29 June 2019
As world leaders gathered in Osaka to discuss sustainable and inclusive economic growth, WWF is deeply concerned that the G20 Osaka Leaders’ Declaration fails to place the natural environment or ecosystem services at the heart of economic and financial stability.
There is mounting evidence that nature is in decline as never before, growing recognition that environmental risks pose the gravest threat to the global economy, and a dire warning that the longer we wait to avert the climate catastrophe the more costly it will be. Last month’s UN IPBES report is a clarion call that Earth’s natural systems are operating in the red. And yet G20 leaders are still not acting to address these interrelated crises.
Nature is worth an estimated $125 trillion to the global economy every year and it is our strongest ally in tackling climate change, the most pressing global challenge of our time. We need to invest in rather than use up the natural capital that sustains us, doing all we can to deliver well-being and prosperity by sustaining our planet’s precious natural systems.
It is still scientifically and technically possible to restore nature, deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and avert dangerous climate change – but that world is only possible if people and nature thrive together.
In this context, it is encouraging that G20 leaders have announced the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision, including a goal of eliminating the leakage of plastic pollution into our oceans by 2050. WWF welcomes the affirmation that only reducing plastic pollution to zero is sufficient in avoiding its large environmental, social and economic impacts.
The introduction of a goal at the international level is a first meaningful step in the global response to the plastic pollution crisis and provides important direction to the efforts of both governments and businesses. Nevertheless, we still need to see faster action for our planet. A global goal of eliminating plastic leakage into our oceans by 2030 is necessary. Further, WWF urges government leaders to immediately start negotiations for a new treaty to combat marine plastic pollution, as the natural follow up to the new global goal.
What we need now is urgent action in response to the interlinked environmental challenges we face. While most G20 countries have reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, WWF strongly urges the group, who holds 85 percent of the world’s GDP, to commit to delivering more ambitious nationally determined contributions before 2020 by announcing them at UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit planned for 23 September in New York. WWF also calls on world leaders to secure an international commitment to stop and reverse the loss of nature. We need a New Deal for Nature and People as comprehensive and ambitious as the Paris Agreement on climate change, that puts our natural world on the path to recovery.