One of the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to rally global ambition for a biodiversity framework that sets the world on a path to a sustainable future, says Elizabeth Maruma Mrema. Mrema, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), says there’s growing awareness of the importance of biodiversity for everything from food security to the regulation of water and air quality, to pest and disease regulation. “World leaders fully recognize that the continued deterioration and degradation of Earth’s natural ecosystems are having major impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people around the world,” she says. In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Mrema talks about building a robust post-2020 framework after the Aichi Biodiversity Targets fell short, how the conservation sector has changed over her career, and her hopes for the CBD summit coming up later this year. 2020 was supposed to be the year for evaluating the past decade’s progress in meeting biodiversity conservation targets and setting the agenda for the next decade. But then the pandemic hit, plunging the world into hardship and uncertainty, prompting postponements of global meetings, and pushing biodiversity to the back of most people’s […]
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