Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We're the charity and think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Lydia Collis, a policy analyst of Green Alliance.

This episode is about COP 15, which is taking place in Montreal as we speak.

You might be surprised to see another COP on the agenda, but whereas last months in Cairo was all about climate, this is all about biodiversity.

And it's a long-awaited moment. The event was originally due to be held in China in 2020,

but COVID has twice delayed it and now moved it to Canada,

though China are still the official organisers.

It's been dubbed the most important conference of the year

and there's hope we might see major progress on action to end biodiversity loss around the world.

I'm joined by Patrick Greenfield, who reports on biodiversity and the environment at The Guardian and is on the ground in Montreal.

All COPS, Climate COPS, Desertification COPS, cops, biodiversity cops, are about preventing futures

and preventing realities that hopefully are never realized.

And we will never really know what we've prevented.

Some countries are working very hard on these issues.

We've seen Costa Rica, for example, the only tropical country in the history of the planet

to halt and reverse its deforestation rate and massively expand its forest cover, right? There

are moments of hope that we're just trying to, I guess, lift up and expand on a global level.

In this episode, we're going to be looking at why we need a biodiversity cop,

what we're hoping might be achieved, and how it relates back to what's going on here in the UK.

Patrick, to start, can you tell us why is the world gathering in Montreal to talk about biodiversity? I'm here in Montreal with negotiators

from 193 countries, I think it is now, to agree this decade's targets for protecting biodiversity

...