Australia has promised ongoing funding to help developing countries protect nature as the environment minister heads to crucial biodiversity talks in Canada.

But exactly what that will look like hasn’t been spelled out.

Tanya Plibersek is attending COP15 in Montreal – a UN gathering attempting to thrash out a new deal to halt and reverse devastating declines in nature by 2030.

Independent Senator David Pocock has gone with her, saying Australia must show strong leadership in negotiations, and not let ambition falter in the closing stretch of the two-week conference.

Money is one of the big sticking points. During a session on mobilising finance for protecting nature earlier this week, delegates from countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa walked out over the reluctance of wealthy nations to discuss stumping up new cash.

In Montreal on Thursday, a group of donor nations including Australia restated their intention to provide ongoing financial help to developing nations protect the biodiversity they still have, for the benefit of the world.

Through a joint statement, nations including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, US and the EU together committed billions of dollars to support the protection and restoration of the natural world.

Donors committed to substantially increase their investments by 2025, but were also clear that funding must be mobilised from other sources too.

Some donors offered specific commitments such as France which will double its international finance for biodiversity to reach 1 billion euros per year by 2025.

But Australia’s commitment was relatively vague, with the statement saying:

“Australia plans to increase its international public finance for nature through to 2030 to support developing countries implement an ambitious GBF (global biodiversity framework).

“This builds on the commitment to double its development assistance funding to $2 billion over 2020-2025 for climate including environment and biodiversity projects.”

Donor nations broadly promised to “continue increasing international biodiversity finance and align relevant international development flows, commensurate with ambition” of the framework.

“We also recognise that international development finance alone will never be sufficient to bridge the biodiversity finance gap.

“Mobilising domestic and international finance from all sources remains essential to deliver on the GBF. However, international development finance is critical to unlock further domestic public finance, as well as private and philanthropic finance.”

WWF International called the statement “a good signal of the much-needed political will in Montreal, to ensure financial resources are delivered to the places that need it the most”.

“This political will must now be translated into concrete agreements and convergence in the negotiation room over the next couple of days, to rescue a desperately needed deal for nature to save our life support systems,” WWF’s head of global advocacy Claire Blanchard said.

– AAP