AFP UK

Ma Mingliang rarely encountered wild elephants while growing up in southwestern China, after centuries of hunting and deforestation nearly eradicated them. Today, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community to keep them out.

A wandering herd of Asian elephants has captivated China for more than a year with a remarkable trek northwards through farms and cities hundreds of kilometres from their normal range in Yunnan province.

But an elephant in the street is now a common sight for residents of the animals’ home territory on the Myanmar-Laos border, where a recovering elephant population is being squeezed into ever-shrinking habitat, leading to more conflict with humans.

The tension is immediately apparent in Ma’s village in Xishuangbanna, a subtropical prefecture the size of a small country where China’s elephant population congregates.

The neatly ordered homes of the little community, called Xiangyanqing, climb up a gently sloping hillside, dotted by signs promoting human-elephant “harmony” and encircled by a steel fence separating it from adjacent jungle.

The village of rubber-tappers is entered through a wide steel gate that clangs shut at night, when hunger activates the elephants.

– ‘There is conflict’ –

Still, they regularly find their way in, putting the village in lockdown until the potentially dangerous trespassers wander out, usually after raiding fruit and vegetable gardens.

“Things used to be harmonious before. But there is conflict now,” Ma said dryly.

Ironically, successful conservation is partly to blame.

Asian elephants, which range across South and Southeast Asia, were nearly exterminated within China, leaving only around 150 in Xishuangbanna by the 1980s.

Conservationists say a 1988 hunting ban and strict protection of a sprinkling of fragmented elephant reserves has turned things around.

With no natural enemies, the population has doubled to more than 300 and counting.

“Compared to when we were kids, there are more baby elephants in the herds now,” Ma said.

Weighing up to four tons, they consume as much as 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of food daily.

Increasingly, filling up means a raid on a local farm.

Elephants inflict an estimated 20 million yuan ($3 million) in annual economic losses.

The devoured crops and damaged homes in Xishuangbanna are the prefecture’s biggest source of insurance claims, said Zhang Li, an ecology professor at Beijing Normal University involved in elephant conservation policy.

And they killed at least 41 people between 2013 and 2019, Zhang said. Many more are injured each year.

Attacks, typically by protective mothers or volatile lone young males, can resemble grisly crime scenes.

State media reports on recent cases describe victims being trampled by the surprisingly fast-moving beasts and bludgeoned or throttled by their strong trunks, leaving bones shattered, skulls cracked, and bodies gruesomely dismembered.

– Habitat loss –

Communist Party media portrays the 14 wandering elephants -– now pointed homeward after an 18-month odyssey — as lovable symbols of China’s conservation success.

But Chinese scientists say growing habitat loss is part of the problem.

Authorities have been forced to address safety risks.

Xishuangbanna in 2019 installed a high-tech grid covering hundreds of square kilometres that uses stationary cameras to relay elephant sightings to a command centre, which sends out warnings to communities. 

The drill: get indoors, hide upstairs out of reach, and don’t approach the beasts or use firecrackers to drive them off, which may anger them.

Throughout Xishuangbanna, statues and other imagery celebrate its leading residents — while stressing giving them a wide berth.

Villagers are adapting.

For decades, Lu Zhengrong’s hilltop farming settlement grew rice, corn and other staples, but years of elephant raids prompted a shift.

“The wild elephants became too troublesome and numerous, so we’ve switched to growing what they don’t eat, like tea or rubber,” Lu said.

That, however, is accelerating habitat loss, said the ecologist Zhang. 

Surging demand for rubber and tea has caused plantations to steadily expand into lands traditionally roamed by elephants but which lack official state protection, squeezing them into protected but increasingly isolated pockets. 

Inevitably, they roam out.

– ‘We need balance’ –

Exactly why the 14 wanderers made their mammoth trek northward remains a mystery.

But Zhang said “loss and fragmentation of their habitat may be the root cause,” exacerbated by competition for wild food sources as elephant numbers increase.

Things may worsen as climate change is projected to further reduce habitat, he added.

China is devising a new national park system to bolster habitat protection for key species like pandas and tigers.

A Xishuangbanna elephant national park has been proposed by Chinese scientists, but it faces a key obstacle.

