BRITISH broadcaster David Attenborough led a call from conservation groups on Sept 30 for the world to invest $500 billion a year to halt the destruction of nature, warning that the future of the planet was in “grave jeopardy.”
Attenborough, whose new film A Life on Our Planet documents the dangers posed by climate change and the extinction of species, issued the call hours ahead of a U.N. summit aimed at galvanising action to protect wildlife.
“Our natural world is under greater pressure now than at any time in human history, and the future of the entire planet – on which every single one of us depends – is in grave jeopardy,“ Attenborough, 94, said in a statement.
“We still have an opportunity to reverse catastrophic biodiversity loss, but time is running out.”
The call to redirect financing away from fossil fuels and other polluting industries and into locally-led conservation was launched by environmental group Flora & Fauna International and backed by more than 130 organisations.
The world spends an estimated $80-90 billion on conservation each year, but studies show that hundreds of billions of dollars may be needed to save ecosystems from collapse.
In a pre-recorded message to the one-day U.N. summit on Sept 30, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that there was growing evidence of a desire to avert “looming disaster.”
“Let this be the day that action begins. And let us leave the next generation a world every bit as diverse and wondrous as the one we inherited,“ Johnson said.
Britain, Canada and others joined the European Union on Monday in pledging to protect 30% of their land and seas by 2030. U.N.
officials hope to secure a global agreement on that target at a major round of negotiations on biodiversity due to take place in China in 2021. - Reuters
