We must unite our efforts to fight climate change and biodiversity loss
We must unite our efforts to fight climate change and biodiversity loss IUCN
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Integration
These challenges require coherent, consistent, and integrated efforts on the part of governments at all levels, sectors, and systems; multilateral and bilateral institutions; communities; businesses; scientists and others to limit global warming to maximum 1.5°C, conserve and sustainably use biodiversity, and restore degraded ecosystems. Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex, systemic challenge— which also includes the actions, motivations, and aspirations of people—can we develop effective solutions that maximize benefits while minimizing risks.
Ecosystem Integrity
We must maintain, enhance, and restore ecosystem integrity. Sustaining healthy ecosystems is essential to halting biodiversity decline and species extinctions and to maintaining ecosystem services that underpin human well-being. Ambitious land- and ocean-based actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore ecosystems have co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and biodiversity conservation objectives. Such efforts can help to contain temperature rise to 1.5°C, provided that such actions complement—and are not in lieu of—ambitious reductions of emissions from fossil fuels, industrial processes, and land-use change.
Transformation
Addressing the biodiversity and climate crises will require systemic changes in the way we live, changes that can only be achieved through rapid and far-reaching actions across all sectors of a type, scale, and speed never before attempted. All actors, private and public, must begin the process of planning for transformative actions to protect biodiversity, rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of climate change, and achieve sustainable development. Those actions must put society on the pathway to a positive vision of good quality of life in harmony with nature. Governments have a particular responsibility to adopt and enforce laws governing such transformations in ways that are equitable, just, and effective.
Urgency
The window of opportunity to address climate change and biodiversity loss is still open, but it is closing rapidly. Achieving the goal of protecting 30 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial and marine areas by 2030—as adopted by the parties to the Global Biodiversity Convention in late 2022—will require significant expansion of protected areas in only seven years and will be almost impossible without greater collaboration across the international agreements on biodiversity, climate change, and desertification.
Join us, as fellow seekers of change, on a transformative journey at https://sdgtalks.ai/welcome, where you can become a member and actively contribute to shaping a brighter future.
