Nature must have equal footing in climate change policy, experts tell CDP Awards

The CDP event celebrates the companies and cities which are working to achieve greater sustainability, and the highlights are being broadcast on Euronews, in a special programme hosted by Méabh McMahon.

NGOs worldwide have called for the Earth to become 'nature positive' by 2030, a goal leaders of the G7 group of industrialised countries have endorsed. Nature positivity entails halting and reversing today’s catastrophic loss of nature and biodiversity.

2030 is a crucial deadline, Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary at the Convention on Biological Diversity told Euronews, because “what is at stake is the loss of biodiversity reaching unprecedented rates in the history of mankind.”

“We need to see a better integration of nature and climate change in decision-making on an equal footing at the national level,” she argued, adding: “No time to waste. Scientists have told us we either take action now or perish.”

Nature plays a vital part in regulating the Earth’s climate as “biosphere systems help us in absorbing and dampening the disturbance caused by our fossil fuel burning,” Johan Rockstrom, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, underlined in his panel discussion with Euronews.

These biosphere systems include the forests, the oceans, the ice sheet, the permafrost as well as grasslands and wetlands. Many of them act as carbon sinks, meaning they absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release and thus help in cooling the planet. However, some carbon sinks such as wetlands can become carbon sources if they are not managed and protected.

The threat of such tipping points being reached is real, according to the CDP Europe Awards panelists. "The demand we are making on biospheres’ goods and services