2020 is a big year for climate action. It is the start of a decade of climate action. But if we’re talking climate, we need to be talking about conservation and regeneration, argues our CEO Kirsty Schneeberger.
2020 is a big year for climate and a big year for biodiversity.
Five years on from the momentous UN conference that delivered the Paris Agreement, swiftly followed by the fastest entry into force of any international environmental Treaty, it’s time for countries to step up and deliver on climate action. 2019 and 2020 so far have seen some of the worst climate impacts ever with record temperatures and prolonged droughts causing the devastating fires in Australia; back to back storms in the UK causing severe flooding with warnings still in place; and the temperature of Antarctica rising above 20°C for the first time ever.
Similarly we are witnessing a mass extinction of species on an unprecedented scale and pace, an ecological crisis that threatens everything we know about life on earth. In 2019 ‘ecological debt day’ was the 29th July. This day marks the moment when we have used up the year’s available resources and we go into resource overdraft. As we all know, paying off an overdraft is not easy and the longer we leave it the harder it will be to achieve.
A decade of action
The UN climate conference to be held in Glasgow this November will be an important venue for further commitments to action and demonstrations of milestones and achievements already reached. Just as the UN biodiversity talks to be held in China in October will set science-based targets on what we need to do to preserve and conserve nature.
Both will underpin the decade of action and ambition that we are entering into. 2020 – 2030 presents a unique and invaluable window of opportunity to avert disaster and set us on track to achieve both temperature and nature goals.
But we need more than that – whilst governments can set the tone and agree to a framework of action it won’t be nearly enough to rely on alone.
That’s why we need action happening on the ground.
Tree nursery at Tesoro Escondido Reserve, Ecuador. Image: Synchronicity Earth
Two sides of the same coin
We also need to recognise that action on climate and action on biodiversity are actually two sides of the same coin. We know that climate impacts affect nature – be it animals perishing in forest fires, or coral bleaching events that are destroying underwater ecosystems. We also know that loss of biodiversity exacerbates climate change – deforestation and mangrove destruction prevent CO2 from being absorbed by these important ‘carbon sinks’ meaning more CO2 is left in the atmosphere – contributing to as much as 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As a consequence of all this, biodiversity loss is also crippling nature’s ability to adapt to changes. Meaning we get stuck in a vicious cycle of one causing the other that in turn causes the other again.
But the crucial question is: can we turn that into a virtuous cycle? If climate and biodiversity are so inextricably linked and impact on each other negatively, surely we can harness their interconnectedness and trigger positive feedback loops that bring about positive change?
Luckily, the answer is yes.