A viable park would require the expensive and politically tricky task of reclaiming farmland and relocating hundreds of thousands of residents to link up pockets of habitat.

Until then, residents must live with the elephants.

“I can’t say we like it,” said Lu.

“But we need balance between this animal and people. We have to protect them.”

Ma Mingliang rarely encountered wild elephants while growing up in southwestern China, after centuries of hunting and deforestation nearly eradicated them. Today, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community to keep them out.

A wandering herd of Asian elephants has captivated China for more than a year with a remarkable trek northwards through farms and cities hundreds of kilometres from their normal range in Yunnan province.

But an elephant in the street is now a common sight for residents of the animals’ home territory on the Myanmar-Laos border, where a recovering elephant population is being squeezed into ever-shrinking habitat, leading to more conflict with humans.

The tension is immediately apparent in Ma’s village in Xishuangbanna, a subtropical prefecture the size of a small country where China’s elephant population congregates.

The neatly ordered homes of the little community, called Xiangyanqing, climb up a gently sloping hillside, dotted by signs promoting human-elephant “harmony” and encircled by a steel fence separating it from adjacent jungle.

The village of rubber-tappers is entered through a wide steel gate that clangs shut at night, when hunger activates the elephants.

– ‘There is conflict’ –

Still, they regularly find their way in, putting the village in lockdown until the potentially dangerous trespassers wander out, usually after raiding fruit and vegetable gardens.

“Things used to be harmonious before. But there is conflict now,” Ma said dryly.

Ironically, successful conservation is partly to blame.

Asian elephants, which range across South and Southeast Asia, were nearly exterminated within China, leaving only around 150 in Xishuangbanna by the 1980s.

Conservationists say a 1988 hunting ban and strict protection of a sprinkling of fragmented elephant reserves has turned things around.

With no natural enemies, the population has doubled to more than 300 and counting.

“Compared to when we were kids, there are more baby elephants in the herds now,” Ma said.

Weighing up to four tons, they consume as much as 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of food daily.

Increasingly, filling up means a raid on a local farm.

Elephants inflict an estimated 20 million yuan ($3 million) in annual economic losses.

The devoured crops and damaged homes in Xishuangbanna are the prefecture’s biggest source of insurance claims, said Zhang Li, an ecology professor at Beijing Normal University involved in elephant conservation policy.

And they killed at least 41 people between 2013 and 2019, Zhang said. Many more are injured each year.

Attacks, typically by protective mothers or volatile lone young males, can resemble grisly crime scenes.

State media reports on recent cases describe victims being trampled by the surprisingly fast-moving beasts and bludgeoned or throttled by their strong trunks, leaving bones shattered, skulls cracked, and bodies gruesomely dismembered.

– Habitat loss –

Communist Party media portrays the 14 wandering elephants -– now pointed homeward after an 18-month odyssey — as lovable symbols of China’s conservation success.

But Chinese scientists say growing habitat loss is part of the problem.

Authorities have been forced to address safety risks.

Xishuangbanna in 2019 installed a high-tech grid covering hundreds of square kilometres that uses stationary cameras to relay elephant sightings to a command centre, which sends out warnings to communities. 

The drill: get indoors, hide upstairs out of reach, and don’t approach the beasts or use firecrackers to drive them off, which may anger them.

Throughout Xishuangbanna, statues and other imagery celebrate its leading residents — while stressing giving them a wide berth.

Villagers are adapting.

For decades, Lu Zhengrong’s hilltop farming settlement grew rice, corn and other staples, but years of elephant raids prompted a shift.

“The wild elephants became too troublesome and numerous, so we’ve switched to growing what they don’t eat, like tea or rubber,” Lu said.

That, however, is accelerating habitat loss, said the ecologist Zhang. 

Surging demand for rubber and tea has caused plantations to steadily expand into lands traditionally roamed by elephants but which lack official state protection, squeezing them into protected but increasingly isolated pockets. 

Inevitably, they roam out.

– ‘We need balance’ –

Exactly why the 14 wanderers made their mammoth trek northward remains a mystery.

But Zhang said “loss and fragmentation of their habitat may be the root cause,” exacerbated by competition for wild food sources as elephant numbers increase.

Things may worsen as climate change is projected to further reduce habitat, he added.

China is devising a new national park system to bolster habitat protection for key species like pandas and tigers.

