“We are talking about a tipping point to halt the loss of biodiversity worldwide.”
The countries of the world agreed at the conference to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity by 2030, to protect at least 30 percent of all land and water areas by 2030, and to restore 30 percent of degraded land, inland water, coastal and marine ecosystems by 2030. – a set of goals that have been called 30 x 30. Finland also still has a long way to go to achieve the goals, Ohisalo admitted. According to Helsingin Sanomat.
The Natural Resources Center (Luukas) has estimated that approximately 19 percent of the country’s forests, bushes and wastelands are currently protected.
However, Ohisalo emphasized that protection according to the agreement does not necessarily exclude all economic activities. “It can refer to an area where conservation is combined with commercial use or, for example, a camping site,” he said.
He also drew attention to the agreement on reducing financing harmful to the environment.
“We are rapidly starting to thin out environmentally harmful financing and, in general, we are trying to direct financing flows to more sustainable destinations in order to get rid of environmentally harmful financing,” he said. quoted saying from YLE.
World leaders have been trying to reach an agreement on halting biodiversity loss for decades: the deadline was initially set for 2010, then 2020, and now 2030. Ohisalo hopes that all countries will take the newly formed framework seriously and incorporate it into all their own agendas. the action he describes is a new reality.
“This is an important and long-awaited agreement,” he said, according to the public broadcaster.
“Scientific knowledge about the state of nature and the degradation of nature has strengthened considerably in recent years. We have a real opportunity to launch more of these measures because we have data from different parts of the world. I believe we have taken important steps forward.”
The breakthrough came after two weeks of talks, when scientists warned that human activity is causing the planet’s sixth mass extinction event, the biggest since the time of the dinosaurs. Guardian on Monday reported that Cop15 president China pushed the deal through, ignoring demands from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo for a new biodiversity fund.
Cameroon’s negotiator called the agreement a “fraud,” while Uganda’s negotiator said there had been a “coup d’état” at Cop15, according to The Guardian.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
Source: The Nordic Page