With the annual U.N. climate summit in its final week, many of the world’s environment ministers assembled in Egypt have begun setting their sights on another high-stakes meeting for nature taking place next month.
But for those talks on protecting nature to be a success, experts say, governments must bring global warming in check.
“Climate change is one of the big drivers of biodiversity loss,” said David Cooper, the deputy chief of U.N.’s Convention on Biological Diversity.
The U.N. agency will convene its next global summit on biodiversity next month in Montreal, after host country China postponed the event four times through the global COVID-19 pandemic.
At the COP15 talks scheduled for Dec. 7-19, national delegations will hash out a new global deal to protect plummeting wildlife populations worldwide and halt the continuing degradation of landscapes.
Campaigners are calling for a full-fledged “Paris Agreement for nature” under which countries set national conservation targets and then report routinely on their progress in meeting them.
But first, the world needs to see success made on tackling climate challenges in Egypt, experts say.
“If we don’t have successful outcomes in the climate process, then we cannot halt biodiversity loss,” Cooper said.
Without steep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, as many as half of all species by century’s end will be facing temperatures and conditions beyond their ability to survive, according to research published in 2018 in the journal Science.
Those that can’t migrate or adapt will perish. The loss of forests and other ecosystems like coral reefs and seagrass beds will also leave the world with fewer natural forms of carbon sequestration.
Already, these “carbon sinks” absorb about half of the excess emissions humans are pumping into the air from burning fossil fuels.