A Xishuangbanna elephant national park has been proposed by Chinese scientists, but it faces a key obstacle.

A viable park would require the expensive and politically tricky task of reclaiming farmland and relocating hundreds of thousands of residents to link up pockets of habitat.

Until then, residents must live with the elephants.

“I can’t say we like it,” said Lu.

“But we need balance between this animal and people. We have to protect them.”

Tropical storm Grace strengthened into a hurricane on Wednesday as it barreled toward Mexico’s Caribbean coast, grounding flights and threatening to bring strong winds, flash flooding and large waves.

A hurricane warning was in effect for a string of beach resorts, including Cancun, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.

At least 124 flights to or from Cancun were canceled, the city’s mayor, Mara Lezama, said on Twitter.

At 0000 GMT, the Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale — was packing maximum sustained winds of 80 miles (130 kilometers) per hour, according to the NHC.

It was located 170 miles east of the Mexican town of Tulum and expected to make landfall early Thursday, having already drenched earthquake-stricken Haiti, the NHC said.

The storm was then expected to cross the southwest Gulf of Mexico before lashing the eastern states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

Grace was “expected to bring strong winds and a dangerous storm surge” to parts of the Yucatan, according to the NHC.

“Heavy rainfall from Grace will likely result in areas of flash and urban flooding, and will also be capable of producing mudslides,” it said.

The storm surge will be accompanied by “large and destructive waves” near the coast, the NHC warned.

Businesses on Mexico’s Riviera Maya boarded up windows, while fishermen and tour operators hauled their boats onto land and tourists soaked up the final hours in the sun.

At supermarkets in Cancun, some residents stocked up on food in preparation for the storm’s arrival, although the authorities called on people to avoid panic buying.

“We don’t know what it will be like,” said 41-year-old housewife Hortencia Rodriguez.

“With Wilma we didn’t prepare and we were hit hard,” she said, referring to a Category 5 hurricane that pummeled Cancun in 2005.

Authorities in Mexico’s southeastern state of Quintana Roo set up 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

A wildfire that erupted outside California’s state capital just a few days ago had exploded to cover 54,000 acres by Wednesday, an eight-fold increase in 24 hours.

At least two people had to be airlifted to hospital as the Caldor Fire tore through a small town around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Sacramento.

Thousands of people have been told to seek safety, with the blaze raging uncontrolled through the Eldorado National Forest.

“Please, please heed the warnings, and then when you’re asked to get out, get out,” Fire Chief Thom Porter said, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“We need you out of the way so we can protect your homes from these fires.”

In a stunning demonstration of the way these blazes transform, the Caldor Fire, which began on Saturday, grew from around 6,500 acres on Tuesday morning, fanned by strong winds and huge reserves of tinder-dry fuel.

The Caldor Fire is one of scores raging across the desiccated western United States, as man-made climate change alters weather patterns and brings chronic drought to the region.

On Wednesday, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for parts of the town of Lower Lake, including two schools and a mobile home park, after a new blaze erupted there.

“If you’re in Lower Lake, you should probably get out of here,” Sheriff Brian Martin said in a Facebook video.

“We’ve got some pretty sticky situations going on. This is a very, very serious event.”

The Lake County News said firefighters had seen RVs ablaze, with reports that authorities were going door-to-door to urge people to flee the quickly developing Cache Fire.

– Dixie Fire still burning –

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire continued to burn.

It has now scorched more than 600,000 acres in the month since it started, and is the second biggest blaze in California’s history.

Photos taken by an AFP journalist show towering flames consuming the trees along the side of a highway, as firefighters try to set containment lines.

In the town of Janesville, the burned out hulks of cars sit among the still-smoking undergrowth; elsewhere, mailboxes exposed to the ferocious heat of the flames have melted out of shape.

The acrid smoke created by wildfires sparked an air quality advisory Wednesday for residents in and around San Francisco.

Utility PG&E on Tuesday began shutting off power supply to more than 50,000 customers.

The company — which has acknowledged that its equipment may have started the Dixie Fire — said the shut-offs were to avoid the danger of live lines falling on dry vegetation.

The last decade has seen a huge rise in the number of wildfires in the west of the United States.

