By Tu Ruihe
IT is time to stop the degradation of ecosystems and arrest biodiversity loss before it is too late
Achieving sustainable social and economic development is a long-term pursuit of humanity. From the perspective of environment, the United Nations Environment Programme believes that the degrading ecosystems and biodiversity loss are a huge crisis confronting humans in their pursuit of sustainable development. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic is a strong warning nature has given to humans, underlining the close links between the ecosystems, biodiversity and human health.
Healthy ecosystems and abundant biodiversity provide us not only with food and resources, but also a broad range of ecological services, including greenhouse gas mitigation, decomposition of wastes discharged by humans, and protection against disasters and contagious diseases. Without biodiversity, there will be no future for humanity.
The Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted in 1992 has three goals: conserving biodiversity, achieving a sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources.
Global biodiversity faces serious threats. The recently published Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 finds rapidly degrading ecosystems and accelerating biodiversity loss are an acute crisis. It warns that we are facing the sixth mass extinction of wildlife on the Earth, with nearly 1 million of the planet’s estimated 8 million plant and animal species on the brink of extinction; and human activity has altered more than 75 percent of the Earth’s land areas, with biodiversity and ecosystems declining.
Of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets set up in Aichi, Japan at the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010, also known as COP 10, not a single one has been fully achieved, and only six have been partially achieved. The Aichi Biodiversity Targets are reflected directly in many of the targets within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and underpin a wider set of the Sustainable Development Goals. If the worsening trend continues, many goals in the 2030 Agenda will also not be achieved.
As countries around the world strive to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and revive economic and social activities, the United Nations is appealing to governments to “Build Back Better” by taking into account three aspects pollution control, climate crisis response and biodiversity conservation in making and implementing their post-pandemic recovery policies.
The Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 lays out eight areas where transformative changes should be made for humanity to realize sustainable development, namely forests and land; freshwater; fisheries and oceans; sustainable agriculture; food systems; climate action; cities and infrastructure; and biodiversity-inclusive “One Health”. For each of the transition areas, there are specific approaches, such as deploying green infrastructure in cities to reduce the influence on biodiversity; and a sustainable climate action transition, employing nature-based solutions alongside a rapid phaseout of fossil fuel, to reduce the scale and impacts of climate change.
Global cooperation and multilateralism are called for to conserve ecosystems and biodiversity. Only by working together and taking concrete actions can we achieve the Vision 2050 on Biodiversity of “living in harmony with nature”.
– The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
