This Saturday, a virtual climate summit was held to mark 5 years since the Paris Agreement on Climate Action.
It was attended by over 70 world leaders and aimed to assess the progress towards reaching the Paris targets. The Paris Targets aim for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5°C (at most 2°C) in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. These impacts will include devastating destruction of biodiversity.
Visions for different amounts of CO2 emissions up to 2030 - emissions of today will need to be halved to limit warming to 1.5°C (Source: The Guardian)
In this post, I will be talking about how climate and biodiversity are linked and extremely important to one another, and finish by examining global leaders' role in custodianship.
Climate change damages biodiversity
Climate change is already causing multiple threats to biodiversity and this is only set to increase without serious action to stop it. These impacts include but are not limited to temperature spikes, coral bleaching, extreme weather events such as wildfires, changes in rainfall, and sea level rise. These will either cause species to migrate to other areas, but if they unable to move away, they will eventually go extinct.
This happened to a small rodent endemic to Bramble Cay, an island in Australia, the mosaic-tailed rat. It was the first species to be recognised as becoming extinct due to climate change in June 2016. Rising sea levels decreased the size of Bramble Cay from 9.8 to 6.2 acres, shrinking the rats' habitat by 97%.
It is now thought that one in five species are threatened by climate change, and this will only worsen as the planet warms more.
The mosaic-tailed rat is believed to be the first victim of climate change (Source: National Geographic)
Biodiversity helps mitigate climate change
Conservation helps to protect ecosystems from climate change, but it is also important to recognise that healthy ecosystems with high biodiversity are vital to mitigating climate change.
Firstly, they will be more resilient and able to maintain ecosystem services, such as food and medicine, and protect us against extreme weather events, for example by absorbing excess flood water.
Secondly, forest peatlands and oceans act as carbon sinks, and so decreasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere helps to reduce the greenhouse effect and therefore global warming.
Ecosystems provide a multitude of services for us, including climate regulation (Source: ZSL)
A global crisis
This intertwined relationship demonstrates how many of our current problems are dependent on one another and how global actors including country leaders and policy makers must view these as one large global crisis. The Climate Ambition Summit 2020, although hopeful, is not enough - all world leaders must start taking real action. These include actively working to transform our energy systems to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, protecting areas (to preserve biodiversity and carbon sinks), and restoring ecosystems. Overall, to treat our planet as a precious and valuable entity that must not be exploited. Global leaders are key actors that must adopt a "custodial approach" to their work if our societies and environments are to be saved.
Countries must commit to achieving their Paris targets (Source: EURACTIV)
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