Cop15 negotiators have left their homework to the last minute – can they scrape a pass? | Patrick Greenfield

Pressure is increasing on world leaders to make progress at the UN biodiversity summit - but the pile of unfinished tasks is mounting

All procrastinators know the feeling: an enormous task is not close to being finished, time is slipping away and the pressure to act has become impossible to ignore. But despite the mounting unease, there is still not yet enough pressure to take action, and it is unclear if there ever will be.

At the Palais des congres de Montreal convention centre at Cop15, after more than two years of delays, there is a sense that governments tasked with agreeing this decade's targets for protecting life on Earth are in just such a situation.