2023 began with the promise of progress. The Global Biodiversity Framework had just been signed at COP15 in Montreal, setting humanity on a mission to protect and restore a third of planet before decade’s end — a goal that will halt and reverse wildlife loss while helping fight climate change. An Environics survey we released last January showed Canadians are overwhelmingly behind this mission too: 77 per cent believe we’re at a crisis point and must act in the next 10 years to reverse biodiversity loss, and half of Canadians want the federal government to make its 30×30 target of protecting 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030 a top priority. Then, of course, the rest of the year saw the country, and the world, beset by the nightmarish impacts of climate change — record-shattering wildfires, floods, superstorms and heatwaves — eventually ending with the near-failure of this month’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai after “phase out fossil fuels” was removed.