Campaign For Nature
October 29, 2020
Today, leaders from 190 countries were scheduled to gather in Kunming, China for final negotiations on a biodiversity treaty designed to address the world’s urgent extinction crises. Instead, these leaders are at home, battling the spread of a zoonotic disease that likely emerged from deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats.
A timely new report by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) asserts that preventing future pandemics before they emerge requires targeted action to address the underlying causes of pandemics--which are the same global environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss and climate change. Among the solutions the report lays out is the conservation of critical areas for biodiversity, the financing of this protection, and the design of a green economic recovery from COVID-19--which offers “an insurance against future outbreaks.”