Considering biological diversity as a global asset to current and future generations and populations across the planet, the Convention works to prevent species extinction and maintain protected habitats.
Its mission is to “take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity to ensure that by 2020, ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide essential services, thereby securing the planet’s variety of life, and contributing to human well-being, and poverty eradication.”[7] With 197 ratified parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is committed to the objective of “[stabilizing] greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” [8] Following the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and previously the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the UNFCCC Secretariat works to maintain the goals and objectives of the Convention, as the primary United Nations body whose role functions to address the threat of climate change.
[10] The UNCCD aims to restore the productivity of degraded land, while improving livelihoods and aiding populations that are vulnerable because of environmental destruction.
[10] “The Convention’s 197 parties work together to improve the living conditions for people in drylands, to maintain and restore land and soil productivity, and to mitigate the effects of drought.”[11]