Biodiversity to the Natural Environment
Biodiversity to the natural environment can not be overemphasised in our fight against climate crisis.
For over 40 years since 1974, millions of people have celebrated the 5th of June to raise awareness concerning the environment, have dialogues on pressing issues threatening the environment, and amending national and international policies concerning the environment.
In preparation for the celebration of World Environment Day 2020 themed “Biodiversity”, Revamp Rave Network had a Webinar on the 4th of June, engaging environmentalists, Climate Advocates and other young leaders and attendees from all over Africa.
The webinar was to enlighten young advocate on the importance of restoring our environment and its sustainability. The session featured six speakers from various African countries.
The speakers include: Nadine Khaouli — Youth Development Delegate UNDP Lebanon, Elizabeth Gulugulu — Project Manager African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, Deon Shekuza — Co-Founder Namibian Youth on Renewable Energy, Fatou Jeng — Founder-Clean Earth Gambia, Mohammed Mahmood — V.P Ecologistics and the Moderator for the event and Abimbola Abikoye Project Coordinator Revamp Rave Network.
Nadine Khaouli, the special guest speaker, gave the opening address. She shared her perspective on the topic aforementioned, highlighting the impacts she is making through what she does for the betterment of the environment in her society, especially in Lebanon.
Nadine revealed how cognizant Climate Change is a global problem. Some of the ways for Climate Action, according to her, is by supporting and raising awareness. She explicitly explained “Mission 1.5”; globally launched on the 13th of February, 2020 as part of UNDP (United Nations Development Program).
She said Mission 1.5 aims to hear from everyone on how the Climate Change is affecting them, elect people around the world who call for Climate Action, and bridge the gap between people and governments to fight the climate crisis.
Elizabeth Gulugulu, the first speaker, spoke about ways of restoring biodiversity and having a sustainable future. She started by explaining the intersection of food security and biodiversity conservation.
In her presentation, she stated that it is oblivious that there is more demand for food production as the human population increases. The world population is expected to reach nine billion by 2050 to this end; the availability of global food production will need to rise by 60%. Touching on the availability of arable land and land under permanent crops cover approximately 11% or 1.5 billion hectares of Earth’s land surface.
There are approximately 2.7 billion hectares of land under some form of agricultural use, whether crop production, livestock grazing, or agroforestry (FAO 2014). The emphasis on food security without the interference of food availability, food accessibility, food utilisation and food nutrition cannot be achievable, she said.
Biodiversity is the variety of genes, species and ecosystems while conservation is the preservation, protection or restoration of the natural environment and wildlife.
Setting more examples, she epitomised why the increase in global food security and conservation of biodiversity are two of the world’s most pressing challenges. In her discussion, she explained the need to conserve ecosystems viz forest; this plays a huge role in food security through contributions to diets, are medicinal and nutrition.
Conserving Dams, Rivers, Lakes, Oceans, and Seas are significant in biodiversity; they are the habitats of lives underwater and provides livelihood to many via food and other means.
For example, Fish provides about 3 billion people, with almost 20% of their animal protein intake. Commercial fishing mainly occurs on the large reservoirs such as Lake Chad, Nile and many more. There are different kinds of soils and species found within them.
Lastly, these various species or organisms contribute to a wide range of essential services to all ecosystems’ sustainable function.
Deon Shekuza said the integration of young people is required to scale up advocacy and activism towards conservation biodiversity. We must raise awareness to protect the environment and encourage young people to look forward to raising ambition towards upgrading the environment.
It is relevant for youths to look at biodiversity from the view of technology, regardless of the little or no investments put into it to solve biodiversity issues.
Technology would help take stock of environmental progress towards restoring and protecting biodiversity, particularly the use of data collection can go a long way in driving results.
Some of the areas he recommended for young people to consider in taking Climate Action includes:
- Improvement in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
- Young people should have fair share space so that they will deliver within their capacity.
- The consideration of young people in decision-making and giving official spaces for youth to contribute to processes strengthening the drive-in conservation of biodiversity.
- Mobilisation of organisations and strategic setup in ensuring positive change towards the environment.
- The need for the intergeneration of eco principles captured in convention articles should be inclusive in terms of agreement and protocols.
Deon noted that biodiversity is a natural science subject and the way it is protected or implemented has a lot to do with law in Africa.
Fatou Jeng noted that humans are accountable for disturbing the proper functioning of ecosystems, and urges us to provide solutions and ways in which biodiversity can be protected and restored, sighting her tree planting engagements in the Gambia.
Planting-trees is a substantial preventive measure against soil erosion and high sea-level rise. Exploring the nature-based solution is useful in times like this. An exemplary implementation of environmental laws to improve biodiversity by the government should be of priority from adequate investment in nature-based solutions to other climate mitigation processes should be pursued in all global sphere.
As young people, Fatou encouraged us to mobilise ourselves, innovate change by uniting and raising our voices in unison towards the nature-based solution and elevating our work with the government as stakeholders to ensure climate action.
We can proffer change when we invest our energy and time on our environment.- Fatou Jeng.
Happy International World Environment Day!
Read more — https://rravenetwork.medium.com/climate-change-implications-on-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-9136cd0ea834
