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Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressly committed to better protect the habitat of animals and plants.
Together with French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel called on partners to join a global alliance on Monday at the “One Planet Summit” in Paris.
50 states want to protect 30 percent of the land and sea areas by 2030.
Efforts must be ramped up to preserve biological diversity, warned Merkel, who was connected to the summit via video.
It doesn't have to happen sometime, but now, otherwise the consequences are irreversible.
French President Emmanuel Macron admitted the "failure" of previous efforts.
Macron emphasized that not a single one of the biodiversity goals formulated in 2010 had been achieved.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned of an “era of pandemics” if developments continued.
Germany undertakes to put 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection by 2030.
A few months ago, the EU set the 30 percent target for the community of 27 states.
Macron announced that France would already meet the target in the coming year.
With the joint commitment, you now have a verifiable goal, said the 43-year-old.
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The global community originally set out to stop the loss of species and habitats by 2020.
UN General Secretary António Guterres emphasized as co-host that the world could not "simply go back to business as usual" after the coronavirus pandemic.
"Blah blah nature, blah blah important"
Von der Leyen recalled that scientists believe there is a connection between pandemics and threatened biodiversity.
“We have spoken many times about the links between biodiversity loss and Covid.
If we don't act urgently to protect nature, we could be at the dawn of a new era of pandemics, ”she warned.
“But we can still take countermeasures”.
Due to the destruction of ecosystems and human intervention in nature, previously separated species come into contact.
The risk of disease transmission from animals to humans is growing.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed that humans are destroying biodiversity at a worrying rate in order to make the earth usable "70 percent of the birds on earth today are chickens," said Johnson.
Only around four percent of mammals belonged to wild species such as monkeys or whales.
That is "a disaster".
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Criticism of the statements came from the Greens: MEP Sven Giegold wrote on Twitter that the “gap between words and deeds” could hardly be greater in species protection.
In her lecture, Merkel once again emphasized the protection of biodiversity, but it was “bitter” that the agricultural reform negotiated under the German EU Council Presidency undermined precisely these efforts.
Leading climate activist Greta Thunberg thought the event was just empty talk.
“Live from the One Planet Summit in Paris: blah blah nature, blah blah important, blah blah ambitious, blah blah green investments, blah blah green opportunities, blah blah green growth, blah blah blah”, wrote the Swede on Twitter.
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The Species Conservation Summit, which was mainly held online, was hosted by France together with the United Nations and the World Bank.
It is supposed to lay the foundations for the UN negotiations on the protection of biodiversity in China in October.
Representatives from almost 200 countries are to set new UN species protection goals there.
The previous international efforts to protect species are considered to have failed.
According to a report published in 2019 by the UN Advisory Board on Biodiversity, one million species on earth are threatened with extinction.
One focus of the summit was on Africa.
Macron announced that the international community wants to support a stalled environmental project in the Sahel region with almost twelve billion euros.
In the “Great Green Wall” project, thousands of kilometers of trees are to be planted like a green ribbon in the Sahel region - from Dakar to Djibouti.
This is to stop the spread of the Sahara and thus the desertification.
This is also intended to fight against famine and drought in the region.
"The challenge until 2030 is huge," said Macron.