Saving the diversity and abundance of life on the earth may cost $100 billion a year, say scientists who have proposed a policy to prevent another mass extinction event on the planet.
There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the earth. Scientists now estimate that society must urgently come to grips this coming decade to stop the very first human-made biodiversity catastrophe.
“The sixth extinction is on our society’s shoulders; it really is,” ecologist Greg Asner, of Arizona State University in the U.S., said in a statement on the occasion of Earth day.
Mr. Asner is one of 19 international authors with a bold new science policy proposal to reverse the tide, called “A Global Deal for Nature” (GDN). The policy’s mission is to save the diversity and abundance of life on the earth — for the price tag of $100 billion a year.
Companion pact
Societal investment in the GDN plan would, for the first time, integrate and implement climate and nature deals on a global scale to avoid human upheaval and biodiversity loss.
While the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was the first major accord to take global action toward climate change policies, the international team of GDN scientists believe a similar companion pact is desperately needed to implement the very first global nature conservation plan to meet these challenges.
“The Global Deal for Nature is a time-bound, science-based plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth. Achieving the milestones and targets of the Global Deal for Nature is the best gift we can offer to future generations—an environmental reset, a pathway to an Eden 2.0,” said Eric Dinerstein, of the U.S.-based nongovernmental organisation Resolve.
The study, published in Science Advances , outlines the guiding principles, milestones and targets needed to avoid the extinction threats of a two degrees Celsius warming forecast.
