Organizations representing hundreds of millions of people issued a joint call Friday for governments to act to protect nature, following serious scientific warnings of humanity’s destruction of our planet.
Nature is currently declining faster than at any point in human history, with at least one million species facing extinction, many within decades. More than 1,000 signatories joined the demand for a more sustainable future that conserves Earth’s crucial biodiversity.
Last week the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released their Living Planet index, which found 68 percent of populations of wild animals, birds, fish and plants had vanished since 1970.
This week, The United Nations (UN) warned that nations would fail to meet each of the 20 targets they made a decade ago to preserve nature and protect Earth’s vital biodiversity.
Industry and environmental groups, youth and indigenous communities, and religious organizations demanded world leaders take the huge threat to nature seriously at the UN Summit on Biodiversity at the end of September.
Marco Lambertini, director-general of WWF-International, called for sweeping changes to global food systems, with agriculture the main driver of forest loss and water consumption.
“World leaders cannot ignore the groundswell of voices from across society calling for them to take decisive action at the Summit to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and secure a nature-positive world by 2030,” he said.
“Man’s inhuman act towards nature has resulted in the loss of biodiversity leading to the destruction of habits, lifestyles, culture and indigenous knowledge,” said Aliou Mustafa, Cameroon National Indigenous peoples fellow at the Global Environment Facility.
He said it was vital to empower indigenous communities, which control around 80 percent of biodiversity worldwide.
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