Call for plan to save world welcomed

THE World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has welcomed the call by Sir David Attenborough for more to be done to save the natural world.

Sir David, a WWF ambassador, made a call for a global environmental action plan during a conversation with Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The WWF, in a statement, said the call by the world renowned environmentalist reinforced the urgent need expressed by the WWF and other organisations for a new deal for nature and people in 2020 – an agreement which would aim to halt and reverse the loss of nature, and protect the planet.

Sir David, who made his first documentary 60 years ago and is releasing a new documentary later this year, spoke of his lifelong ambition to create societal affinity with the natural world through his work, and the need now for this affinity to translate into real, collective action to protect the planet.

“We have to recognise that every breath of air we take, every mouthful of food we take comes from the natural world,” Sir David told Prince William. “And that if we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves. We have the power. We have the knowledge to actually live in harmony with nature.”

Prince William responded by saying: “People of my generation are beginning to step into positions of leadership around the world. The work to save the planet is largely going to happen on our watch.”

The call from Sir David comes after the release of the WWF’s latest flagship Living Planet Report, published in late 2018, which shows that population sizes of the planet’s wildlife have plummeted by 60% on average since 1970 – in less than a lifetime.

The report highlighted overuse of natural resources on land and in the oceans, and agricultural activity, driven by human consumption, as the dominant causes of the decline in wildlife and the destruction of forests, oceans and landscapes. It also identified climate change and pollution, including plastic, as significant and growing threats.

The WWF warned that current efforts to protect nature are failing because they are not ambitious enough to match the scale of the threat the planet is facing and called for political and economic leaders at the highest levels to commit to a co-ordinated, global plan of action to protect the planet.

Marco Lambertini, the director-general of WWF International, said: “There’s no doubt we are destroying our planet faster than ever, with catastrophic consequences for ourselves. But the fate of our world is not a done deal. We are at a critical point where the decisions we make have the potential to put us on the path towards a better future. To do that, we need political and business commitment at the highest level. That’s why we need a ‘New Deal for Nature and People’ to unite us in finding integrated solutions to the three biggest challenges of our time – climate change, restoring nature and feeding our global population.”

According to the WWF, a new deal for nature and people would put the environment at the heart of economic, political, social and financial systems, and would integrate efforts to tackle climate change, biodiversity declines, threats to the environment of the high seas, and development, via a series of vital international agreements in 2020.