The Secretary of State for the Environment of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), Hugo Morán, participated today, on the occasion of the celebration tomorrow of World Environment Day, in the second edition of #Biodirectos, a series of online meetings, broadcast live and simultaneously on our social media channels Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

During this second meeting, the importance of having nature in the economic recovery after the global crisis generated by COVID-19 was addressed. Morán spoke about the main lines of the recent Green Deal launched by the European Union and the role played by an ecological and fair transition in moving towards a sustainable and climate-neutral economy. Biodiversity, Morán stressed, “also plays a fundamental role in this context, as nature-based solutions offer the best way to achieve human well-being, address climate change and protect the planet from future pandemics”.

The Secretary of State for the Environment pointed out that with the European Green Deal “a process of convergence of science and citizens is achieved, where it is found that the deterioration of environmental health becomes a deterioration of public health, which can ultimately become the bankruptcy of economic health”.

Morán stressed that “we need the concept of growth to converge again with the concept of development, because if growth is not sustainable, it ceases to be development and becomes a risk. The moment we are aware that we are part of nature and that we are not its owners, we will be guaranteeing our survival.”

This meeting, which has been followed live by almost 3,000 people through our social networks, has also had the participation of Unai Pascual, lead author and member of the Global Assessment Management Committee of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and co-chair of the Values Assessment. and Natalia Fabra, Professor of Economics at the Carlos III University of Madrid and who heads a research group on energy transition funded by the European Research Council.

The objective of the #Biodirectos is to raise awareness of the important role that biodiversity plays in relation to human health, as well as to address various issues related to the opportunities offered by a green reconstruction after the global crisis generated by COVID-19.