On the occasion of World Wildlife Day, Wednesday 3 March, the Commission reiterated its call to institutions around the world to give a voice to boost mobilisation for nature and help convince more governments to be ambitious at COP15 in Kunming.
“Humanity is destroying nature at an unprecedented rate, and we risk losing nearly 1 million species. We must urgently restore balance in our relationship with nature and reverse biodiversity loss. Action starts with awareness”, according to the Executive Vice-President of the Commission in charge of the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans.
A year ago, the Commission launched the global coalition ‘United for Biodiversity’, looking to national parks, aquariums, botanical gardens, zoos, science and natural history museums to raise public awareness of the nature crisis, in anticipation of this COP initially planned for October 2020 (see EUROPE 12439/21).
In one year, more than 200 institutions from all over the world have joined this initiative.
The Commission has also joined the ‘High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People’ (HAC), which supports the objective of protecting at least 30% of land and marine areas by 2030. This was launched last January at the One Planet for biodiversity summit (see EUROPE 12633/12, 12569/11). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)