Why is the Biodiversity Cop seen as the poor relative to the Climate Cop?
Professor Yadvinder Malhi, is at Cop 16 and commented on why Biodiversity has been slow to get on the agenda.
“I think one of the reasons that the climate change convention really took of after Rio in 1992, whereas the biodiversity convention languished, is that it was easier to tell a straightforward story of climate change being an existential threat to humanity that needed an urgent response. In contrast, biodiversity was still widely characterized as “nice to have” rather than of essential existentially value.
“I think over recent decades biodiversity and conservation scientists have been able to make an increasingly powerful case for thriving biodiversity also being valuable, indeed essential, for human wellbeing, and that loss of biodiversity is also an existential threat. It is good this case has been made and that biodiversity and nature are often mentioned in the same breath as climate change. However, in highlighting how biodiversity is useful for human wellbeing we should be careful not to forget the intrinsic value of a biosphere more ancient, more wonderful, and more mysterious than we as a recently emerged species can fully appreciate”.
Yadvinder has been quoted in the Guardian today, read more here.