Our Daily Planet
October 30, 2020
Yesterday leaders from 190 countries were supposed to have met in Kunming, China for final negotiations on a biodiversity treaty designed to address the world’s urgent extinction and biodiversity crises. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has made attendance of the UN Biodiversity Conference impossible.
However, a panel of experts from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (an independent intergovernmental body open to all member countries of the UN) released a report that links zoonotic diseases like COVID-19 to “unsustainable exploitation of the environment,” including the wildlife trade and land-use change.