The world isn't moving fast enough to protect biodiversity
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
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As Earth's biodiversity continues to collapse, a new report finds that countries have made insufficient progress on goals designed to halt the catastrophic slide. The sweeping United Nations report highlights the fact that, despite commitments made a decade ago, countries across the world have not come close to meeting the scale of the crisis and have failed to meet a single established goal. This is the second consecutive decade in which governments have failed to meet targets.
Failure to act on the targets could not only result in massive loss of biodiversity, but also undermine established climate crisis and sustainable development goals. Scientists say that humanity is now at a crossroads. The UN's biodiversity head stated, “Earth’s living systems as a whole are being compromised. And the more humanity exploits nature in unsustainable ways and undermines its contributions to people, the more we undermine our own wellbeing, security and prosperity."
The report demonstrates the urgency and necessity of working to protect 30 percent of America—and the world—by 2030 (the 30x30 goal). In the face of the collapse of our natural systems, scientists have stated that achieving this goal is necessary to prevent the unraveling of fundamental natural systems. Protecting and restoring natural areas is the most effective way to slow extinctions and retain resilient ecosystems, with much higher animal and plant abundance within protected areas.
The United States provides a key opportunity to make strides toward this goal: nearly 60 percent of lands in the continental U.S. are still in a mostly natural condition or could be restored, making the U.S. one of the top five countries for retaining lands in their natural state.
Senators demand White House fire controversial head of public lands agency
Yesterday, U.S. Senators took the floor to demand that the White House fire anti-public lands extremist William Perry Pendley, who continues to head the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) despite his inability to gain Senate confirmation. Pendley not only has a history of calling for the sale of public lands, explicitly racist comments, and climate denial; he also continues to serve as de facto head of the BLM via a succession order that he signed himself.
“President Trump has shown that he's willing to circumvent Congress and skip the constitutionally required confirmation process for other key federal leadership posts by illegally placing people into unofficial and indefinite acting roles,” said Senator Martin Heinrich.
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—Mark Squillace, associate dean at the University of Colorado Law School and a specialist in natural resources law, Associated Press |
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