The world cannot afford another decade of failure to address its worsening biodiversity crisis, Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan has told Cop15.
Addressing the high-level ministerial segment of the UN biodiversty conference in Montreal, he said he had “a sense of urgency and deep concern at what is the most important global biodiversity summit for over a decade”.
Mr Noonan added: “Nature is in peril, the complex web of life on which we all depend, the product of 3.6 billion years of evolution, is deteriorating before our very eyes, and we do not have another decade. We simply don’t.”
Ireland was committed to supporting an ambitious global biodiversity framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss “but we are not waiting for these negotiations to act”, he said.
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Funding for its key biodiversity agency – the National Parks & Wildlife Service – had been increased by 85 per cent in three years and its staffing doubled, he noted.
“We have grown our international biodiversity spending to €15 million and are committed to scaling up biodiversity finance further. We have pioneered high nature value farming schemes that reward real results for nature and people,” Mr Noonan said.
Ecological restoration and rehabilitation of almost 100,000 hectares of raised and blanket bog had commenced, while three million hectares of marine protected areas (MPAs) had been put in place in the past two year backed by new legislation “to ensure we achieve 30 per cent protection by 2030″.
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Mr Noonan highlighted innovative deliberative democracy processes; notably the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss and a national business and biodiversity platform to engage the private sector on the issue.
“We are currently developing our fourth national biodiversity action plan under our Convention on Biological Diversity obligations, which will integrate all of the above, as well as our further ambitions to engage with the EU’s nature restoration law and protected area targets, and the outcomes of this summit,” he confirmed.
The action plan would also be put on a statutory footing, he said. “Like many countries, we have a long road yet to travel, but through action, passion and determination across government and society, we will get there.”.
The Kunming Declaration set out collective ambition for conservation and restoration of the living world, he said. “The weight of that ambition – 550 gigatons of global biomass; our ancient biological inheritance; the very fabric of our common future – is on our shoulders. May we have the strength and the courage to bear that burden, and the wisdom to seize its opportunity.”
