A ‘War of the Vermin’ at UN after ‘peace pact with nature’ in Montreal

United Nations : Minutes after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed the biodiversity agreement reached in Montreal as the start of a “peace pact with nature”, a cockroach showed up to test it.

In the ‘War of the Vermin’, it was summarily squished without a vote in the Security Council! During his news conference in the UN headquarters’ press briefing room in New York on Monday, the cockroach sauntered in front of the dais and a reporter who was beginning to ask a question pointed it out.

After it was summarily killed, Guterres said amid laughter: “We could have a debate about how we were rescued (from) this threat or if there was a threat to biodiversity.” “Which means there are always two ways to look at the same thing,” he added about what applies to almost anything at the deeply polarised UN.

The cockroach, about an inch long, was attacked by an Australian reporter, whom Guterres’s Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called “a girl from the outback”. Cockroaches that abound in New York City are not an endangered species and are probably not covered by the biodiversity agreement’s agreement to preserve 30 per cent of land and water for biodiversity.

Known as the Convention on Biodiversity, the agreement was announced after hectic negotiations early Monday towards the end of 15th UN conference on biodiversity in Montreal. After cataloguing the gloom of 2022, Guterres saw hope in the agreement involving 196 countries.

“Despite the limitations and long odds, we are working to push back against despair, to fight back against disillusion and to find real solutions,” he said. “The most recent example comes from just this morning, at 3 a.m.” when the agreement was announced in Montreal, he said. “We are finally starting to forge a peace pact with nature,” he added.