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The urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises requires closer coordination between UNFCCC and CBD: Key messages from European science academies for UNFCCC COP26 and CBD COP15

Global warming is getting faster and faster, as the latest IPCC report confirms, and biodiversity loss continues. As the two crises potentiate each other, Europe’s science academies urge governments to treat them as one, and as equally urgent.

EASAC Commentary UNFCCC COP26 & CBD COP15
Image: EASAC

A new European academy report adds the most recent data to inform the two forthcoming UN summits on climate (UNFCCC) and biodiversity (CBD) respectively, with a focus on 16 areas requiring urgent action to shield humanity from the worst. The scientists make clear that governments need to push the reset button: if humanity wants to stop climate change and preserve the biodiversity that it needs for survival, it must change the economic system to one that rewards and incentivises sustainable choices and behaviour.

With the closely related policy agendas of the Climate Summit and the Biodiversity Summit, negotiators have the opportunity to take coordinated, bold and transformative action to deliver a new, more integrated and coherent framework for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change together. The urgency is such that both need to work together now, take advantage of the many potential synergies between climate change and biodiversity policies – such as ecosystem restoration – and change humanity’s course towards a sustainable future.

Edition / Volume: Commentary
Pages: 17 p.

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Dr. Roger Pfister
Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences (a+)
House of Academies
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3001 Bern
Switzerland


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