Challenges

Nature is at risk from climate change 

Human-caused climate change is one of the biggest threats our planet faces today. Caused by humanity’s ever-rising use of fossil fuels, which release planet warming greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere, and by the continued destruction of nature’s precious biodiversity through commercial practices such as agriculture, logging, mining, fishing, construction, and industrial pollution, the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere has risen by more than 1.15°C above pre-industrial levels and is projected to rise by almost 3°C by 2100. Similarly, the Earth’s oceans have also warmed to unprecedented levels, with the average global sea surface temperature reaching an all-time high of 20.96°C in early August 2023. 

These rises in temperature pose a serious and rapidly accelerating threat to the health of the planet and to the lives of animal and plant species around the world. Through the Paris Agreement, the nations of the world agreed that global warming should not exceed 1.5°C if the worst impacts of climate change are to be avoided. However, given current GHG emissions pathways, atmospheric warming is likely to reach 1.5°C by 2027 and 2.8°C by 2100. 

This level of temperature increase will have catastrophic impacts on many plants, animals, insects, and humans. From the coral reefs of the Caribbean and Australia, where corals are bleaching and dying due to ocean temperature rise, and the savannahs of Africa, where more and more animals die each year due to worsening droughts, to the Gulf of Maine, where climate change has affected the ability of North Atlantic right whales to reproduce, climate change is already having serious impacts upon plants, animals, and ecosystems and threatens the extinction of up to one million species. We now live in a time of climate crisis. 

Interconnected crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty 

The climate and biodiversity crises are recognised as two sides of the same coin. Climate change and biodiversity loss are also both intimately linked to poverty and inequality, as many of the most biodiverse regions of the world are located in the most impoverished parts of the world. Poverty is an important driver of biodiversity loss, which in turn contributes to climate change. Climate change is having a disproportionate impact upon families and communities living in poverty as they bear the brunt of a crisis they have done little if anything to cause.