Global assembly goals to guard species on the brink

The world’s main international conservation congress opened on Friday, with warnings that humanity should deal with the grave dangers of biodiversity loss and local weather change collectively.

The key message from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems aren’t any much less existential threats than international warming.

“The battle for the climate—against climate change—is twinned with the battle to preserve and restore biodiversity,” mentioned French President Emmanuel Macron in a speech on the opening ceremony within the French port metropolis of Marseille.

But efforts to stem the losses of the world’s wildlife had fallen behind, he warned.

How to reverse relentless habitat destruction, unsustainable agriculture, mining and a warming planet will dominate dialogue in the course of the convention.

“We are facing huge challenges. We are seeing the climate changing and impacting hugely our societies,” mentioned IUCN chief Bruno Oberle in a speech earlier than the congress opened.

“We are seeing biodiversity disappearing and the pandemic hitting our economies, our families, our health.”

The assembly, delayed from 2020 by the pandemic, comes forward of essential UN summits on local weather, meals techniques and biodiversity that might form the planet’s foreseeable future.

Previous IUCN congresses have paved the best way for international treaties on biodiversity and the international trade in endangered species.

But efforts to halt in depth declines in numbers and variety of animals and vegetation have thus far did not gradual the destruction.

In 2019 the UN’s biodiversity consultants warned that one million species are on the point of extinction—elevating the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction occasion in 500 million years.

Protesters in Marseille, with banners that learn “Nature is not for sale!” and “Change the system not the climate!”, urged extra pressing motion.

“It’s hard to read the headlines: floods, fires, famines, plagues and tell your children that everything is alright,” mentioned actor Harrison Ford, who has turn out to be a vocal environmental campaigner, the opening ceremony.

“It’s not alright. Dammit, it’s not alright!”

‘Our proper to exist’

The nine-day IUCN assembly will embrace an replace of its Red List of Threatened Species, measuring how shut animal and plant species are to vanishing without end.

Experts have assessed almost 135,000 species during the last half-century and almost 28 % are at the moment susceptible to extinction, with habitat loss, overexploitation and unlawful commerce driving the loss.

Big cats, for instance, have misplaced greater than 90 % of their historic vary and inhabitants, with solely 20,000 lions, 7,000 cheetahs, 4,000 tigers and some dozen Amur leopards left within the wild.

The IUCN can even, for the primary time in its seven-decade historical past, welcome indigenous peoples to share their data on how greatest to heal the natural world as voting members.

Oberle thanked indigenous groups for becoming a member of the IUCN’s membership and bringing a “wealth of experience” on the way to have a distinct relationship with the planet.

Recent analysis has warned that rampant deforestation and climate change are pushing the Amazon in direction of a disastrous “tipping point” which might see tropical forests give strategy to savannah-like landscapes.

Rates of tree loss drop sharply within the forests the place native peoples reside, particularly in the event that they maintain a point of title—authorized or customary—over land.

“We are demanding from the world our right to exist as peoples, to live with dignity in our territories,” mentioned Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, lead coordinator for COICA, which represents indigenous teams in 9 Amazon-basin nations.

Motions on the desk embrace defending 80 % of Amazonia by 2025, tackling plastic within the oceans, combating wildlife crime and stopping pandemics.

Macron has mentioned the convention ought to lay the “initial foundations” for a worldwide biodiversity technique that would be the focus of UN deliberations in China in April subsequent yr.

The worldwide group is making an attempt to border interim targets for this decade in addition to longer-term goals for 2050.

© 2021 AFP