Efforts on climate

After moving backwards for four years on all things related to the environment under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has put forward an ambitious plan to protect 30% of federal lands and water by 2030 as part of its broader climate initiative.

This places the US back into a highly significant global conversation to protect some of the most important places on Earth. Fighting climate change without advancing biodiversity efforts is as futile as trying to save tigers from extinction without protecting the habitats in which they thrive.

Biodiversity conservation is not only an important part of fighting climate change; it brings other important benefits through the provision of a whole range of ecosystem goods and services. Biodiversity is deeply linked to our mental and physical health, clean water, food security, and jobs that depend on the environment. And, with approximately one million plant and animal species threatened by extinction, the loss of our natural habitats is as much of a global crisis as climate change.

Biodiversity is shorthand for biological diversity, which basically stands for the variety of all life forms on Earth and how they relate to each other within ecosystems. Biodiverse and healthy ecosystems help our planet withstand shocks such as climate change and natural disasters.

The world's largest reinsurance company, Swiss Re, published a stark warning highlighting that 20 percent of countries have ecosystems on the verge of collapse. In their warning, they speak about the consequence of losing vital "services" in economic terms. Instead of experiencing rolling crises in food and water supply, we need to connect the economy back to the environment and also to the biodiversity that provides "services" that we should protect.

This is why the Biden administration should take equally bold steps against climate change's sister crisis – the drastic and accelerating loss of biological diversity on our planet. There are three critical areas where we can go beyond the "30 by 30" initiative:

First, we need to identify who is most negatively impacting biodiversity and make them stop. For example, we know about the crucial role honeybees and other pollinators play for crops grown in the US. Companies that produce pesticides that harm them need to be held accountable for destroying the ‘services’ that this biological diversity supports. We hold polluters accountable for their impact and we need to do the same for those with negative impacts on biodiversity.

Second, Americans should protect biodiversity and ecosystems in our country and abroad because they are deeply interlinked. Just as we care about child labor in the supply chain of consumer products or toxic factories that produce goods we need, we must to stop habitat destruction that is caused by the things we buy.

Excerpted: ‘Biden's Efforts on Climate Is a Start – But What About Including Biodiversity?’

Commondreams.org