World leaders pledge to protect nature – will it make a difference?

By Adam Vaughan

A farm worker trying to put out an illegal fire which burned part of the Amazon rainforest reserve in Brazil

CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images

It has been a big week for talk about tackling our destruction of nature. “We need to respect nature, follow its laws and protect it,” said China’s president Xi Jinping at a virtual UN biodiversity summit today. However, he stopped short of a biodiversity equivalent of his significant climate announcement last week, pledging that the country would achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

At the summit, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said “humanity is …