BEFORE DISCUSSING COP15:
You may have noticed that I’ve chosen to feature tweets from Biodiversity Ireland on this site. That is in large part because biodiversity is easy to put on the back burner in discussions of climate change, adaptation, and mitigation. Whether this is due to the tendency to avoid discussing less ‘charismatic’ species, or because of the human tendency to focus on species we see as helpful or useful in an exploitative context, the fact remains that we do not have a great track record when it comes to achieving biodiversity goals (such as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets). Many people might be interested in reintroducing wolves or bison, but when it comes to arthropods (many of which are becoming extinct at alarming rates) there are certainly less headlines being made.
Green Hearstreak-Patrick Garvey 
Pearl Border Fritillary-Paul Dinca 
Common Blue (Male)-Liam Lysaght 
Marsh Fritillary-Liam Lysaght 
Brimstone-OisÃn Duffy 
Red Admiral-Kevin Murphy
For fellow residents of Ireland, you might be interested in The National Biodiverity Centre’s resources. There are numerous free online learning courses available to help identify and monitor our insect friends, including Irish butterflies, moths, damselflies, dragonflies, and of course, bees! There are also many other resources here in English agus as Gaeilge.
Now… COP15 on Biological Diversity
Speaking of biodiversity, the UN Conference of Parties on Biological Diversity, COP15 was hugely overshadowed in the media by COP26, so I wanted to dedicate a short post to it before discussing COP26.
“COP15 is our chance to shift our course. Together with COP26 on climate, it is our chance to agree on the pathway to the world we want. Because in delivering on biodiversity, we deliver on climate, on pollution, on the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, and on the food and energy system transformation. So, let us ensure that this COP will be remembered as the moment we finally set our societies and economies on the path to rebuilding the biodiversity upon which we all rely.”
Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Program
As a result of the first meeting of COP15, pledged contributions to the Trust Fund for the Convention on the Biological Diversity for 2022 make up $11,629,664 USD. The largest contributors to this fund are China and Japan, each contributing over 1 million USD. Interestingly (but not surprisingly) The United States is missing from the parties.
Below I have included the Kunming Declaration, which will be submitted for the second part of COP15 25 commencing Apr – 8 May 2022. It will be interesting to see what changes, if any, will be integrated into COP15’s second meeting as a result of the COP26 on Climate.