There is research that shows that at least half of the earth’s surface needs to be wilderness in order for us to prevent a climate catastrophe and a mass extinction of animals. At present, we are not close to that figure, but an initiative will hopefully take us a long way .
More than 50 countries have now agreed that they will protect at least 30 percent of both land and sea by 2030. Today, only 15 percent of the earth’s land area and seven percent of the sea will be protected, so it will be a real improvement. We will hardly reach 50 percent by 2030 as it looks now, but if we go as far as 30 percent, we have bought ourselves time to reach the rest of the way even before the disaster is a fact.
The initiative in question is called the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, HAC . At present, it has a little over 50 members . Here we find countries such as Angola, Costa Rica, Congo (both countries), France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, Pakistan, Spain and the United Kingdom.
An Achilles’ heel for many environmental initiatives is that the countries think it will be too expensive. However, an analysis from Cambridge University in the UK shows that HAC can pay off . According to it, investments of $ 103-178 billion would be needed to achieve HAC’s goals. But at the same time, the conservation of forests alone and Mangrove Swamp would reduce the economic impact of environmental disasters by $ 170-534 billion.
The countries in the HAC now hope that many more countries will join the initiative during the major conference on biodiversity, which will be launched in China in May. Hopefully, they can then also come up with some binding measures that would give the initiative a really good chance of success.
