The first in a series of articles that will look at some of the global challenges facing the environment and their relevance to Norfolk, its environment, wildlife and people.
2019 was the year when concerns about the climate and biodiversity emergencies made news around the world.
A year when young people – with Greta Thunberg leading the way – encouraged millions of people in more than 100 countries to voice environmental concerns through public actions.
A year when we stopped talking about climate change and biodiversity loss and started calling these a climate and biodiversity emergency.
It was also a year when atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide continued their seemingly unstoppable upward trend. A year when numerous scientific reports highlighted environmental damage, from forest fires in the Amazon to the continuing
.JPG.aspx?width=300&height=233&ext=.jpg)
Chaffinch, by Elizabeth Dack
global loss of wildlife habitats, species and populations. And bushfires, made more ferocious by prolonged drought and record breaking high temperatures, reeking devastation across large parts of Australia.
Looking forward, 2020 is set to be a critically important year for our environment, both local and global. This year, in China, the future of the Convention for Biological Diversity will be determined at a key UN conference in October on the theme of ‘Building a shared future for all life on Earth’ and just a month later world leaders will gather in Glasgow for a make or break climate conference. Closer to home the UK Government will begin to progress its landmark Environment Bill, which has huge implications for the future of wildlife protection and the countryside, in Norfolk and across England.
Of course January 2020 marks not just the start of a new year but also of a new decade. The United Nations has declared 2021 to 2030 the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, when the world must massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems to save threatened wildlife and fight climate change.
The 2020s are a decade when we all have a choice to make: to transition to more sustainable lifestyles and decarbonise our economies and lifestyles, or to continue with business as usual and risk putting the world on a course where damage to natural systems that support life may become irreversible.
An increasing number of the world’s leading climate scientists believe that unless enough of us take the decisions needed to at least level the curve of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide in the next few years, then by 2030 we could be passing tipping points beyond which global heating, loss of Arctic and Antarctic ice and rising sea-levels become impossible to control.
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims
Buckminster Fuller
Some of these global issues may seem remote from Norfolk but the reality is that we will all be affected by the coming changes, both to highly interconnected global natural systems and highly interconnected global human economies. We are all to an extent part of the problem and all have the opportunity to be part of the solution.
Over the coming months in these articles we will explore how here in Norfolk we can play our part by making positive local responses to global challenges including species loss, marine conservation, plastic pollution, habitat loss, and deforestation. The drivers of biodiversity loss at a global level are habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, human over-exploitation of nature and the introduction of destructive non-native species. Norfolk is not an island isolated from these issues, but through understanding the issues we all, individuals and Norfolk organisations, have the opportunity to play a vital role in creating solutions. To quote Greta: ‘no one is too small to make a difference’ and making a positive difference is not a bad resolution for the new year.