Countries approved a historic deal to reverse decades of environmental destruction threatening the world’s species and ecosystems at a marathon UN biodiversity summit early Monday. The chair of the COP15 nature summit, Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu, declared the deal adopted at a plenary session in Montreal that ran into the wee hours and banged his gavel, sparking loud applause from assembled delegates. In doing so he overruled an objection from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which had refused to back the text, demanding greater funding for developing countries as part of the accord. “We have in our hands a package which I think can guide us all to work together to hold and reverse biodiversity loss, to put biodiversity on the path of recovery for the benefit of all people in the world,” Huang told the assembly. His Canadian counterpart and host Steven Guilbeault called it a “historic step.”