The Seventh World Conference on nature conservation ended in Marseille, France, on the 10th. The World Conservation Union updated the red list of endangered species during the conference, aiming to make the world more aware of the current situation of biodiversity loss and the inseparable link between the protection of biodiversity and human well-being and economic and social development.

Analysts pointed out that an important goal of this conference is to tell the international community which species are under threat and the rate of extinction. The international community expects that the upcoming 15th Conference of the parties to the United Nations Convention on biological diversity (COP15) in China will open a new chapter in global biodiversity conservation by formulating the "post-2020 global biodiversity framework".

Biodiversity crisis intensifies

The World Conservation Union updated the red list of endangered species and assessed the risk of 138374 species threatened worldwide, of which 38543 species are threatened with extinction. Craig Hilton Taylor, head of the red list of endangered species Department of the global species project of the World Conservation Union, said that the global extinction of species is accelerating. "This trend is 100 to 1000 times higher than the normal extinction rate". Mankind is approaching the sixth species extinction. If the extinction continues to grow at this rate, we will soon face a major crisis.

Zhang Xinsheng, President of the World Conservation Union, said that the earth and mother nature, on which mankind depends, are facing three major crises, namely environmental pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity and serious degradation of the earth's ecosystem. It can be said that the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of the earth's ecosystem have approached the red line.

Patrick gilaudu, a French ecologist and professor at France's Franch Conte University, said in a video interview with Xinhua that the birth of species is the result of natural evolution over 3 billion years, and lost species can no longer be reborn. "Mankind is now facing a sharp loss of biodiversity, which is a very serious problem."

Gilaudu said that the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation pose a major risk to human survival and development. COVID-19 is a painful lesson that human beings somehow destroy the direct consequences of biodiversity. If biodiversity is not protected at all levels, mankind will put itself at risk.

The World Conservation Congress is a quadrennial institutional meeting of the World Conservation Union, which has an important impact in the field of global environment and development. The conference lasts for 9 days and adopts a combination of online and offline forms. The conference adopted the Marseille Declaration on the 10th. The declaration points out that the next few months will largely determine how countries respond to the emergency situation facing global biodiversity. At the upcoming COP15 in Kunming, China and beyond, all parties must take decisive action and strengthen cooperation.

All parties look forward to COP15

Analysts pointed out that there is no doubt about the urgency of global biodiversity conservation. Facing the unprecedented challenges of global natural environment governance, the international community should promote the construction of a beautiful world with harmonious coexistence between man and nature with unprecedented determination and action.

Bruno oberler, director general of the World Conservation Union, said on the 10th that the decision of the current World Conservation Conference will promote all parties to take action in response to biodiversity and climate crisis in the next key 10 years. The World Conservation Union "sends a strong message to the United Nations climate change Glasgow conference and COP15: it is time for fundamental change".

After the World Conservation Conference, COP15 will be held in Kunming in two stages in October this year and the first half of next year. French Minister of ecological transformation Barbara pompili said on the 10th that global biodiversity is facing challenges. The world should actively mobilize through COP15 to further increase the area of global nature reserves, accelerate the sharing of biodiversity knowledge and ensure the continuous increase of special funds around the world.

Gilaudu said that the upcoming COP15 will set new goals for global biodiversity conservation. He admitted that through the scientific research of the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change, the Intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services and other institutions, countries and regions have realized that the global biodiversity faces great problems, and the great challenge of COP15 is how to let people all over the world participate in protection in their own way.

Augustine Coran, director of the Cameroon project of the World Conservation Union, said that the threat to global biodiversity is a major concern of the entire international community, because the protection of biodiversity is the hope of curbing climate change. COP15 is an opportunity for biodiversity conservation around the world. We will seize the opportunity to show the efforts and achievements made by the African subregion in this field in the past 10 years and make suggestions for the formulation of the "post-2020 global biodiversity framework".