Climate change linked to the burning of fossil fuels has made the region dryer and hotter for longer, creating ideal conditions for the blazes to rage.

A wildfire that erupted outside California’s state capital just a few days ago had exploded to cover 54,000 acres by Wednesday, an eight-fold increase in 24 hours.

At least two people had to be airlifted to hospital as the Caldor Fire tore through a small town around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Sacramento.

Thousands of people have been told to seek safety, with the blaze raging uncontrolled through the Eldorado National Forest.

“Please, please heed the warnings, and then when you’re asked to get out, get out,” Fire Chief Thom Porter said, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“We need you out of the way so we can protect your homes from these fires.”

In a stunning demonstration of the way these blazes transform, the Caldor Fire, which began on Saturday, grew from around 6,500 acres on Tuesday morning, fanned by strong winds and huge reserves of tinder-dry fuel.

The Caldor Fire is one of scores raging across the desiccated western United States, as man-made climate change alters weather patterns and brings chronic drought to the region.

On Wednesday, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for parts of the town of Lower Lake, including two schools and a mobile home park, after a new blaze erupted there.

“If you’re in Lower Lake, you should probably get out of here,” Sheriff Brian Martin said in a Facebook video.

“We’ve got some pretty sticky situations going on. This is a very, very serious event.”

The Lake County News said firefighters had seen RVs ablaze, with reports that authorities were going door-to-door to urge people to flee the quickly developing Cache Fire.

– Dixie Fire still burning –

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire continued to burn.

It has now scorched more than 600,000 acres in the month since it started, and is the second biggest blaze in California’s history.

Photos taken by an AFP journalist show towering flames consuming the trees along the side of a highway, as firefighters try to set containment lines.

In the town of Janesville, the burned out hulks of cars sit among the still-smoking undergrowth; elsewhere, mailboxes exposed to the ferocious heat of the flames have melted out of shape.

The acrid smoke created by wildfires sparked an air quality advisory Wednesday for residents in and around San Francisco.

Utility PG&E on Tuesday began shutting off power supply to more than 50,000 customers.

The company — which has acknowledged that its equipment may have started the Dixie Fire — said the shut-offs were to avoid the danger of live lines falling on dry vegetation.

The last decade has seen a huge rise in the number of wildfires in the west of the United States.

Climate change linked to the burning of fossil fuels has made the region dryer and hotter for longer, creating ideal conditions for the blazes to rage.

Tropical storm Grace strengthened into a hurricane on Wednesday as it barreled toward Mexico’s Caribbean coast, threatening to bring heavy rain, flash flooding and large waves, meteorologists said.

A hurricane warning was in effect for a string of beach resorts, including Cancun, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.

At least 10 flights between Mexico City and Cancun were cancelled and more disruption was expected, the Mexican transport ministry said.

At 2100 GMT, the Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale — was packing maximum sustained winds of 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour, according to the NHC.

It was located 400 kilometers east of the Mexican town of Tulum and expected to make landfall early Thursday, having already drenched earthquake-stricken Haiti, the NHC said.

The storm was then expected to cross the southwest Gulf of Mexico before lashing the eastern states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

“Heavy rainfall from Grace will likely result in areas of flash and urban flooding, and will also be capable of producing mudslides,” the NHC warned.

A “dangerous storm surge” will be accompanied by “large and destructive waves” near the coast, it said.

Businesses on Mexico’s Riviera Maya boarded up windows while fishermen and tour operators hauled their boats onto land and tourists soaked up the final hours in the sun.

At supermarkets in Cancun, some residents stocked up on food in preparation for the storm’s arrival, although the authorities called on people to avoid panic buying.

“We don’t know what it will be like,” said 41-year-old housewife Hortencia Rodriguez.

“With Wilma we didn’t prepare and we were hit hard,” she said, referring to a Category 5 hurricane that pummeled Cancun in 2005.

Authorities in Mexico’s southeastern state of Quintana Roo set up 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

Hundreds of firefighters struggled for a third day Wednesday to contain France’s worst wildfire of the summer near the glitzy Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez which has left two dead and forced thousands of residents and tourists to flee.

The fire is the latest to hit a Mediterranean region that has seen an onslaught of blazes claim lives in Greece, Turkey, Italy and Algeria in recent weeks, with numerous officials blaming climate change.

