Peace with Nature” means acting with and for Nature
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.” – William Shatner, reflecting on his trip aboard the Blue Origin space shuttle in 2021 “Peace with Nature” is the theme of the UN COP16 biodiversity summit, which began in Colombia this week. https://www.cop16colombia.com/es/en/ To understand better what is taking place at the summit, and what is at stake, read about the history of the UN biodiversity conferences and take a look at what is at its heart: the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which includes the summit’s goals and 23 targets. https://tinyurl.com/COP16-biodiversity And here is Canada’s plan to achieve its biodiversity goals: https://tinyurl.com/Canada-commitment WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) has reviewed the world’s National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans and has revealed that the majority of countries are not fully honouring their commitments to halt and reverse Nature loss by 2030. In fact, only 10% of countries have submitted their updated plans for Nature. WWF has put out a tracker to show the current tangible action plans of individual nations to protect Nature. Which countries are doing best? Find out at https://tinyurl.com/WWF-Nature-tracker Unlike the annual UN climate change conference, the biodiversity summit only takes place every two years. Few heads of government attend it, and many thousand fewer people come than to the extravaganzas that are the climate change COPs, with all their slick negotiating groups and lobbyists (who often outnumber individual nation states’ delegates). It is utterly disgraceful that the United States hasn’t even ratified the GBF and essentially remains silent throughout the two weeks. There have never been binding resolutions to lower carbon emissions, and nor have the biodiversity conferences conjured up real wins for Nature, although the December 2022 Montreal summit broke through some of the entrenched anti-Nature propaganda to move forward on giving Indigenous and global south voices a more powerful presence and voice. However, the lion’s share of financial benefits, including the possession and monetizing of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources, still goes to the global north, when it is all too obvious that the southern hemisphere’s intact biosphere is what props up and feeds the massive extractive and consumeristic way of life of Canadians and Americans. The goals of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity include DSI justice, halting human-induced extinction of threatened species and reducing the rate of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050, the sustainable use and management of biodiversity to ensure that Nature’s contributions to humans are valued, maintained and
