World leaders want to protect a third of the Earth's land and water to save wildlife from extinction. There's a climate connection, too.

• Nearly 200 countries agreed to protect 30% of Earth's land and water at a UN biodiversity meeting.
• Species are going extinct at the fastest rate in human history, risking food and water supplies.

Nearly 200 countries reached a landmark agreement on Monday to protect 30% of the world's lands and oceans by the end of the decade to slow an unprecedented loss of nature.

The deal comes as animal and plant species are going extinct at the fastest rate in human history, with scientists estimating that some 1 million species are at risk. Many of the industries profiting from nature are also driving its destruction, including farming, fishing, logging, mining, and fossil-fuel extraction. While food and energy are essential to human existence, balance needs to be restored, world leaders said during a UN biodiversity summit in Montreal known as COP15.

The meeting kicked off only a few weeks after the annual climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, came to a close, underscoring the link between nature and the climate crisis. Forests, oceans, and wetlands store carbon dioxide pollution that is heating the planet, but rising temperatures and more extreme weather is stressing those ecosystems and the species that inhabit them.

"When it comes to climate adaptation and carbon sequestration, there are places on the planet that are most urgent to conserve, like peatlands, mangroves, and coral reefs," Jeffrey Parrish, global managing director for The Nature Conservancy's Protect Oceans, Lands, and Water program, told Insider.

Parrish said biodiversity finally got its "Paris moment" — comparing Montreal to the landmark Paris climate agreement in 2016 — because the goals are the most ambitious to date.

Here are five takeaways from Montreal:

30x30

World leaders set nearly two dozen targets for 2030. The most notable is conserving 30% of land and sea, which typically means restricting areas from commercial activity. Today, about 17% of land and 8% of oceans fit that description.

The US isn't a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity because Congress never ratified it. But President Joe Biden last year committed to the 30x30 pledge in an executive order and his administration sent officials to Montreal to participate in the talks.

Industries driving nature loss

The other 70% of land and water that humanity relies on needs to be restored and used more sustainably to achieve the goals outlined in Montreal. This requires changing the industries driving biodiversity loss.

The agreement mentions agriculture, fishing and forestry, but only set specific targets for reducing pesticides, fertilizer runoff, and highly toxic chemicals. Countries also agreed to carry out policies that "encourage" companies to measure and disclose how their operations both rely on and affect nature, as well as the risks of nature's decline to the bottom line.

Eliminating, phasing out, or reforming subsidies that harm biodiversity is another pillar of the deal. By one estimate, governments spend at least $1.8 trillion a year — or 2% of global gross domestic product — on subsidies for agriculture, construction, forestry, fossil fuels, and other industries that degrade nature. Countries aim to reduce that spending by at least $500 billion by 2030, under the new agreement.

Money moves

The deal calls for mobilizing $200 billion a year in financing from governments, the private sector, and philanthropy. Wealthy countries promised to spend $30 billion a year by 2030 to help poorer nations protect and restore their ecosystems — short of what developing nations had been seeking.

Indigenous peoples

For the first time, the biodiversity framework acknowledged the role of Indigenous people in protecting and restoring land and water. But world leaders didn't designate their land and territory as a separate category of conservation, which groups including Amnesty International and Greenpeace called for.

Can they achieve it?

If the past is prologue, meeting the goals outlined in Montreal will be a huge challenge. Countries didn't achieve any of the targets to slow biodiversity loss by 2020 included in a previous framework, known as the Aichi targets. And even if the $200 billion financing goal is met, it falls short of an estimated $700 billion needed to stem biodiversity loss.

Another obstacle is opposition to the deal by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is home to the second-largest tropical forest and a large portion of the Congo Basin.

UN agreements are typically reached by consensus, but Ève Bazaiba, the DRC's environment minister, told the Guardian that the COP15 president forced through a deal over the country's objections.