Biodiversity – Virginijus Sinkevicius – Photo EC
(MONACO) – On World Wildlife Day, and ahead of October’s CoP 15 Convention on Biological Diversity, the EU Commission called Tuesday for stronger mobilisation in raising awareness of the need to protect biodiversity.
The EU executive is turning to all national parks, aquariums, botanic gardens, zoos, science and natural history museums to join forces and boost public awareness about the nature crisis.
“Protection and restoration of biodiversity would not only save the nature for future generations, but also help to tackle climate change, and avoid negative consequences on our food, health and economy,” said Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius: “We urgently need to take global action, otherwise, our only chance of seeing nature is in the zoos and botanical gardens.”
With their collections, education and conservation programmes, national parks, aquariums, botanic gardens, zoos, science and natural history museums are according to the Commission the best ambassadors to raise public awareness about the dramatic effects of the biodiversity crisis.
The Commission is also encouraging national, regional and local authorities, non-governmental organisations, businesses, scientists and individual citizens to play their part in raising awareness ahead of the United Nations Biodiversity Summit (CoP 15).
During CoP 15, the 196 Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity are expected to adopt a new global framework to protect and restore nature, as much-needed as the Paris Agreement focusing on the climate urgency. Following the Summit, the focus of the coalition for biodiversity will be on coordinated actions with tangible impact aimed at bending the curve of biodiversity loss.
The Oceanographic Museum of Monaco was hosting a ceremony to mark both this launch and the handover of direction of the Aquariums coalition from the European Commission to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) under the ‘Clean Seas’ campaign.
Later this month, the Commission will announce the new EU Biodiversity Strategy to protect and restore nature in Europe, detailing the EU’s ambition for the Biodiversity CoP15.
