This year’s major climate summit may have concluded when world leaders and environment advocates departed Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt with a “call for action.” But that 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of Parties (more commonly referred to as COP27) is just the beginning as there is another important COP currently ongoing in Montreal, Canada.

Opened last Dec. 7, 2022, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, dubbed as COP15, is underway and representatives from various nations are now focusing on the “living world” – the biological diversity. This event will run until Dec. 19.

The UN defines biodiversity as the “result of 4.5 billion years of evolution and, increasingly, of human influence as well. It forms the web of life, of which humans are integral and upon which people and the planet so fully depend.” More than defining it, the UN is raising its loudest alarm yet, noting how species are now disappearing hundreds, or even thousands, of times faster than the natural background rate of extinction.

“The scientific community has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Around the world, from forests to oceans, animal species, and tropical plants are currently threatened by an unprecedented loss caused by human activity,” the UN said.

Hearing this alarm, the COP15 aims to achieve a “historic agreement to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, on par with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.” This year’s conference also aims to adopt a new landmark global biodiversity framework that safeguards nature, the first of its kind since the Aichi Biodiversity Targets were introduced in 2010.

“We have but a few days to act decisively and with principle. Action must be bold, not bracketed – so we have to get the deal done,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

In his opening statement for the COP15, Andersen stressed that “nature and biodiversity are dying the death of a billion cuts.” And humanity is “paying the price for betraying its closest friend.”

“This Conference of the Parties must secure the future of our planetary life support system,” he said. “We cannot live without nature and biodiversity. Nature provides the very essence of life. Technology cannot replace the trees, the soil, the water, and the species that teem in them. We have no other world to flee to. When the web of life falls, we fall with it. In the coming days, you have a unique responsibility to deliver: to agree on the plan to make peace with nature. This responsibility is not a choice between something or nothing. It is a choice between everything or nothing.”

One does not have to look around the world to witness the loss of crucial ecosystems. In the Philippines, there are tons of evidence of how forests and mountains are destroyed in the name of progress and greed, or how rivers and waterways are polluted for the sake of convenience and apathy. All these realities should make one stand up and feel the urgency to call on our government and our leaders to protect biodiversity.

If you think there is still time, Andersen has this to say: “We cannot make the mistake of thinking time is on our side. We must shore up and strengthen the web of life, so it can carry the full weight of humanity for centuries to come.”

So, is it time’s up? Or time for action?