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Humanity is waging a “foolish and suicidal” war against nature that is causing human suffering and huge economic losses while accelerating the destruction of life on Earth, said UN Secretary General António Guterres.
Guterres’ most severe warning to date came with the release of a UN report establishing the triple emergency the world is in: the climate crisis, the devastation of wildlife and nature, and pollution. which causes many millions of premature deaths each year.
Making peace with nature is the defining task of the coming decades, he said, and the key to a prosperous and sustainable future for all people. The report combines recent major UN assessments with the latest research and solutions available, representing an authoritative scientific blueprint for how to fix the planet.
The report says societies and economies must be transformed through policies such as substituting GDP as an economic measure with one that reflects the true value of nature, as recommended this month by a study commissioned by the UK Treasury.
Carbon emissions must be taxed, and trillions of dollars of “perverse” subsidies for fossil fuels and destructive agriculture must be diverted towards green energy and food production, the report says. In addition to systemic changes, people in rich nations can also act, he says, by reducing meat consumption and wasting less energy and water.
“Humanity is waging a war against nature. This is foolish and suicidal, ”Guterres said. “The consequences of our recklessness are already evident in human suffering, huge economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth.”
The triple emergence threatened our viability as a species, he said. But ending the war would not mean a worse standard of living or the end of poverty reduction. “On the contrary, making peace with nature, ensuring your health and taking advantage of the critical and underrated benefits it provides are key to a prosperous and sustainable future for all.”
“This report provides the basis for hope,” he said. “Make it clear that our war against nature has left the planet shattered. But it also guides us to a safer place by providing a post-war peace plan and reconstruction program. “
Inger Andersen, director of the United Nations Environment Program (Unep), said: “We do not need to look beyond the global pandemic caused by Covid-19, a disease that is transmitted from animals to humans, to know that the The finely tuned system of the natural world has been disrupted. ”Unep and the World Health Organization have said that the root cause of pandemics is the destruction of the natural world, and that worse outbreaks will ensue unless action is taken.
The report says that the fivefold growth of the global economy in the last 50 years was driven in large part by a huge increase in the extraction of fossil fuels and other resources, and has come at a huge cost to the environment. The world’s population has doubled since 1970, and while average prosperity has also doubled, 1.3 billion people remain in poverty and 700 million go hungry.
He says current measures to address environmental crises are far short of what is needed: the world is still on the path of catastrophic warming of 3 ° C above pre-industrial levels, a million species face extinction and the 90% of people live with dirty air.
“We use three-quarters of the land and two-thirds of the oceans; we are completely dominating the Earth,” said Ivar Baste of the Norwegian Environment Agency, lead author of the report.
Professor Sir Robert Watson, who has led UN scientific assessments on climate and biodiversity and is the report’s other lead author, said: “We have a triple emergency and these three issues are all interrelated and must be addressed together. They are no longer just environmental problems, they are economic problems, development problems, security problems, social, moral and ethical problems.
“Of all the things we have to do, we really have to rethink our economic and financial systems. Basically, GDP doesn’t take nature into account. We need to get rid of these perverse subsidies, they cost between 5 and 7 trillion dollars a year. If you could move some of these into low-carbon technology and invest in nature, then the money is there. “
This meant taking on companies and countries with vested interests in fossil fuels, he said: “There are a lot of people who really like these perverse subsidies. They love the status quo. So governments must have the guts to act. “
Financial institutions could play a huge role, Watson said, by ending financing for fossil fuels, clearing forests and large-scale monoculture agriculture. Businesses should act too, he said: “Proactive companies see that if they can be sustainable, they can be the first to move and make a profit. But in some cases, regulation will almost certainly be necessary for those companies that don’t care. “
Pollution was included in the report because despite improvements in some wealthy nations, toxic air, water, soils and workplaces cause at least 9 million deaths a year, one in six of all deaths. . “This is still a big problem,” Baste said.
The nations of the world will meet at two crucial UN summits in 2021 on climate and biodiversity crises. “We know that we have failed miserably in our biodiversity goals [set in 2010]”Watson said. “I would be very disappointed if these summits only talk about objectives and goals. They have to talk about stocks, that’s really the crucial thing. “