The fire near Saint-Tropez has scorched some 5,000 hectares in a region known for its forests, vineyards and fauna since it broke out in the Plaine des Maures nature reserve on Monday evening.

The blaze spread further north on Wednesday evening, although firefighters said the wind which had fanned the flames all day had finally dropped and temperatures were falling.

“We must remain humble and careful, but we must take the opportunity to hit this fire”, said Commander Florent Dossetti.

“We are going to treat the edges and the hot points before resuming the fight tomorrow, metre by metre,” Dossetti added. 

Var’s senior local official, or prefect, Evence Richard said two people had been found dead, including one whose charred body was discovered in the village of Grimaud.

Investigators were seeking to identify the corpse, which was so badly disfigured that “nothing can indicate whether it is a man or a woman”, prosecutor Patrice Camberou said. “The house was completely destroyed by fire,” he added.

There were fears the body could be that of a young woman staying in a holiday home in the village who was reported missing on Monday.

The other victim was a man, authorities said.

Twenty-four people have been lightly injured in this fire, including five firefighters, Richard said.

As for the thousands evacuated from holiday homes and camping sites, Richard said “we will re-evaluate the situation at the end of the afternoon… but for now a return is not on the agenda.

Around 1,200 firefighters were deployed, some using high-pressure hoses and water-bombing planes and helicopters to control the flames.

– ‘Battle is ongoing’ –

High temperatures and strong winds forced local authorities to evacuate around 7,000 people from homes and campsites, the Var prefecture said Tuesday, many to the safety of municipal buildings and schools.

Among them were 1,300 people staying at a campsite in the village of Bormes-les-Mimosas down the coast from Saint-Tropez.

Others fled the village of La Garde-Freinet, but there were no new evacuations overnight, the fire service said Wednesday.

“We started smelling the smoke around 7 pm, then we saw the flames on the hill,” said Cindy Thinesse, who fled a campsite near Cavalaire on Monday evening. 

“We hesitated, but when we saw that, we decided to leave,” she told AFP.

“The coming hours will be absolutely decisive” for the firefighting effort, President Emmanuel Macron, who has been taking his summer break on the Mediterranean coast, said during a visit to first responders on Tuesday evening.

While Macron added that “the battle is ongoing and the fire has not yet been contained, stabilised,” he said that the firefighters’ courage had managed to “avoid the worst”.

– ‘Climate change hotspot’ – 

The Mediterranean basin has long faced seasonal wildfires linked to its dry and hot weather in the summer, but climate scientists warn they will become increasingly common because of man-made global warming.

A draft UN assessment seen exclusively by AFP says that fire seasons will also last longer in the Mediterranean, which it called a “climate change hotspot”.

The French fire is believed to have started near a motorway stop some 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of Saint-Tropez.

“We’ve never seen it spread with such speed, it was three or four times the usual,” La Garde-Freinet’s mayor Thomas Dombry told AFP.

“Half of the Plain des Maures nature reserve has been devastated,” said Concha Agero, deputy director of the French Office of Biodiversity.

Charred power lines lay on the ground Tuesday, and many trees were burnt around their trunks but their branches were intact, suggesting the fire had ripped through at speed.

But after a calm night, on Wednesday technicians began trying to restore phone and electricity lines.

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A wildfire that erupted outside California’s state capital just a few days ago had exploded to cover more than 53,000 acres by Wednesday.

At least two people had to be airlifted to hospital as the Caldor Fire tore through a small town around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Sacramento.

Thousands of people have been told to seek safety, with the fire raging uncontrolled through the Eldorado National Forest.

“Please, please heed the warnings, and then when you’re asked to get out, get out,” Fire Chief Thom Porter said, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“We need you out of the way so we can protect your homes from these fires.”

The fire, which started on Saturday, grew eightfold in 24 hours, according to incident updates, a frightening demonstration of its aggression.

Strong winds were fanning the blaze, complicating firefighting efforts, Cal Fire said.

The Caldor Fire is one of scores raging across the tinder-dry western United States, as man-made climate change alters weather patterns and brings chronic drought to the region.

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire continued to burn.

It has now scorched more than 600,000 acres in the month since it started, and is the second biggest blaze in California’s history.

