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Letters | For climate change solutions: go beyond carbon and back to nature
- The Earth’s biodiversity and climate costs have been devastating and the risks will accelerate in the coming decades, if proper action is not taken
- Nature-based climate solutions provide a unique opportunity to achieve connected solutions for biodiversity loss, climate change and sustainable development
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Why you can trust SCMP
The UN Climate Action Summit held in New York this week was the first in a year-long series of global biodiversity and climate change gatherings. Much talk, massive media and some expressions of heightened ambition and new initiatives.
There’s been a flurry of international activity over the past decades, yet our biodiversity and climate have continued to suffer.
We have lost 60 per cent of our wildlife over the past 40 years, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the UN says 1 million species are at risk of extinction over the coming decades, and we are not on track to deliver on the Paris Agreement’s long-term climate goal.
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Global gatherings are important, but their limits are becoming increasingly evident. The growing frequency of events since the catalytic UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, stand in stark contrast to the results observed on the ground.
Following decades of sound science and evidence of rapid ecological deterioration, the world’s youth is now also making its voice heard.
Climate change has emerged as a priority on the global agenda and nature-based climate solutions, like restoring and protecting forests, are now attracting political interest, including from China. They offer over a third of the cost-effective carbon dioxide mitigation needed between now and 2030 and, if implemented well, could also achieve biodiversity and development objectives.
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