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UN biodiversity chief: Destroy nature, increase poverty and insecurity
rainforest goldmine in Venezuala, photo by One Off Man Mental (Flickr CC)
In advance of a major UN meeting for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the organization’s secretary-general, Ahmed Djoghlaf, recently warned of the threats posed against the natural world – and life itself – by population growth, urbanization, agriculture and climate change.
Despite these increasing threats and an ongoing mass extinction in the natural world, which is almost 1,000 times the normal ‘background’ rate, governments are simply not acting to preserve biodiversity and the overall health of the planet.
No country has met its targets to protect nature. We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. If current levels [of destruction] go on we will reach a tipping point very soon. The future of the planet now depends on governments taking action in the next few years.
–Ahmed Djoghlaf, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity
Regarding the UK governments proposed cuts in its department of the environment, Djoghlaf was critical and warned that failing to protect biodiversity now will result in future losses far greater than any savings made by the cuts.
He named overfishing and deforestation as immediate threats to human survival and criticized countries who treat climate change and biodiversity as separate issues.
Djoghlaf’s message is essentially that to preserve biodiversity is to preserve humanity, because we are ultimately dependent on what nature provides.
Read more in the Guardian:
Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief
Additional resources:
UN Convention on Biological Diversity
New York Times – On Our Radar: Pakistan’s Climate Debate
Tags: Ahmed, biodiversity, biological, change, climate, convention, diversity, Djoghlaf, Nature, rainforest, threats, UN
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people are stupid