World leaders pledge to halt biodiversity loss by 2030

NEW YORK: World leaders pledged to take urgent action over the next 10 years to put nature and biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030.

They made the pledge ahead of the Biodiversity Summit in New York today.

By Monday, the heads of state and government from 66 countries and the European Union have endorsed this pledge.

The leaders committed themselves to putting biodiversity, climate and the environment as a whole at the heart both of their countries’ Covid-19 recovery strategies and investments and of their pursuit of national and international development and cooperation.

They pledged that response to the current health and economic crisis is green and just, and contributes directly to recovering better and achieving sustainable societies.

They committed themselves to the development and implementation of an ambitious and transformational post-2020 global biodiversity framework for adoption at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, in May 2021 as a key instrument to reach their sustainable development Goals.

The framework should include a set of clear and robust goals and targets backed up by a strong monitoring and review mechanism and means of implementation, they said.

The leaders pledged to redouble their efforts to end silo thinking and to address the interrelated and interdependent challenges of biodiversity loss, land, freshwater and ocean degradation, deforestation, desertification, pollution and climate change in an integrated and coherent way. —