The combination of environmental change and diversity loss increases the risk of abrupt and potentially irreversible ecosystem collapse.

The time has come to stop talking in terms of distinct crises, be it climate or biodiversity, we need tackle them all as one, with total system change …

… transformative change, including changing global economic, financial and social structures.

Industrial agriculture and fisheries, infrastructure, mining, energy extraction, logging, plantations and large scale bio-energy, together with endless growth and overconsumption.

All of which benefit the few while fueling poverty, violence, conflict and escalating environmental breakdown for the many.

At sea, a third of marine mammals, reef-forming corals, sharks, and shark relatives are on the brink.

Fishing has had the single greatest impact on sea life. We are overfishing a third of the World’s fish stocks.

Life on land is not any better. Humans have altered three-quarters of the Earth’s land area, leaving more than half a million species without enough habitat to survive.

We have destroyed a third of the planet’s forest cover in the last two centuries alone.

We need nothing less than radical system change that breaks away from the broken capitalist economic model based on endless extractive growth, profit and inequality. We must break down all systems of exploitation – colonialism and neocolonialism, patriarchy and racism. – Nele Marien

Indigenous people and local communities have a pivotal role at defending ecosystems and protecting biodiversity often in the face of conflict over their lands and in confrontation with the huge power of corporations.

Conservation managed by local communities and indigenous people is more effective at preventing deforestation and habitat loss than officially protected areas.

It is long past the time that we start listening to the people who live and rely on these lands, some of the World’s last near-pristine landscapes, on how to best to keep them that way.

We need urgent protection of collective rights of indigenous people and local communities including access to and control of their own commons and livelihoods. We need to learn from their ways of life and traditional knowledge systems. – Rita Uwaka