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European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
News article7 December 2022European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency

EU presents LIFE biodiversity projects on its COP 15 website

Starting today, the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 15) will be the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade.

EU presents LIFE biodiversity projects on its COP 15 website
LIFE16 NAT/LV/000262/Latvian Fund for Nature - All rights reserved. Licensed to the European Union under conditions.

Despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide. We are losing plants and animals at a rate 1 000 times greater than at any other time in recorded human history. In Europe, 420 million birds have been lost since 1990, two-thirds of wetlands have disappeared over the past century, and insect populations are rapidly declining. Globally, the wild species population has fallen by 60% in just 40 years, with one million currently at risk of extinction.

COP 15 brings governments worldwide together to agree on an ambitious global biodiversity framework to halt and reverse this biodiversity loss.

Meanwhile, the LIFE Programme has a long and rich history of conservation success, which has helped counter biodiversity loss. And it has championed many of the values and actions in the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.

Since 1992, LIFE has co-financed conservation actions on more than 5 400 Natura 2000 sites –roughly 20% of the entire network. It has doubled the size of the marine Natura 2000 network over the past five years. And it has co-financed more than 1 800 nature and biodiversity projects. LIFE has safeguarded some 900 species of wild animals and plants and protected over 200 bird species throughout Europe. LIFE has also purchased around 200 000 hectares of land across Europe – this land is protected indefinitely.

To illustrate this impact, several LIFE projects have been selected as prime examples of how to protect our biodiversity. They can be viewed on a new EU COP 15 website.

Read about these LIFE successes

Want to discover more?

More EU nature restoration success stories (including several LIFE projects)

Watch LIFE turns 30 – the story so far

Listen to the #LIFEis30 podcast series

Find out more about the EU at COP15

Sources

LIFE publication: Together for biodiversity

LIFE publication: Bringing nature back through LIFE

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