dore, an environmental lawyer and lecturer, suggests that there is a lot of interest all of a sudden in the issues of protecting biodiversity, probably as much as we have ever felt.

She adds that real educational work remains to be done, as "most people didn't even know that biodiversity COPs existed compared to climate COPs."

"During time immemorial, the caribou saved us," explains Jerome Bacon St-Onge, member of the Innu people in Canada's far north, evoking a "sacred species" for the Indigenous way of life, precious for its meat and its fur in particular.

"The fact that it is wasting away, it causes us very, very heavy damage in terms of cultural identity," he said, warning that "time is running out" to act, according to the report.

 By Sumita Pawar