The Wildlife Trusts respond to the closing of COP26.
As COP26 closes in Glasgow, The Wildlife Trusts say that:
Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, says: “If soaring rhetoric was enough to save the climate and nature, all would be fine. But the gulf between rhetoric and reality these last two weeks in Glasgow has been one of life and death, both for entire ecosystems such as tropical rainforests and coral reefs, and for the communities that depend on them.
We’ve seen some baby steps forward, when giant leaps were needed. The focus on ‘keeping 1.5 alive’ has been welcome, as has the greater recognition of the role that nature can play in helping us tackle the climate crisis. But to deliver this, we need to build a renewed momentum to cut carbon emissions deeper and faster, and we need the world to adopt a local-to-global ’30 by 30 target’ for nature at the UN Convention on Biodiversity Diversity meeting taking place in China next spring, so that nature can be put into recovery across 30% of land and sea by the end of the decade.
It’s nothing short of shameful that the rich world failed to mobilise the long-promised US $100bn of annual climate finance to help poorer countries tackle the climate crisis. They fell $20bn short – about half the cost of the UK road building programme. We always knew that implementing the promise of climate finance was critical for unlocking a stronger outcome from COP26, and by cutting foreign aid just months before this meeting, the UK Government shot themselves in the foot”.
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Posted On: 15/11/2021