Tag: biodiversity

The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) has just unfolded in Baku, Azerbaijan. This means that since 1992, when 154 countries signed the UNFCCC agreeing to combat harmful human impacts on the climate, we are still grappling with many challenges.

The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change draws to a close this week. For Africa, discussions at this year’s conference placed the continent as a central player that is playing an active role in actioning efforts and initiatives for a better, more sustainable future.

Global and domestic food security remains under extreme threat. Climate change has always been the main driver for the threat, however, the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia has drastically increased concerns about the impact of war on soaring food prices and input costs.

As a country with one of the most emissions-intensive power sectors in the world, and a nation that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, South Africa understands the need to transition its economy and to decarbonise, as well as to build resilience to the impacts of climate change.

As the global population continues to increase, waste generation is threatening biodiversity and the planet as a whole. With the global population expected to significantly exceed nine billion people by 2050, of which some 2.5 billion will be living on the African continent, biodiversity is shrinking, even as the waste generated by billions of people grows exponentially.

For the past 50 years, human activities have dramatically reduced biodiversity across the globe. We have, through our actions, extinguished our habitats and reduced populations of plants and wild animals by up to 60% so that today, our natural resources and the species on our planet are under threat – from us.

COVID-19 is simply a symptom of a deadlier underlying issue: our dominant belief that humanity is separate from and above the natural world. This pandemic was predicted in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, in which a 2007 article explicitly referred to the likelihood of further SARS-like viruses linked to the culture of eating exotic mammals in Southern China.