Restoring Balance With Nature
Defining our positive future
For centuries, we have used nature to live. As results:
- Nearly one million species are at risk of extinction.
- Nearly three quarters of the Earth's ice-free land has been transformed to meet human demands for food, raw materials, and homes.
- If humans continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, global temperature will rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius target within decades.
Today, we need nature to survive. We must restore our balance with nature which we have been long ignoring. Protecting and restoring nature can help drive a green recovery and prevent future pandemics. Investing in nature-based solutions will allow us to build forward better, greener, healthier, stronger, and more sustainably.
- Land and ecosystems restoration actions strengthen nature, build food security and resilience;
- Nature-based solutions that conserve biodiversity can help address almost a third of all emissions, help transform food systems, and build adaptation and resilience;
- Mitigation of and adaptation to climate change by a variety of efforts including reducing fossil fuel use, modifying agriculture and land-use practices and others can ensure that biodiversity remains rich and healthy, and land is protected from further degradation;
To bring about this change, the United Nation Conventions – Convention on Biological Diversity, UN Convention to Combat Desertification and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – are joining forces to ensure that each and every one of us takes action in their own environment in order to change the course of the world to restore balance with nature. Through Restoring Balance with Nature Campaign, we share ideas with you about how the actions of the three conventions impact not only the ecosystems per se, but our everyday lives, by creating a positive butterfly effect.
How do the Rio Conventions work together?
- The Rio Conventions, their protocols and the body of decisions and institutional frameworks – along with the Sustainable Development Goals – provide a broad and sound blueprint for building forward. Countries, corporations, and communities can draw on their ambition, clear targets, and agreed pathway for action at all levels to restore the land that sustains us, halt the loss of biodiversity, and mitigate and adapt to climate change.
- By responding urgently to the climate change emergency, protecting nature, as well as protecting and restoring our land resources (i.e., soil, water and biodiversity), we will reduce numerous future risks to humanity and ecosystems. We will at the same time support an economic recovery in which women and youth have a significant role to play, powered by new jobs, livelihoods, business models, and value chains created in renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure.
- In the lead up to the Conferences of the Parties of the three Rio Conventions, it will be crucial to work collectively and coherently to reinforce positive practices at each state. We need to foster collaboration and set the stage for a new political and investment paradigm that indeed, leaves no one behind.
- As COVID-19 revealed, global emergencies recognize no borders, respect no ideologies, and are not restrained by political differences. To address them multilateralism is the only way forward.
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