Urgent: Governments must tackle population to save biodiversity
Human activity has caused a biodiversity crisis. To prevent further biodiversity loss, we must address the impact of our growing human population.
In the run-up to the crucial COP15 biodiversity summit later this year, please call on your country’s environment minister to ensure that positive, choice-based population solutions are included in the new global biodiversity agreement.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity is the key international agreement protecting global biodiversity. In 2010, ambitious global biodiversity goals were agreed, called the Aichi Targets. These expired in 2020 without any of the targets being met. While there are many reasons for this, the failure to address the issue of human population growth is certainly among them.
The world’s nations are in the process of drawing up a new biodiversity agreement to replace the Aichi Targets – the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. This will be further negotiated in Geneva this March, and then adopted at the COP15 summit in China later this year. It is vital that this agreement explicitly addresses the role of human population growth in biodiversity loss to have any chance of success.
Using the form on this page, you can send a personal message to the environment minister in your country. Simply fill in your details in the ‘Take Action’ fields and press ‘Next’. The suggested text for your message will then appear, with your details and those of the minister from your country filled in. You can amend that text if you wish. Original messages with unique subject lines are normally most effective, but there is no need to make any changes if you don’t want to – just click the button to send your message when you are ready. If you do amend the text, please keep your message polite and positive. The message the minister receives will include your email address, so you may receive a reply from them.
NB: If your country is not on the list and you have the relevant contact information, please let us know so we can add it.