Posted on 30 December, 2019 by Green Alliance blog
As we start the New Year, it’s clear that 2020 is our last chance to bring the world together to take decisive action on climate change, to protect our communities and reverse the alarming loss of wildlife we have witnessed in recent years. When world leaders gather at global events this year, including the UN General Assembly in September, the global biodiversity summit in China in October and the climate summit in Glasgow next November, bold leadership from our own country and others will be needed, if we are to turn the tide over the next decade and beyond.
Not just future threats, the consequences are here now
As chairs of two of the largest environmental bodies in the country, the Environment Agency and Natural England, we are constantly reminded that the twin emergencies of climate change and degradation of the natural environment are not only future threats of unprecedented scale but that they are already causing dire consequences.
In October, the alarming new report on the State of Nature in the UK revealed that 41 per cent of the country’s wildlife species have declined over the past 50 years. Thirteen per cent of the species tracked are threatened with extinction in England. A month later, during the election campaign, the country experienced its worst flooding since 2015 as hundreds of people in Fishlake were evacuated. As the recovery effort continues, some of them have still not been able to return home.