U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that humanity is going through an “existential crisis” because of the relentless destruction of life-sustaining nature.
“Every year, we see temperatures climbing higher. Every day, we lose more species. Every minute, we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers and lakes. Make no mistake. This is what an existential crisis looks like,” the secretary-general informed delegates to the UN’s COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia.
The sixteenth so-called Conference of Parties (COP16) to the U.N.’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) should make progress on the creation of monitoring and funding mechanisms to realize 23 objectives agreed in Canada two years in the past to “halt and reverse” nature destruction.
Themed “Peace with Nature,” the summit has been slowed down in disagreement about modalities of funding.
Negotiators are additionally break up on how finest to share the earnings of digitally sequenced plant and animal genetic knowledge – utilized in medicines and cosmetics – with the communities they arrive from.
Delegates don’t have any time to waste.
There are solely 5 years left to realize the 23 U.N. targets, which embody inserting 30 p.c of land, water and ocean below safety by 2030.
“Every day, we lose more species. Every minute, we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers and lakes. Make no mistake. This is what an existential crisis looks like,” Guterres informed delegates.
A report issued by nature watchdogs stated Monday that solely 17.6% of land and inland waters, and eight.4% of the ocean and coastal areas are protected and conserved.
And an replace of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s purple record of threatened animals and crops discovered that a couple of in three species of tree are susceptible to extinction worldwide.
These embody 1000’s that present people with timber, drugs, meals and gasoline.
More than 46,000 plant and animal species out of the greater than 166,000 assessed at the moment are threatened with extinction.
‘More cash’
Guterres stated people should make the swap from “plundering… to preserving” nature’s bounty. Continued destruction would solely improve “hunger, displacement, and armed conflicts.”
“Nature is life. And yet we are waging a war against it,” the U.N. secretary-general informed COP16 delegates.
“No country, rich or poor, is immune to the devastation inflicted by climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and pollution. These environmental crises are intertwined,” he added.
To this finish, he urged the 196 international locations signed as much as the U.N. biodiversity conference to behave on the commitments made two years in the past after they adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This means adopting detailed nationwide biodiversity safety plans, solely 36 of which have been submitted so far.
Furthermore, “finance promises must be kept and support to developing countries accelerated,” stated Guterres, calling for brand spanking new private and non-private pledges.
So far, international locations have made about $400 million in commitments to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), together with pledges of $163 million introduced this week by Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the Canadian province of Quebec.
The Kunming-Montreal framework decided that international locations should mobilize $20 billion per 12 months by 2025 from wealthy nations to assist creating ones. The GBFF is simply a part of this funding.
Of the $20 billion aim, $15 billion a 12 months was reached for 2022, in accordance with the OECD.
COP16 has attracted a file 23,000 registered delegates and a few 1,200 journalists to Cali, in accordance with organizers.
Tens of 1000’s of activists and residents have flocked to its so-called “green zone” arrange for cultural actions, demonstrations and celebrations.
More than 10,000 police and troopers had been deployed to safeguard the occasion which had obtained threats from a Colombian guerrilla group. No incidents have been reported.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Guterres is becoming a member of the heads of state of Colombia, Armenia, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti and Suriname, in addition to 115 authorities ministers and 44 deputies.
The ministers will hopefully “help us make movement” on some excellent points, stated CBD spokesman David Ainsworth.
The COP16 summit runs till Friday.
Source: www.dailysabah.com