The Vice-President and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, stressed, on the occasion of tomorrow’s celebration of the International Day for Biological Diversity, that “this year the United Nations reminds us that we are part of the solution, because the biological diversity to which we belong as a species is the most fragile part and for which we represent a threat in the strict sense”. Thus, he pointed out that “to the extent that we are the cause of a large part of the loss of terrestrial diversity, marine diversity and aquatic diversity, we must dedicate our effort to preserve it and to ensure that there is not one species less on the planet because of our actions”.
Teresa Ribera opened the seminar “I am part of the solution”, the second session of the cycle of conferences “The Door to Biodiversity”, organized by the Biodiversity Foundation at its headquarters in Seville.
“We must consider the possibility that we recover many of those systems that we have been weakening over decades, rethinking and redirecting our relationship with the planet,” he added. Ribera insisted on the importance of integrating the conservation of natural capital into our daily lives. “It is not enough not to erode, because we have to dedicate our effort to the recovery of ecosystems.”
“Biological diversity is life and it is also a brake against other threats: it is a protection system against the effects of climate change. Their degradation favours us to come into contact with species, microorganisms with which we have not necessarily generated a dynamic of coexistence, so it is not ruled out that they end up introducing vectors of diseases that we thought were eradicated or for which we were not prepared”, he stressed.
For the vice-president, “by placing nature at the centre, by thinking about nature-based solutions when we address the different challenges we have in mind, we gain in strengthening our own resilience and adaptation for the construction of a greater wealth of ecosystem services that we do not appreciate with the value they deserve”.
“Our natural spaces need a green agenda and a blue agenda, something that we have incorporated into our Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan because reversing the loss of biodiversity is one of the Ministry’s priorities,” he said, “shared objectives that guarantee our presence and prominence in the Biodiversity Strategy 2030-2050, which must incorporate our objectives in terms of recovery and green infrastructure, of biological corridors that ensure the protection, capacity and flexibility of interconnection of species in spaces”, he concluded.
SOLUTIONS FROM SCIENCE
In this second seminar of the cycle “The Door to Biodiversity”, experts have participated and have valued the role of biodiversity as a fundamental piece of green recovery, focusing from a scientific point of view on the benefits it brings us and the solutions it offers us for renaturation and change in our cultural and economic model.
Science, in the field of biodiversity conservation, aspires to be integrative, interdisciplinary and part of the solution, uniting knowledge of natural history, evolutionary biology, genetics, ecology, as well as social sciences. Under this prism, after the intervention of the vice-president, four thematic blocks have followed in which researchers, members of conservation associations, university professors and entrepreneurs who develop sustainable solutions, have presented projects that have the support of the Biodiversity Foundation and that are developed in the field of knowledge, innovation, bioeconomy and citizen science.
The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Elena Pita, closed the day by insisting on the importance of integrating biodiversity in a transversal way in all sectors. “We must integrate biodiversity into economic sectors and society, and this must be accompanied by a change of mentality”, he specified, to conclude by stressing that “we can reverse the loss of biodiversity, because we are part of the solution”.
This second seminar took place on the eve of the celebration of the International Day for Biological Diversity, whose theme this year is “I am part of the solution”. The United Nations slogan has been chosen as a continuation and follow-up to the efforts of the 2020 campaign “Our solutions are in nature”, which served as a reminder that biodiversity remains the answer to various sustainable development challenges.
