A United Nations (UN) summit to halt nature loss is taking place in Montreal, with formal negotiations for an international agreement starting on Wednesday.

Delegates from almost 200 countries will spend two weeks discussing a new global deal to protect the world's struggling species and fast-vanishing wild places.

The summit, in Canada's second-most populous city, is called COP15 in reference to it being the 15th 'conference of parties' – or nations – signed onto the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

China holds the COP15 presidency, making it responsible for facilitating year-round negotiations ahead of hosting the deal-making summit.

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The most recent set of nature targets – the Aichi Targets – expired in 2020, meaning there is no currently global agreement in effect.

There are currently more than a million species threatened with extinction, as plant and animal species vanish at a rate 1,000 times faster than the natural extinction rate.

In Montreal, negotiators are considering 23 new targets, tackling everything from pesticides and noise pollution to corporate disclosures around the use of natural resources.

Scientists and campaigners are pushing for countries to adopt a 'Paris Agreement for nature' – referring to the 2015 deal brokered at the U.N. climate talks in Paris to hold global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius.