Opinion: Towards a Fairer Future for Conservation
Just under a year ago, at a meeting attended by 139 heads of state and government, the United Nations triumphantly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a positive and ambitious vision seeking to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all, where development is both sustainable and fairer.
A year later, the message from the IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) – the world’s largest nature conservation event, hoping to shape the direction of conservation and sustainable development – is much more sobering:
The ecosystems that underpin our economies, well-being and survival are collapsing. Species are becoming extinct at unprecedented rates. Our climate is in crisis… The benefits of development are not shared equitably, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and economic growth is occurring at the expense of ecological integrity.
Marco Simola