The World Is Failing To Stop Extinctions. These Scientists Have A Plan To Help.

This was the year the world was supposed to tackle the biodiversity crisis head-on. Countries were set to meet in Kunming, China, in October to agree on new goals to protect nature. But the coronavirus pandemic has halted progress on this massive challenge. It’s a bitter irony, as COVID-19 has revealed more clearly than ever the serious implications of our ever-encroaching impact on nature. “When we destroy and degrade biodiversity, we undermine the web of life and increase the risk of disease spillover from wildlife to people,” David Cooper, the deputy executive secretary for the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity, told HuffPost. Yet, instead of action, we often have inertia at an international level. This is despite the fact we are living through an extinction crisis. Scientists have warned that unless urgent action is taken, up to 1 million species of land and marine life could go extinct because of human actions. This is why Mark Rounsevell, a professor of land use change at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, and his colleagues are calling for the creation of a new biodiversity target that is measurable and, importantly, simple. Their idea, proposed in June , is that […]

Click here to view original web page at The World Is Failing To Stop Extinctions. These Scientists Have A Plan To Help.