Prime Minister will address a major UN Summit on Biodiversity
tomorrow [Wednesday 30th
September] via pre-recorded video. The Summit, hosted by UN
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is the first of its kind and
aims to accelerate action on protecting biodiversity for
sustainable development.
Addressing the Summit on Biodiversity, will say:
“From the tiniest of plants to the mightiest, most majestic
megafauna, the natural life that so enriches our planet today is
declining at a pace that is truly terrifying.
“Almost 70 per cent of the world’s wildlife has been lost in the
past half century – a lifetime to many of us but the blink of an
eye in the grand sweep of planetary evolution.
“As many as one million species of plants and animals are
threatened with extinction.
“We are on the brink of a world in which the orangutan and the
black rhino can be found not in the jungles of Borneo or the
savannahs of Africa, but confined to the pages of history books.
“And consider the pangolin – that scaly mammalian miracle of
evolution boasting a prehensile tongue that is somehow attached
to its pelvis.
“I don’t believe any of us would choose to bequeath a planet on
which such a wonderfully bizarre little creature is as unfamiliar
to future generations as dinosaurs and dodos are to us today.
“Yet that is what awaits us if we continue down this road. And
that’s not just bad news for the pangolins – it is bad news for
all of us.
“Upset the delicate balance nature has achieved over tens of
millions of years and the consequences could be catastrophic –
for the economy, for the climate, for food security, for public
health, for all the Sustainable Development Goals.
“Yet alongside the growing evidence of looming disaster I also
see growing evidence of a desire to avert it. There is the very
fact of this summit, the first of its kind. The Leaders’ Pledge
for Nature has been signed by the heads of many nations,
including I am proud to say, myself.
And that’s not all the UK has been doing.
“At home we’re putting biodiversity targets into law, removing
deforestation from our own supply chains, and shifting our land
use subsidies to support rather than damage nature.
“Internationally, we spearheaded the ambitious Global Ocean
Alliance, committed to protecting at least 30 per cent of the
world’s oceans by 2030. We’ve doubled our funding for
International Climate Finance.
“We’re launching a £500 million Blue Planet Fund to protect and
restore marine ecosystems, and our Blue Belt programme is on
track to protect marine areas the size of India.
“And as co-host of COP26 and president of next year’s G7 we are
going to make sure the natural world stays right at the top of
the global agenda.
“Because the rhinos and the pangolins and all the other
threatened species and everyone who relies on that diversity of
life – they need more than good intentions.
“They need concerted, co-ordinated, global action. Let this be
the day that action begins. And let us leave the next generation
a world every bit as diverse and wondrous as the one we
inherited.”
