Fiji Reaffirms Commitment to Biodiversity
We are harnessing the energy of our young; of our coastal communities by launching a farreaching ‘jobs for nature programme with an initial target of 10,000. We are advancing ecosystem restoration and naturebased solutions to our infrastructure. Dr Satyendra Prasad Fiji’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Fiji is more committed than ever before in doing far more than its fair share in advancing ecosystem restoration projects and nature-based solutions into its infrastructure.
This is to help stop the collapse of the ecosystem and loss of biodiversity.
Fiji’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr Satyendra Prasad said this while speaking at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP-15 High-level which ends today.
The event took place from December 7-19 in Montreal, Canada where governments will meet to make an agreement on collective actions targeting biodiversity which would need to address the key factors that contribute to the deterioration of nature as well as ways to mitigate nature loss while reversing it by the year 2030.
“We are expanding protection across our pristine 2.3 million square kilometres of our Blue Pacific to a highly protected 30 percent within a 100 per cent managed framework overall. We are committed to highly protecting 50 terrestrial and ocean biodiversity areas,” Dr Prasad said.
“We are harnessing the energy of our young; of our coastal communities by launching a far-reaching
‘jobs for nature programme with an initial target of 10,000. We are advancing ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions to our infrastructure.”
He said if the world does not do its part by staying within 1.5 Celsius, it stands to lose this all.
“The right thing at this point in history when our biodiversity and the natural world faces near collapse is to deliver a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) that gets the job done and that is to return our
natural world to a path of stability and restoration. That is what we are surely here to do, we are called to get the job done,” he said.
“Getting the job done includes highly protecting 30 percent of the world’s ocean.
“It means protecting 30 per cent of our lands globally, not a percent less. We have to collectively shift our extractive and exploitative mindset that orders our approach to the natural world to one that places nature and ocean at the
heart of everything we do.”
He said Fiji was working together with fellow small island developing states since the Blue Pacific is home to more than 10 percent of global terrestrial biodiversity and over 40 percent of the ocean biodiversity while also extending its moratorium on sea bed mining.
“We are expanding protection across our pristine 2.3 million square kilometers of our Blue Pacific to a highly protected 30 per cent within a 100 per cent managed framework overall, we are committed to highly protecting 50 terrestrial and ocean biodiversity areas,” he said.
He said Fiji stood ready to work with the international community to deliver a Kunming-Montreal Moment for Nature.