EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
The IUCN World Conservation Congress reconvened in Marseilles to share the latest in sustainable development practice and policy. IUCN members discuss how the pandemic affects the climate.
About The Road to Glasgow:
The Road to Glasgow is a docuseries explaining the major events leading to COP26, the United Nations Climate Conference and the world's largest climate event. This series will focus on climate and biodiversity events planned throughout 2021.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Ecofriendly #Conservation #EarthX
The IUCN World Conservation Congress reconvened in Marseilles to share the latest in sustainable development practice and policy. IUCN members discuss how the pandemic affects the climate.
About The Road to Glasgow:
The Road to Glasgow is a docuseries explaining the major events leading to COP26, the United Nations Climate Conference and the world's largest climate event. This series will focus on climate and biodiversity events planned throughout 2021.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Ecofriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Seems to me that our world is full of confusion right now. I see the road to Glasgow as a
00:11road to climate clarity. But are we getting closer or is the global fog just as thick
00:17as ever? We're in the south of France at the IUCN to find out if the world can come
00:22together to clear the haze of climate change on this episode of Road to Glasgow.
00:51Hi there, I'm Shona Smith and we're in Marseille, France, where the nations are coming together
00:56for the IUCN World Conservation Congress, an event self-described to drive action on
01:02biodiversity, nature-based recovery and climate change. Drive action. I like the phrase, but
01:09is that what will happen? I want to know. That's why I've been on this road to Glasgow,
01:15this path to the 26th Conference of the Parties, coming to my home, Scotland, later this year.
01:21I learned the importance of combining nature and climate together to reach a real solution
01:27when I chatted with Harvey Locke and his global goals for Nature and Climate Virtual Conference.
01:33I went to Washington, DC, where President Joe Biden helped a Leaders' Summit on Climate
01:38to find out if the US can be a leader in the global climate effort. What am I looking for
01:44on this road? Well, it's the big question. Will 2021 be the year of real global change?
01:51And I use the word real. It's not enough that we take action, which on the face of it looks
01:57great but at its essence is ineffective at best, or even worse, contributing to the problem.
02:03My generation wants real action, strategic action, effective action, not just empty virtue
02:11That's why I've come to the south of France, to the IUCN Congress,
02:15to see if I can find answers to my questions.
02:20The IUCN is held just every four years, and with the cloud of COVID hanging over the globe,
02:27this is one of the first meetings in person since the pandemic started.
02:31The IUCN, or International Union for the Conservation of Nature, is one of the oldest
02:37environmental unions, started in 1948 in France. Through the decades, the IUCN has
02:44served as the driving factor in the protection of endangered species, creating the 1980 World
02:51Conservation Strategy, a document that has served as inspiration for many governments
02:57and organizations. So the idea was to focus on nature, conservation,
03:03and sustainable and equitable use of resources. And kind of what's cool about it is that it has
03:09a really neat governance structure. So its mandate is pursued and generated by states,
03:17so heads of states, by civil society, and also by indigenous peoples organizations.
03:23So it's rather unique. There's no other organization that has kind of this
03:27democratic approach where they collectively agree on what to pursue and how to pursue it.
03:32What are some of the recent big wins or successes of the IUCN through the years?
03:38The biggest ones would probably be the Red List. So the Red List is a way of identifying which
03:45species are most threatened globally, but it also helps target actions. So how do you conserve them,
03:51where to conserve them, how to go about it. So that's one. And then really recently, there was
03:58sort of a call to action for something called Nature-Based Solutions that IUCN kind of pioneered
04:04and has been doing with its members and partners to really put nature at sort of the center of
04:10development and economic growth. One reason that IUCN is an important coming together here in
04:17September 2021 is because of its proximity to the Conference of the Parties, or COP,
04:23that will be held in Glasgow in November. This will be COP26, the annual UN climate get-together
04:30that, frankly, through the years has had a mixed track record of results. While many years it's
04:36just been talk, there has been some action, like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement,
04:43for which the foundation was laid during the previous COP20 in Lima, Peru, where Manuel
04:48Cugar Vidal served as president. Remember that we are in a time in which we are implementing the
04:55Paris Agreement. And for this, what we do need, it is two key things. First, to land domestically
05:03our objective. It is not too much to continue discussing globally. It is to ground domestically
05:09action. And to do that, what we do need, it is countries with clear national determined
05:15contribution or climate plans, with clear targets, well connected to long-term strategies.
