Coalition grows to protect global biodiversity

More than 50 countries around the world have joined a coalition that pledges to protect at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030.

The High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, co-chaired by the UK, France and Costa Rica, aims to get a global agreement this year at the Convention on Biodiversity’s COP15.

The HAC launched this week at the One Planet Summit, hosted by the French president Emmanuel Macron, in a bid to halt biodiversity loss and species extinction, protect vital ecosystems and promote a global deal for nature and people.

The intergovernmental coalition, which was formed in 2019 by the UK, France and Costa Rica, has now been joined by 50 countries to push for ambitious, science-based global action to protect the future.

It utilises the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity as it works to halt the destruction of the natural world.

The One Planet Summit was held by videoconference this year, due to the pandemic, and around 30 leaders, government officials and heads of international organisations took part, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Extinction is now threatening more than one million animals and planet species and according to a UN report on biodiversity in 2019, human activities are putting nature in more trouble now than at any other time in human history.

Mr Macron said: “We know even more clearly amid the crisis we are going through that all our vulnerabilities are interrelated. Pressure on nature exerted by human activities is increasing inequalities and threatening our health and our security.

“We can change the story if we decide to do it.”