When Egypt hosted the COP27 climate change talks last month, political heat was triggered — as well as noise. But when the so-called COP15 biodiversity talks started last week in freezing Montreal, there was near silence on the global stage.

Unlike the climate meeting, there are no world leaders in attendance, aside from Canada’s Justin Trudeau. There are few business or finance leaders present. And while there have been intense internal dramas (the talks have repeatedly been about to break down), these have received scant attention, partly because the media presence is small.

This is deeply alarming. This “Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity” was supposed to be “the most significant conference on biodiversity in a decade”, according to the UN. It was called to hammer out a global deal to protect nature, comparable to the headline-grabbing 2015 Paris climate accord.