05:21Something that I would like to encourage countries, it is to work in their long-term strategies.
05:26Because the only way to have good action by now, it is if they are connected to 2050 vision. So both
05:34documents are important. But also to ground them domestically. The implementation of the Paris
05:39Agreement needs to have the non-state actors, so that means business sector and subnational
05:45government, defining their own targets. And those targets must be supported by science. Because it
05:52is important to track progress, to see how much they are advancing in fulfilling with them. So all
05:58of this is happening. And I think that if we have a good COP26 by the end of this year, we could
06:05celebrate a good year. That for sure it wouldn't be enough. We need to continue doubling our effort
06:12by 2022 and beyond, to continue making possible the full implementation of the Paris Agreement
06:20and their objectives. Another takeaway for me, after spending time with people at the IUCN
06:25Congress, is that there are some real wins happening. That it's not all doom and gloom.
06:30For someone like me that wants to see real action and effective action, this is great to see.
06:36So in the Open Ceremony, there were these amazing commitments made by both the French and
06:42Greek governments to go beyond their initial conservation targets and focus on the Mediterranean
06:48in particular, which is really cool. That's where we are. That's where we're having this Congress.
06:53And so an increased focus there is really powerful. And many other announcements and
06:59in particular in build-up to the Convention on Biological Diversity and also the upcoming
07:05Convention of Parties for the United Nations Framework for the Convention on Climate Change.
07:10It's a mouthful, but we're really hoping for some ambitious commitments that will lead into both of
07:16those COPs that will really help further the links between biodiversity and climate change.
07:21As the world gets ready for COP26 in Glasgow, how will the COVID-19 pandemic affect the meetings?
07:28What has been its effect at IUCN? And what role does religion play
07:33in the environmental efforts? Let's find out when we return on the road to Glasgow.
07:49Will COP26 be a conference of action or just another year of talk while the temperatures
07:56rise and harsh and damaging weather simply gets more extreme? And as far as action,
08:02how has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted meetings and conferences like this one?
08:07It's clear that attendance has felt an impact at this first worldwide meeting since the pandemic
08:13started. And no doubt it's going to serve as a template for how to conduct conferences in the
08:19post-COVID age. On one hand, there is a real advantage to face-to-face meetings. And on the
08:25other, virtual capabilities allow a much wider audience to be involved. I caught up with several
08:31leaders in the climate community at the IUCN Congress to find out. Every sector is impacted
08:38and we had to postpone twice. And at one moment it was even debated, should it be cancelled
08:43altogether? And that was really heartbreaking. But the French government really stepped up and
08:48said, well, look, we will put in place every precaution possible. We will make this as safe
08:53as possible. We don't want to lose this opportunity to pursue the meeting. So we decided to go ahead
09:00and it's the first ever hybrid Congress, so electronic and in-person. And it looks like
09:06the numbers are still kind of coming in, but it looks like we may even have as many participants
09:11when you combine electronic with in-person as we've had in prior Congresses.
09:1580% of the world's population claim to follow a spiritual path. While some see religion as an
09:22obstacle, others see it as an opportunity to really make a difference in the climate culture.
09:28Taking care of the earth is, after all, a God-given duty in many religions.
09:33Bishop Thomas Schiermacher addressed the IUCN and I got a chance to ask him what role religion plays
09:39in healing climate and nature. The first step I would say is, in the right sense,
09:49the church can take it out of politics. Don't misunderstand me if you want to change something,
09:54you need politics. But we have often the fights about political views of climate change and
10:03what is the responsibility of humans. We can take it back and say, let's start very simple,
10:08first chapter of the Bible, originally the Jewish Tanakh and of course taken over by Christianity
10:15that says humans are there to work and to preserve the world. Humans are responsible
10:21for the whole creation. Jesus says the basic is love God, love your neighbor as yourself.
10:30And if you love God, if you love the Creator, that includes you love the creation.
