Preserving biodiversity would not only ease climate crises but become “a win for people and our economies,” President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado Quesada said Tuesday.
“As we are facing the devastating consequences of COVID-19; we must think beyond the present and put nature in the centre of our economies,’’ he said.
Quesada said this in a video address to the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
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The meeting, known as COP15, started on Monday in Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
Stressing that 55 per cent of global gross domestic product depends on high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services, Alvarado said the economic benefits of protecting biodiversity outweigh the costs.
“If we want a successful economy and future and create jobs, restoring and conserving our land and ocean is critical,’’ he said.
The Kunming conference, the president said, came at an extremely important time as the whole world was facing a series of overlapping crises.
He called on countries and other stakeholders to take this opportunity to seek consensus on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework, which is expected to guide joint actions to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
Also the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for global cooperation to reverse biodiversity loss that was threatening human civilisation.
“The destruction of biodiversity results in a polluted environment, as well as scarcity of food and water. This situation causes conflicts and forces people to migrate,” Erdogan said in his speech via video at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
“Environmental degradation is one of the reasons that turned the Mediterranean, the cradle of civilisations, into a refugee graveyard,” Erdogan said.
He urged countries bearing “the historical responsibility” to be “the first to take action in the face of this threat,” calling for all countries to join hands to this end.
Source: Xinhua