Daily US Times: UN chief Antonio Guterres has said A new scientific blueprint for tackling climate change, pollution and the accelerating loss of animal species and plant shows how to end the world’s “suicidal” war on nature,
“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal,” the UN chief wrote in the preface of the United Nations Environment Programme report published on Thursday.
Mr Guterres wrote: “The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth.”
Guterres also said that the biodiversity crisis, climate emergency and the pollution kill millions of people every year and have left the planet broken.
“But [the report] also guides us to a safer place by providing a peace plan and a post-war rebuilding programme,” he added.
Among the recommendations was that more than $5 trillion in annual subsidies to sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, fossil fuels and mining should be redirected to accelerate a shift to a low-carbon future and restore nature.
Governments should also look beyond economic growth as an indicator of performance and take account of the value of preserving ecosystems, the Environment Programme said.
The report aimed to encourage governments to take more ambitious steps at a United Nations climate conference in Glasgow in November and during parallel talks to agree upon a new global pact on preserving biodiversity.
With countries launching economic recovery packages in response to the current Covid pandemic, the authors of the report hoped their policy prescriptions would encourage more coordinated action to rapidly transform destructive industrial and financial systems.
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