10:35And that adds a lot of people who don't like the political agenda around certain things
10:42to the camp of those people pushing for it. Oscar Soria, a climate activist with Avaaz,
10:48agrees. I think it's a question of love and connection. And it might sound very hippie,
10:55but if you see, you know, all the different books, especially in the Abrahamic religions,
11:03you will see there, what is the connection between people? Indigenous peoples in their
11:09oral traditions, in faith, they speak with Mother Earth, while in Abrahamic religions,
11:16we are the stewards of this. There is a common theme, which is that we are part of a bigger
11:23living system that actually call us for humility. And what we have seen in the last 20 years is
11:29different religious leaders calling just for that humility, that we are not the owners of the land,
11:35that we do have a moral responsibility towards the next generations. The road to Glasgow isn't
11:41just through cities, countrysides, forests. It also travels through the oceans. Maria Sole Bianco
11:49of Italy has a special heart for the climate effort as it concerns the oceans. So first of all,
11:55it's so important to recognize the fantastic role that the ocean has been playing as our major ally
12:03in the fight of climate change. The ocean has been absorbing about 93% of the extra heat
12:08retained in atmosphere by greenhouse gases. If the ocean didn't deliver this service, the
12:15temperature of our planet would be on average 36 degrees higher now. Okay, so this is fundamental
12:23to recognize, but also to recognize that this has consequences. And the consequences that we are
12:29experiencing in the ocean is ocean warming, ocean acidification, ocean deoxygenation, and you add on
12:37top of them things like loss of biodiversity, overfishing and illegal fishing. You had
12:45pollution, so you understand that the picture is not really bright and the ocean is changing
12:52dramatically. But the good thing is that we still have time to turn the tide and we know what
12:58solution we have available to do that. And what are those concrete solutions that we can take?
13:03So fortunately enough, the ocean has an amazing healing power if we leave it the space to do that.
13:11And we can do that through marine protected areas. Marine protected areas that are effectively
13:16managed deliver amazing benefits, ecological, social and economic. What I would like to see is
13:23the entire global community coming together as one to do something to protect this global common
13:33and that we share, because we share one ocean, but we also share the responsibility to protect it.
13:39Will more marine protected areas come out of COP26? Will there be a treaty that addresses
13:46the overfishing that all the countries actually follow? The oceans are such a key part of the
13:52sustainable environment that we all need for survival. The good news is that more and more
13:58countries are recognizing the impact that preserving the oceans can make and have been
14:04taking steps to protecting. Progress from IUCN and COP26 regarding oceans would be a huge step
14:11to something real, to something tangible. Another huge step in impacting our climate
14:18are helping and supporting indigenous peoples. More on that when we return on the road to Glasgow.
14:24This summer has been record-breaking in heat, drought and fires. Is it just the cyclical nature
14:31of the planet or brought on by mankind? I ran into Sasha Kuo-Shima, UN Deputy Director of Food
14:38and Agriculture Organization, to get her thoughts on the problem. From the IPCC report we know it's
14:44mostly from anthropogenic activities, so human activities are aggravating a lot of things.
14:51So human activities are aggravating a lot of the problems that we have with the weather events
14:57today. So it's causing a lot of shocks and disturbances in many of the land cultivation,
15:03in agriculture, you know, soil has been eroded. There are a number of
15:09activities on our soils that also degrade the soils. Pesticides use a lot of other chemical
15:16fertilizers, for example. What would you say is the solution to this huge problem? From the
15:23agricultural standpoint and specifically from the land and water management perspective,
15:29because that's the division I am, you know, managing at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,
15:35is principally sustainable land and water management. That includes soils. There are a
15:39tremendous amount of soil organic carbon potential as well as wetlands carbon sequestration potential
15:46with proper management of our natural resources. You know, these are not new issues. That's the
15:50most important thing to put out there. What the main threat is in the Americas, where we work,
15:56has been identified by scientists, by the IPCC, as impacts on ecosystems and the services they
16:03provide. Water security, that means not necessarily availability of water, because in the Americas we
16:10have more water than any other continent in the world. But the challenge is accessing those water
16:16resources, getting them to the people. And the third area of challenge has to do with extreme
16:22events. Their intensity and their frequency has augmented. The suggested solution is better land
16:29management, and few groups do land management better than indigenous peoples. One thing I've
16:35learned as I've sat and listened at the IUCN Congress is the importance of indigenous people
16:41groups in protecting our climate and nature. As we heard earlier, as a whole, indigenous people are
16:48more in touch with nature. They directly live or die by the environment that surrounds them. Yet
16:54many governments don't protect them or even outright harm them. But the good news that I've
17:00been seeing on the road to Glasgow is a spotlight put onto their plight, and organizations will to
17:07stand with them and fight, like the Rights and Resources Initiative and Avaaz. We all know that
17:141.8 billion of indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant communities
17:21live in tropical forests, that we're all talking about restoring and preserving to avoid climate
17:28change and to maintain biodiversity. But at the same time, what we are seeing is indigenous people
17:34have only less than 15% of their right to land and resources legally recognized. So there's a
17:42huge gap while they're preserving and conserving the tropical forest. At the same time, their rights
17:48are not fully recognized. So that's one major issue. What do you think is the solution to that?
