On Monday, May 6th, a United Nations assessment detailed threats to global biodiversity and found that one million species may face extinction due to climate change, habitat loss, and other anthropogenic changes in the environment. It also enumerated the ways in which this extinction will affect human social and economic systems.
In response, Leila Salazar-López of Amazon Watch issued the following statement:
“This sobering report shows that the time for protecting biodiversity is running out. From the Amazon to the Arctic, dirty industrial development and human greed is destroying critical ecosystems and harming the communities that depend on the land. As indigenous peoples have reminded us for years: our own survival as human beings is fundamentally tied to the health of our environment.
“For millennia, indigenous peoples have been the best stewards of the land but, as this report confirms, their territories are increasingly under threat from ‘resource extraction, commodity production, mining and transport and energy infrastructure.’ In order to protect critical ecosystems like the Amazon, the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest, we must support indigenous solutions to restore tropical forests and respect their right to Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC). The planet and the myriad creatures that call it home cannot afford any less.”
