Climate and the Planet: No longer a North vs South issue but a Planet vs Catastrophe issue

While negotiators succeeded in creating a new Cali Fund at COP16 to halt Earth’s rampant biodiversity losses, contributions were made “voluntary.” Biodiversity losses or effects of climate change are no longer a Global North vs. Global South issue but rather an existential crisis faced by the entire planet, and the Global North is not exempt from its disastrous effects.Speaking at the opening of the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) at Cali, Columbia, UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasised that “Nature is life. And yet we are waging a war against it – a war in which there can be no winner.”

The world is facing a planetary crisis caused by biodiversity losses and not to forget, climate change. Climate change has dominated headlines, yet its inextricable link with biodiversity remains curiously muffled. This disconnect, despite both issues falling under the purview of most environmental ministries, underscores a dangerous silo mentality. They need to be tackled together to ensure a livable planet.

Climate change has already started to shift ecosystem distributions and species ranges while negatively impacting the synchronisation of ecological events, resulting in the first climate-driven extinctions.

The European Union has lost more than half of its wetlands; more than 40 percent of its mammals, 25 percent of the birds, 45 percent of the butterflies, 30 percent of the amphibians; and more than half of the freshwater fish are endangered.

According to the Red List by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 35 percent of animal, plant and fungus species studied in Switzerland are at risk of extinction.

Over the past four decades, extreme weather events accounted for 85000 to 145000 human fatalities across Europe. Over 85 percent of those fatalities have been due to heatwaves. Ecosystem services and nature-based solutions dependent on a healthy biodiversity particularly contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In Australia, 19 percent of ecosystems are showing signs of collapse, and 21 percent of mammal species are now threatened.

North America lost over 20 percent of its species in the past century, with over 1,000 additional species in the United States listed as endangered or threatened.

The number of species identified by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has increased steadily from 17 in 1978 as being at risk to 841 in 2022.

We need a ‘whole of society’ approach to tackle these challenges, with policy instruments and financial assistance at the national and international levels backing up the conservation of biodiversity across the planet instead of condemning the Global South to tackle biodiversity losses by themselves, especially when the Global North is also experiencing biodiversity losses.