Cop17 at a glance: everything you need to know about the UN’s nature summit
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EN: The idiom 'put something/someone to the test' means to test how effective, strong, or reliable something or someone really is under difficult conditions.
The unexpected surge in online traffic put the new server infrastructure to the test.
EN: The prepositional phrase 'at a glance' functions idiomatically as a modifier meaning 'briefly' or 'as a quick overview'. It is widely used in news, journalism, and executive summaries as a subtitle or topic marker.
Here are the key takeaways of the fiscal budget at a glance.
EN: Headlinese often utilizes the simple present tense ('Puts') to express immediate, ongoing, or upcoming real-world actions, creating a sense of urgency and directness.
Central Bank Raises Interest Rates Amid Persistent Inflation Fears.
EN: In international diplomacy, 'COP' stands for 'Conference of the Parties'. While the public is often most familiar with the climate-focused COPs under the UNFCCC, biodiversity has its own separate biennial summit series under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
EN: The noun phrase 'a biodiversity summit...' acts as an appositive to 'UN COP17', providing explanatory or descriptive information about the event without introducing a relative pronoun (which would be 'which is a biodiversity summit...').
Delegates will meet in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, an annual meeting determining global health policies.
EN: The sentence contains two stacked participial phrases acting as reduced relative clauses: the present participle phrase 'reviewing...' modifies 'summit' (active: which will review), and the past participle phrase 'agreed at...' modifies 'targets' (passive: which were agreed at).
The committee released a report evaluating the new guidelines introduced last spring.
EN: The term 'COP' stands for 'Conference of the Parties', the governing body of international environmental conventions. While the public is often most familiar with climate summits (such as the COP for the UNFCCC), biodiversity operates under a separate track under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The '23 targets agreed at COP15' refers to the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022, which set goals including the famous '30x30' pledge (protecting 30% of land and ocean by 2030).
EN: The preposition 'amid' (meaning 'in the middle of' or 'surrounded by', often metaphorically amid circumstances, reactions, or emotions) is frequently used in journalistic and formal English to set the background context against which an event occurs.
The reforms were approved amid widespread public protests.
EN: The noun 'warnings' is followed by an appositive clause introduced by the conjunction 'that'. Unlike a relative clause, 'that' does not replace an argument in the clause; it merely connects an abstract noun (e.g., warning, fact, claim, rumor) to a full clause explaining its content.
There are growing concerns that the peace talks may collapse.
EN: The subordinate clause uses the conjunction 'since' with a simple past tense ('the dinosaurs vanished') to mark a fixed point in the deep geological past, serving as a temporal benchmark for the ongoing event described in the present continuous tense ('is undergoing').
The region has seen unprecedented growth since the new railway opened.
EN: The reference to 'the dinosaurs vanished' alludes to the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event roughly 66 million years ago. In contemporary environmental and biodiversity discourse, scientific authorities often label our current era as the 'Sixth Mass Extinction' (the Anthropocene extinction), framing human-driven species decline alongside Earth's most catastrophic prehistoric events.
EN: This sentence employs locative/prepositional inversion (Fronting of Prepositional Phrase + Inverted Predicate). When a prepositional phrase expressing location, rank, or category ('Among...') is moved to the beginning for rhetorical focus or cohesion, the copular verb ('are') precedes the actual compound subject (the three coordinated gerund phrases).
Among the key challenges facing the committee are securing sufficient funding and retaining qualified personnel.
EN: Parallel gerund phrases functioning as compound subjects: Three balanced non-finite verb phrases ('protecting...', 'restoring...', and 'reforming...') are coordinated by 'and'. Because there are three distinct actions, the verb 'are' agrees with the plural compound subject.
Addressing climate change involves reducing carbon emissions, investing in renewable energy, and modernizing transport networks.
EN: The targets listed in this sentence correspond directly to the landmark '30x30' initiative under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed at COP15 in 2022. Target 3 commits nations to protect 30% of global terrestrial, inland water, and coastal/marine areas by 2030, Target 2 mandates restoring at least 30% of degraded ecosystems, and Target 18 pledges to phase out or reform at least $500 billion annually in environmentally harmful subsidies.
EN: Negative inversion occurs when a negative adverb or adverbial phrase (such as 'never', 'seldom', 'rarely', or 'under no circumstances') is placed at the beginning of a clause for rhetorical emphasis. The auxiliary verb precedes the subject, mirroring question word order ('Never have governments met...').
Rarely have scientists witnessed such rapid climatic shifts.
EN: The conjunction 'since' introduces a subordinate time clause referring to a specific historical starting point in the simple past ('was established'), while the main clause uses the present perfect ('have met') to describe actions or states extending from that point up to the present.
She has lived abroad ever since she graduated from university.
EN: The '1992 Rio Earth Summit' (formally the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) was a landmark event that produced the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The sentence references this milestone to highlight more than three decades of systemic failure by global leaders to fulfill their international conservation promises.
EN: The conjunction 'lest' introduces an adverbial clause of purpose or negative result, meaning 'for fear that' or 'in order to avoid'. In formal and literary English, the clause following 'lest' typically uses the present subjunctive (base form of the verb, e.g., 'fail') or 'should' + base verb.
He spoke in whispers, lest he wake the sleeping infant.
EN: The verb 'insist' (often followed by 'that') triggers the mandative subjunctive in formal English. The verb in the subordinate clause takes its base form ('demonstrate'), regardless of the subject's person or number.
The committee insisted that every candidate submit their portfolio on time.
EN: The existential construction 'there has been' (present perfect of 'there is') indicates that something has emerged or occurred over a period leading up to the present. Paired with a nominalization like 'a concerted push to do sth', it conveys sustained, coordinated collective action without explicitly naming an agent.
There has been a concerted push to accelerate renewable energy transitions across Europe.
EN: The deadline '2030' refers to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at COP15 in 2022, which set 23 targets to be achieved by 2030 to halt biodiversity loss. The phrase 'lest this decade's international agreements fail likewise' directly references the earlier 'Aichi Biodiversity Targets' (2010–2020), none of which were fully achieved globally, creating urgent diplomatic pressure at UN environmental summits.
Key vocabulary words with IPA pronunciation, definitions, example sentences, and interactive quizzes.
Phrases with type tags, bilingual definitions, usage notes, and example sentences.
immediately, or with a quick look
to test how good or effective someone or something is, especially in a challenging situation
a determined and coordinated effort by a group of people to achieve something
a biological community and its environment that has suffered damage or loss of biodiversity due to human activities or natural disasters