Photos taken by an AFP journalist show towering flames consuming the trees along the side of a highway, as firefighters try to set containment lines.

In the town of Janesville, the burned out hulks of cars sit among the still-smoking undergrowth; elsewhere, mailboxes exposed to the ferocious heat of the flames have melted out of shape.

The acrid smoke created by wildfires sparked an air quality advisory Wednesday for residents of the Bay Area, around San Francisco.

Utility PG&E on Tuesday began shutting off power supply to more than 50,000 customers.

The company — which has acknowledged that its equipment may have started the Dixie Fire — said the shut-offs were to avoid the danger of live lines falling on dry vegetation.

The last decade has seen a huge rise in the number of wildfires in the west of the United States.

Climate change linked to the burning of fossil fuels has made the region dryer and hotter for longer, creating ideal conditions for the blazes to rage.

Tropical storm Grace strengthened to a hurricane on Wednesday as it barreled toward Mexico’s Caribbean coast, threatening to bring heavy rain, flash flooding and large waves, meteorologists said.

A hurricane warning was in effect for a string of beach resorts, including Cancun, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.

At 1500 GMT, the Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale — was packing maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour, according to the NHC.

It was located 560 kilometers east of the Mexican town of Tulum and expected to strengthen further before making landfall on Thursday morning, having already drenched earthquake-stricken Haiti, the NHC said.

In supermarkets in Cancun, some residents stocked up on food in preparation for the hurricane’s arrival, although the authorities called on people to avoid panic buying.

“We don’t know what it will be like,” said 41-year-old housewife Hortencia Rodriguez.

“With Wilma we didn’t prepare and we were hit hard,” she said, referring to a Category 5 hurricane that pummeled Cancun in 2005.

Authorities in Mexico’s southeastern state of Quintana Roo set up 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

The face-to-face portion of a critical UN biodiversity summit originally slated for last year will be delayed until April 2022, UN officials said Wednesday, citing the Covid pandemic.

An “official” virtual opening of the COP15 meeting hosted by China will take place in mid-October this year, followed by face-to-face negotiations in southern China’s Kunming from April 25 to May 8, 2022.

Campaigners have for years called for an effective global agreement on halting biodiversity loss, similar to what the Paris Agreement lays out for climate change.

With more than one million species facing extinction and the world failing to meet existing nature preservation targets, the need for an accord among the nearly 200 nations taking part in the talks is pressing.

Earlier this month, the UN unveiled a draft agreement for the summit calling for the preservation of at least 30 percent of land and oceans, along with other biodiversity targets.

The fruit of months of online discussions, the draft mapped out the route for humanity to be “living in harmony with nature” by 2050.

The draft outlined 21 targets and 10 “milestones” to be hit by 2030 to preserve biodiversity.

These include restoring at least 20 percent of degraded ecosystems and ensuring that existing intact wild areas are retained.

At least 30 percent of land and marine species should also be protected through conservation areas, the draft proposed.

The framework also called for more sustainable farming and fishing practices, including a two-thirds reduction in pesticide use, as well as “eliminating the discharge of plastic waste”. 

“Addressing the challenge of halting ongoing losses of species and genetic diversity and the damage to our ecosystems will determine the well-being of humanity for generations to come,” UN biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said after Wednesday’s announcement.

“Convening COP15 in two parts will enable maximum progress on the several remaining difficult issues prior to our conclusive face-to-face sessions in Kunming.”

– ‘Absolute minimum’ –

The draft laid out specific funding targets, including the reduction of subsidies that are harmful to nature by at least $500 billion annually. 

It also called for at least $200 billion each year in new and additional finance to implement the targets.

Originally meant to be held in October 2020, the summit was delayed by a year as the coronavirus swept across the planet.

But with the pandemic continuing to rage, the organisers have decided to postpone for a second time.

Two “high-level” days of virtual meetings from October 12 will see world leaders seek to add impetus to the COP15 negotiations, organisers said.

Green groups have however voiced scepticism that the text will survive the fraught negotiations.

Oscar Soria, campaign manager at pressure group Avaaz, told AFP that the figures laid out in the draft were “absolute minimum numbers”.

“If this draft survives the bargaining of the negotiations, the world will have a solid blueprint for biodiversity action,” he said.