The European Commission launched a new global coalition for biodiversity at the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco on Tuesday, March 3. The Commission is calling for stronger action in raising awareness about the need to protect biodiversity.

Ahead of the crucial CoP 15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in October 2020, the Commission is turning to all national parks, aquariums, botanic gardens, zoos, science and natural history museums to join forces and boost public awareness about the nature crisis.

European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius said: “Biodiversity crisis is an important part in climate change. Protection and restoration of biodiversity would not only save the nature for future generations, but also help to tackle climate change, and avoid negative consequences on our food, health and economy. We urgently need to take global action, otherwise, our only chance of seeing nature is in the zoos and botanical gardens. That would be a failure of the humankind.”

With their collections, education and conservation programmes, national parks, aquariums, botanic gardens, zoos, science and natural history museums are the best ambassadors to raise public awareness about the dramatic effects of the biodiversity crisis. The Commission also encourages national, regional and local authorities, non-governmental organisations, businesses, scientists and individual citizens to play their part in raising awareness ahead of the United Nations Biodiversity Summit (CoP 15).

During CoP 15, the 196 Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity are expected to adopt a new global framework to protect and restore nature, as much-needed as the Paris Agreement focusing on the climate urgency. Following the Summit, the focus of the coalition for biodiversity will be on coordinated actions with tangible impact aimed at bending the curve of biodiversity loss. This initiative is consistent and fully in line with other initiatives and coalitions, such as the High Ambition Coalition led by Costa Rica.

A 2019 Report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services IPBES shows that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. The rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with up to a million species facing extinction, and with likely serious impacts on people around the world. This means ecosystems would no longer be able to support humanity by providing water, food, clean air and timber, and their services of pollination, climate regulation, soil formation and regulation of floods would be seriously affected.