The UN chief’s name got here in a video message to the opening ceremony of the gathering, which formally begins on Monday 21 October in one of the crucial biodiverse international locations on earth. Over the following two weeks, authorities consultants, environmental activists and indigenous teams will sort out urgent world challenges in biodiversity safety.
Formally the sixteenth assembly of the Convention of Events to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, recognized by the shorthand CBD COP16, the summit marks the primary world gathering on this important subject since 2022, when international locations agreed on the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Framework (GBF), essentially the most far-reaching motion plan to guard biodiversity.
The Secretary-Basic stated: “The framework is grounded in a transparent reality – for humanity to outlive, nature should flourish…it guarantees to reset relations with Earth and its ecosystems.”
‘La COP de la gente’
“However we’re not on observe. Your process at this COP is to transform phrases into motion. Which means international locations presenting clear plans that align nationwide actions with all of the framework’s targets,” he stated, including that it additionally means agreeing a strengthened monitoring and transparency framework and it means honouring guarantees on finance and accelerating help to growing international locations.
Mr. Guterres stated delegations should go away Cail with vital investments within the GBF, its associated funds and commitments to mobilize different sources of private and non-private finance to ship on its objectives in full.
“And people making the most of nature should contribute to its safety and restoration,” he continued, and underscored that the world’s growing international locations “are being plundered” because the scientific discoveries and financial progress derived from their “extraordinary riches” had been benefitting others.
COP16 should have interaction all of society – as ‘la COP de la gente’ (a COP of the folks) – and it should strengthen the function of indigenous peoples and native communities, who’re “the world’s nice guardians of biodiversity, luminaries of sustainable use.
Their information and stewardship should be on the coronary heart of biodiversity motion at each stage.
“We have now a plan to rescue humanity from a degraded Earth,” the Secretary-Basic stated, and added that he seemed ahead to seeing delegates in particular person on the finish of the COP “to listen to how you have got delivered.”
‘Recomposing the way in which we stay’
In her remarks, COP President Susana Muhamad said that throughout COP16, steps should be taken in the direction of implementation of the Kunming Montreal International Framework.
“It’s principally about recomposing the way in which we stay, recomposing the event mannequin, recomposing, rethinking, rediscovering how we stay collectively in range, in a system that doesn’t completely make nature a sufferer of growth, however reasonably our personal replica as a society reproduces life,” she stated.
Ms. Muhamad, who’s Colombia’s Environmental Minister harassed that biodiversity conservation is deeply linked to local weather motion, and that extractive use of pure assets is liable for 50 per cent of greenhouse gasoline emissions immediately, however on the identical time, it is usually inflicting 90 per cent of biodiversity loss.
“Powerfully restoring ecosystems and nature can contribute virtually 40 per cent to the answer of stabilizing the local weather and the carbon cycle,” she emphasised.
