Montreal: A United Nations summit approved on Monday a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation. The objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage. The countries attending the U.N.-backed COP15 biodiversity conference had been negotiating a text proposed on Sunday and talks addressing the finer points of the deal dragged on until Monday. Delegates were finally able to build consensus around the deal’s most ambitious target of protecting 30% of the world’s land and seas by the decade’s end, a goal known as 30-by-30.
