Measures to arrest nature's decline must be passed into law, say MEPs

Officials call for global targets on protection of land, oceans and wildlife to be subject to Paris-style legal framework

If humanity wants to reverse the widespread destruction of the natural world, biodiversity needs legal protection like the Paris agreement on climate change, members of the European parliament have said.

Action to halt biodiversity decline is based on voluntary commitments but, less than a year before a crucial UN biodiversity conference in China, MEPs pointed to the destruction of precious ecosystems and the more than 1m species facing extinction as evidence that the approach is failing.