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Biden’s Priorities on
climate change match with actions the global
public wants
- Priorities
in Biden's Executive Actions on Climate Change
concur with priorities identified in the world's
largest public opinion poll on climate change
- Nearly
800 million hectares of land can be restored, of
which 250 million hectares of farmland can
improve through climate-friendly farming
practices
Bonn, 29
January 2021 - A majority of the people
in the world want climate action to focus on the
land. This is the finding of the world’s largest poll conducted
to gather the public’s opinion about climate
change and the actions governments’ should
take.
Conservation of land and forests
and adopting climate-friendly farming techniques
are the public’s top two policy priorities.
About 54 percent of those surveyed want
conversion of natural land or forests
eliminated. They also want a switch to renewable
energies and to climate-friendly farming
techniques. Ranked second and third,
respectively, these options received 53 and 52
percent of the vote.
Over 1.2 million
people in 50 countries with over 56 percent of
the global population responded to the poll,
known as the Peoples' Climate Vote. It is the
largest survey of public opinion on climate
change ever conducted.
The survey results
came out Wednesday, the same day that President
Joseph Biden of the United States released an Executive
Order “to tackle the climate crisis at home
and abroad while creating good-paying union jobs
and equitable clean energy future, building
modern and sustainable infrastructure, restoring
scientific integrity and evidence-based
policymaking across the federal government, and
re-establishing the President’s Council of
Advisors on Science and
Technology.”
President Biden’s Executive
Order prioritizes, among other actions, an
energy revolution, conserving natural resources
and leveraging them to help drive the nation
toward a clean energy future, and delivering
justice for communities who have been subjected
to environmental harm.
Welcoming
the decision and the President’s offer to host a
Leaders Climate Summit in April, Ibrahim Thiaw,
Under-Secretary General of the United Nations
and Executive Secretary of the United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification said, “this
is a time like no other” and called on “all
world leaders to heed the public’s call for bold
policy actions on the land…. We know what needs
to be achieved and where, and the framework for
action exists.”
“The public is asking us
to build back better for a resilient future
through better decisions and smart plans. We
must stop financing activities that encourage
land users to convert natural ecosystems into
other uses. Instead, finance must be directed to
three concrete activities. First, better
foresting activities. Second, fixing land that
was damaged. And third, sustainable farming
practices that fix the land while increasing its
output,” he added.
A Special
Report released in 2019 by the authoritative
global scientific body on climate change, the
IPCC, shows that 70 percent of natural
ecosystems have been significantly altered.
Country reports submitted by Parties to the UN
Convention to Combat Desertification show that
one in five of the degraded hectares are
degraded beyond cost-effective repair.
At
the same time, a study released in October 2020
by the Dutch-based research organization, PBL,
shows that nearly 800 million hectares of
degrading land can be restored back to health.
About 250 million hectares of which is
farmland.
“The public has witnessed the
dangers of land use change across all countries.
And it is not just in the loss of species or of
productive land. It is in the increase in
extraordinary and dangerous weather events, such
as hurricanes, droughts and floods. It is in
recurrent food shortages and crop failures. It
is from the society wide impacts of a pandemic
of the kind that is linked to land use change.
And it is in these impacts worsening with every
passing year. It is not a question of whether
change is possible. It’s whether the will to
change exists,” Thiaw stated.
The
Peoples' Climate Vote is one component of a
campaign to educate people about climate change
solutions and ask them about the actions that
they think governments should take. It aims to
connect the public to policymakers – and to
provide the latter with reliable information on
whether people considered climate change an
emergency, and how they would like their
countries to respond.
United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) and its
partners launched the Peoples' Climate Vote
campaign in 2020. The University of Oxford and
several non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
are part of the campaign.
For more
information contact: Ms. Wagaki Wischnewski, wwisch...@unccd.int.
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The United
Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD) is an international agreement on good
land stewardship. Through partnerships, the
Convention’s 197 Parties set up robust systems
to manage land degradation and drought promptly
and effectively. Good land stewardship based on
a sound policy and science helps integrate and
accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable
Development Goals, builds resilience to climate
change and prevents biodiversity loss. Land also
plays a key role in the prevention,
preparedness, response, and recovery phases of
the COVID-19 pandemic, securing rural
livelihoods and creating green jobs, supporting
community resilience and maintaining the
sustainable delivery of ecosystem
services. | | |
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Sent: Friday, January 29, 2021
6:28 PM
Subject: Biden Executive actions
align with global poll
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