UK failure on international environmental targets revealed by the RSPB on eve of major UN report
RSPB analysis of the UK’s self-assessment reveals the picture may be worse than reported, raising doubts some targets have not been met and highlighting areas where the UK has regressed
The UK must recognise the opportunity to make urgent changes at home which can be used to provide international leadership ahead of negotiating the next global plan to save nature and the climate in 2021
To get nature’s recovery back on track the RSPB is launching the Revive Our World campaign, pushing for legally binding targets to restore nature by 2030 and ensure there is not another decade of failure
On the eve of a major United Nations report, which will show the international community has failed to halt environmental decline over the last 10 years, new analysis from the RSPB has revealed the UK’s self-assessment is overly optimistic as high environmental ambitions have not led to real progress being made.
The Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, published tomorrow (12 September) by the United Nations, will contain no country-level breakdowns of how the UK has fared, but an RSPB report ‘A Lost Decade for Nature’, will reveal our true performance.
With UK wildlife continuing to decline and vital habitat being lost or degraded the ability of the governments of the UK to revive our world will depend on an honest assessment of the work needed. While the UK Government believes it has met a third of its targets, RSPB analysis shows the UK may have met as few as just 3 of the 20 international targets it agreed to a decade ago, and in six areas the UK has actually gone backwards.
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Posted On: 14/09/2020