10 years after the failure of United Nation’s (UN) biodiversity treaty, which targeted the expansion of protected areas, reduction of pollution and to slow down the population decline of species, diplomats from 130 nations across the globe gathered once again and discussed about the grim UN assessment of the state of Nature on Monday in Paris.
The meeting took 11 hours as they laid the groundwork for another rescue plan to save life on Earth. AFP obtained the 44-page draft of “Summary for Policy Makers,” which shows 1,001 ways different species have damaged the planet’s resources.
Millions of species are currently facing extinction and humanity’s expanding footprint has been nothing, but devastating for the Earth’s resources.
Diplomats and scientists will now have to study the plans further to create a better rescue to save the Earth. They are currently weighing in a 1,800-page executive summary, called the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform and Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and once approved, will be released for public viewing on May 6.
The experts believe that to fight climate change, humans must look at the importance of Nature, which is crucial for food production, water, medicines, and social cohesion. Forests and oceans take in half of the planet’s warming greenhouse gases, which humans solely spew into the atmosphere and cracks up the ozone layer.
“The recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report shows to what extent climate change threatens biodiversity,” Laurence Tubiana, European Climate Foundation CEO and main architect of Paris Agreement, has told AFP about UN’s climate science panel. “And the upcoming IPBES report – as important for humanity – will show these two problems have overlapping solutions.”
Tubiana cited the 2018 IPCC report, which says the world must be able to reduce 45 percent of C02 emissions on by 2030 and “become carbon neutral” by mid-century.
More scientists and non-government organizations believe that the Earth’s surface can be “sustainably managed” by 2030, but the draft report do not make such concrete proposals.
The next visionary plan to be ratified will be in October next year of the parties to the Convention on Biodiversity in Kunming, China.
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