Australia is preparing for a potentially lethal summer of natural disasters.
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The rise in extreme temperatures across the globe and the unprecedented bushfires and floods of the northern hemisphere summer are an ominous warning of what may lie ahead.
These are the unwelcome reminders of what most people understand as the "climate emergency".
Yet what many people don't yet comprehend is these are also signs of a parallel "nature emergency" unfolding in Australia and around the globe.
Nature is in crisis. It is under threat from human activities and climate change. Wildlife populations are plummeting, around half of the world's original forests have disappeared, and the pace of ecosystem degradation is advancing at an alarming rate.
The evidence has never been clearer. We are having a devastating impact on the planet, and this has severe consequences for our lives, our economy, our society, our health.
Unfortunately, Australia is among the most culpable countries in the world for habitat and species destruction.
Even today Australia ranks alongside the Amazon and Congo as a global deforestation hotspot, clearing trees faster than any other developed nation.
Australia is now home to more than 1900 animals, plants and ecological communities that are threatened with extinction.
More than 550 native animals are at risk of being erased forever, including the greater glider, black-flanked rock-wallaby, regent honeyeater, swift parrot and even the iconic koala.
About 100 native plants and animals have been declared extinct in the last 250 years. This has left Australia with the unwanted record of having the worst mammal extinction rate in the world.
And yet only 34 per cent of Australians believe we are in an extinction crisis, with the majority believing the natural environment is in a good/excellent state. For most people, nature loss is less of a concern than climate, the economy and other issues. The reality is that they are all interdependent.
We are only now beginning to understand that we can't continue to take nature for granted, exploit its resources wastefully and unsustainably, without consequences.
We are already seeing some of these consequences: loss of lives and livelihoods to extreme weather, aggravated poverty from droughts, and zoonotic pandemics able to bring the whole world to its knees.
We are leaving a terribly complicated legacy to our children.
But amid so much bad news, there is room for hope. Momentum is building behind a new approach called "nature positive".
At the COP15 biodiversity summit last December, nearly 200 countries committed to a nature-positive global goal of "halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030". This is a historic, disruptive and hugely ambitious goal that seeks to increase the health, abundance, and diversity of the world's biodiversity.
The term "nature positive" is being increasingly used, but often as a slogan rather than a measurable goal.
The focus now needs to turn to implementation and on driving the necessary actions and systemic changes that will deliver a nature-positive world.
Some of the world's largest conservation organisations, research institutes, and business and finance coalitions have just come together to launch the Nature Positive Initiative to advocate for the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030.
The initiative will help answer some of the big questions: How do we measure nature-positive outcomes? What do nature-positive actions look like? What are the pathways for governments, companies, and investors to contribute to a nature positive outcome? And can biodiversity impacts be credibly compensated for?
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Australia has taken the welcome step of hosting the first Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney in October 2024.
The summit will bring together climate, environment and finance ministers, corporate and business leaders, environment groups, First Nations peoples, scientists, academics, and community leaders to drive investment to protect and repair nature.
There is much to do if we are to transform "nature positive" into something more than a slogan.
The Australian government has rightly expressed its concern about the nature crisis and made a welcome commitment to zero new extinctions in its threatened species action plan.
But regenerating nature by 2030 will take more than words. To achieve success, the scale of funding needs to match the size of the problem.
Australia should step up and contribute to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.
This new nature fund aims to accelerate investment in the conservation of wild species and ecosystems, whose health is under threat from bushfires, flooding, extreme weather, and human activity.
Threatened species recovery and protection is also chronically underfunded here. Australia spends about one tenth of what the US endangered species recovery program spends on helping to prevent extinctions and recover species.
It has been estimated that it would cost at least $2 billion to improve the status of all Australia's threatened species.
Yet Australia spent just $122 million a year in 2018-2019 across state and federal territories on threatened species recovery.
Australia has the opportunity to lead a regenerative revolution and help the world shape a "nature positive" agenda. While we have work to do at home to reverse the damage to nature, we must also take a global leadership role.
Timing is critical. The next two years must create the turning point where we recognise the value of nature and place it at the heart of our economy and society.
- Marco Lambertini is a special envoy for the WWF International.
- Dermot O'Gorman is the CEO of WWF Australia.