Ahead of the UN summit, global leaders signed a pledge to end biodiversity loss, and with that, climate decline that includes reducing deforestation, carbon and plastic pollution.
The pledge, signed by world leaders is a commitment to tackling the climate emergency and damaging unethical practices carried out by private firms and large scale corporate entities.
It was signed by leaders including Boris Johnson, Jacinda Ardern, Imran Khan, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau. Missing from the pledge is Donald Trump as is China, despite vowing to go carbon neutral by 2060. India, who opened up for bids on coal sites in protected forested land is also absent from the document. Justin Trudeau’s name will no doubt be brought into question, considering Canada’s investments in oil.
In the pledge, leaders commit to a multilateral approach “based on unity, solidarity and trust among countries, peoples and generations”.
The document, which you can read here, tells of the need to come together in the face of climatic decline: “Despite ambitious global agreements and targets for the protection, sustainable use and restoration of biodiversity, and notwithstanding many local success stories, the global trends continue rapidly in the wrong direction. A transformative change is needed: we cannot simply carry on as before.”
In a 10 point plan, the pledge outlines how it will tackle the emergency. It says that it will be “science-based” recognising the “…crucial role of traditional and indigenous knowledge as well as science and research in the fight against ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change…”
The signatories say that by “…endorsing this Pledge for Nature, we commit ourselves not simply to words, but to meaningful action and mutual accountability”. How mutual accountability will be reached is yet to be disclosed.
Indifferences and evasion from responsibility only contribute to this rapid descent into environmental disaster – and while the pledge is a step in the right direction, many signatories must emerge from their fossil fuel pasts to equip the necessary integrity required to reestablish the 1.5c target. Something the world is woefully far from achieving.
This will require governmental organisation against corporate entities, including Exxon, Shell, Lukoil as well as consumer goods companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble who are among some of the worst polluters on the planet.
Stanisland Magazine 