17:54The formal recognition of the rights of local indigenous communities, and that recognition
18:00would be having new laws and policies that recognize those rights. But also in terms of
18:07the investment for the global climate agenda, instead of giving the money to the big organizations
18:13who already have a lot, invest directly to those indigenous people who are already investing
18:19in kind and direct investment to maintaining the forest, preserving and conserving the forest.
18:25I think the indigenous people are the first responders of the climate and the biodiversity
18:31efforts. What we have seen is that they are the ones that do the job. They are the ones that are
18:37keeping our ecosystem safe. If you see which ecosystem, which forests are not impacted by
18:45forest fires, for instance, are the ones that are managed by indigenous peoples.
18:50The IPBES report, which is like the biodiversity counterpart of the IPCC, has put forward in 2019
19:01a huge recognition of the role of traditional knowledge and indigenous wisdom in the
19:07protection of biodiversity. And they made it very clear that without those cultures,
19:13we are not going to make it. So as the road to Glasgow takes us closer to our destination,
19:19expectations are beginning to run high. We have built momentum for this COP. That momentum is
19:25fantastic. The point is how to avoid to lose that momentum. Remember that after Paris,
19:32we had five really bad years because of the polarization, because of Trump, because of
19:38politics. The point is that that is something that we should avoid to duplicate or to repeat.
19:43If the COP26 is able to leave a strong legacy and some ways to define a pathway
19:50for the next three to five years, that would be fantastic. Adaptation and climate adaptation
19:58is a lot about water. The sea level rise about water, the adaptation angle for water for both
20:06coastal and also freshwater systems, is critical that water is recognized through the COP26.
20:14So there is some sort of a commitment from our governments to not only look at carbon,
20:21but also the adaptation aspect from the water sector. I think moving towards the COP,
20:28it will be very important to see how human rights issues should be cross-cutting as part of the UN
20:39post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. If the government really takes that holistic approach
20:47of recognizing the rights, including human rights as part of the prerequisite, but also
20:53providing funding directly to indigenous people, local communities, Afro-descendant and women's
20:59network, that would really help meet the climate change agenda. I think that this idea of coming
21:06together as a global community, for example for the protection of the high sea, we need a new treaty,
21:12but we need also to realize that ocean protection means protecting our future as a species living
21:20in this planet, but also the one of other million species living with us and they are
21:27fundamental for our existence. So I hope really to see strong collaboration and commitment.
21:34So I hope that for COP26, frankly, we put the ambition levels very high. I hope that we get
21:44an end with the lip service and we get more action in consideration of those generations
21:50that are coming after us. My children, the children of others and their children as well,
21:56even those that are not born, they have a right to our planet. Here at the IUCN, there was a lot of
22:02voting, a lot of talking. I'm going to be interested to see if it leads to real action. The leaders of
22:09France and Greece kicked off the IUCN with great announcements of increasing their country's goals,
22:15but as we leave Marseille, will what transpired here translate to real change? We shall see.
22:23As the people head back to their home countries from the south of France,
22:27our next big stop on the road to Glasgow is New York Climate Week in September. I'm going to go
22:33and see if I can find more answers to what can realistically be done by a global community
22:39coming together. See you next time on the Road to Glasgow.