By UN Environment
2020 is a crunch year for decision makers tackling the biodiversity and climate change emergencies and for humanity as a whole to start paying attention to the breakdown of our planetary systems. The year will host two major events, known as “conferences of parties,” on biodiversity and climate. The biodiversity conference will agree a new set of goals for nature for the next decade.
A host of recent scientific reports, and principally the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems report, are saying that species are dying out at unprecedented rates and that despite all efforts global temperatures are rising. And, as 2020 dawned, major wildfires in places like Australia have been in the news.
“While wildfires can be part of some ecosystems, human-induced climate change is making them more frequent, larger and more widespread. The increase of forest fires has a dual impact on biodiversity and climate,” says Pascal Peduzzi, Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)-Global Resource Information Database in Geneva and programme manager of the UNEP World Environment Situation Room. Read more>>
