In December 2022, the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity adopted what was described in the official press release as a ‘historic package of measures deemed critical to addressing the dangerous loss of biodiversity and restoring natural ecosystems’ (CBD Citation2022). These included protection of at least 30% of the world’s lands, inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans by 2030 (thereby endorsing the ‘global deal for nature’ or 30 × 30 initiative proposed by Dinerstein et al. Citation2019) along with restoration complete or under way on at least 30% of degraded terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and a suite of other goals and targets. I will outline these in a little more detail below. However, my aim in this essay is not to provide a comprehensive overview of the agreed Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework but to consider its implications for sociology and cognate social sciences – to ask how signing of this ‘landmark agreement’ might inform research agendas, and the practical contribution of sociology to more just and sustainable futures.
