Environmental delegates gather in Colombia for a conference on dwindling global biodiversity

Bogota, Colombia — 

Global biology leaders stitchery Monday successful Cali, Colombia to measure the world's plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to support plants, animals and captious habitats.

The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, oregon COP16, is simply a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings wherever 196 countries signed a historical planetary pact to support biodiversity.

The accord includes 23 measures to halt and reverse quality loss, including putting 30% of the satellite and 30% of degraded ecosystems nether extortion by 2030.

In opening remarks connected Sunday, Colombia's situation curate and COP16 president Susana Muhamad said the league is an accidental "to cod the acquisition that has passed done this satellite from each civilizations, from each cultures, from each cognition ... to make livable, comparatively unchangeable conditions for a caller nine that volition beryllium forged successful the airy of the crisis."

A existent menace to biodiversity loss

All grounds shows a melodramatic diminution successful taxon abundance and distribution, said Linda Krueger, manager of biodiversity astatine The Nature Conservancy.

"A batch of chaotic taxon person little country to live, and they're declining successful numbers," Krueger said. "And we besides spot rising extinction rates. Things that we haven't adjacent discovered yet are blinking out."

The satellite is experiencing its largest nonaccomplishment of beingness since the dinosaurs, with astir 1 cardinal works and carnal taxon present threatened with extinction, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

In the Amazon rainforest, threats to biodiversity see the enlargement of the cultivation frontier and roadworthy networks, deforestation, wood fires and drought, says Andrew Miller, advocacy manager astatine Amazon Watch, an enactment that protects the rainforest.

"You enactment each of that unneurotic and it's a existent menace to biodiversity," Miller said.

Global wildlife populations person plunged connected mean by 73% successful 50 years, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London biennial Living Planet study this month.

The study said Latin America and the Caribbean saw 95% mean declines successful recorded wildlife populations.

Indigenous communities cardinal to biodiversity protection

Indigenous radical are connected the beforehand lines of protecting biodiversity and warring against clime change, putting their lives astatine large risk, said Miller of Amazon Watch.

"A batch of sermon has been fixed astir the voices of section communities … Indigenous peoples truly playing a cardinal role," helium said. "So that's 1 of the things that we'll beryllium looking for astatine COP16."

Indigenous peoples clasp the solutions to combat the clime alteration and biodiversity crises, said Laura Rico, run manager astatine Avaaz, a planetary activism nonprofit.

"They're who person been taking attraction of the land, healing the onshore done their governance systems, their attraction systems and their ways of life," she said. "So ... it's cardinal that the COP recognizes, promotes and encourages the legalization of their territories."

In Colombia's capital, Bogota, the caput of an Amazon Indigenous enactment said the region's Indigenous radical person been preparing for months for COP16.

"This is simply a large accidental to marque the interaction that we request to show to each the actors that travel from different countries the value of Indigenous peoples for the world," said José Mendez, caput of the National Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon.

"It's nary concealed to anyone that we ... are astatine hazard close now," helium said. "The effects that we are presently experiencing owed to clime change, the droughts that the state is experiencing, the Amazon River has ne'er gone done a drought similar the existent one. … This is causing galore taxon to go extinct."

Nature tin recover

Environment curate Muhamad told section media this period that 1 of the conference's main objectives is to present the connection that "biodiversity is arsenic important, complementary and indispensable arsenic the vigor modulation and decarbonization."

Part of Colombia's archetypal ever leftist government, Muhamad cautioned past year's World Economic Forum astir the risks of continuing an extractive system that ignores the societal and biology consequences of earthy assets exploitation.

Since the 2022 Montreal conference, "progress has been excessively slow", says Eva Zabey, enforcement manager of the conjugation Business for Nature.

"There's been immoderate progress," she said. "But the header connection is the implementation of the planetary biodiversity model is excessively dilatory and we request to standard and velocity up."

"COP16 comes astatine an perfectly captious infinitesimal for america to determination from targets mounting to existent actions connected the ground," Zabey said.

Although biodiversity declines are grim, immoderate environmentalists judge a reversal is possible. "We've had immoderate precise palmy taxon reintroductions and we've saved taxon erstwhile we truly absorption connected what is causing their decline," said The Nature Conservancy's Krueger.