PLOS Sustain Transform (2025)
Every year, there is a path of hope between the two major intergovernmental environmental “COPs”, the Conferences of the Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The hope that a breakthrough, a bold decision, will be achieved by member countries. Every year, after the heat of each COP recedes, there is in the scientific community a sense of not enough achieved, of snail-pace progress. Not that intergovernmental summits or treaties are useless; the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and the Paris Agreement on climate change are testimony to the formidable steps that can be achieved through them. However, the progress achieved is clearly far from what is required for the transformative, whole-of-society change that is in order.
