This article was originally published on The Aspen Institute.
“We are a group of former foreign ministers from around the world who met recently to discuss one of the most urgent challenges of our time: the deepening global environmental crisis. It is clear to us from these discussions that climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the excessive exploitation of natural resources are now threatening millions of species with extinction and jeopardizing the health of our planet. Having devoted our careers to fostering international cooperation and stability, we are as gravely concerned about this environmental destruction as we are about any other threat to international security.
The loss and degradation of nature jeopardizes human health, livelihoods, safety and prosperity. It disproportionately harms our poorest communities while undermining our ability to meet a broad range of targets set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We must rise above politics and ideology to unite the global community around the urgent cause of protecting our planet and way of life.
To that end, we strongly support action to establish ambitious targets at the upcoming meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China in late 2020. Specifically, we endorse setting a global target of strongly protecting at least 30 percent of the land and 30 percent of the ocean by 2030.
…Humanity sits on the precipice of irreversible loss of biodiversity and a climate crisis that imperils the future for our grandchildren and generations to come. The world must act boldly, and it must act now.”
Read on at: The Aspen Institute
