The Nature Conservation Network has launched #LesVeusDelTerritori , a campaign that wants to give voice to those people who, day in and day out, work to care for and protect our ecosystems.
Catalonia is located in the Mediterranean region, a key region in terms of biodiversity, but also very vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This campaign highlights the importance of responsible management of the territory, which allows balancing the protection of nature with human activity.
In recent years, biodiversity and the state of our ecosystems have suffered a worrying decline. Increasing heat waves, droughts and floods are already exceeding the tolerance thresholds of many plants and animals, causing local extinctions of populations of some temperature-sensitive or low-mobility species. In this sense, the COP16, the world summit of the UN on biodiversity, just celebrated in Cali, arrives with worrying data on the decline of biodiversity has also put on the table the urgency to act and it has been warned that ecosystems are at a tipping point where species extinction could accelerate.
The emergency to stop the degradation of the natural heritage and the increasing loss of biodiversity in the Catalan territory is increasingly urgent. According to the latest update of the Living Planet Index (LPI) for Catalonia, carried out in 2022 by the Observatory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, a serious regressive trend of natural heritage and loss of biodiversity is evident, warning that populations of fauna have had an average decline of 24% in the last 20 years. This situation is aggravated by the effects of climate change, reaching an unsustainable situation, and putting at risk the provision of ecosystem functions and their basic services. Examples include pollination, carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, air and water purification, forest fire prevention, and ultimately health and survival itself. of people
To reverse this situation and maintain biodiversity, urgent measures must be implemented such as the restoration of ecosystems , the use of solutions based on nature and the active management of protected territories. These actions are essential to guarantee the resilience of ecosystems and the continuity of the services they provide.
Along these lines, the European Nature Restoration Act , approved this spring, was created with the aim of restoring 30% of our natural systems by 2030. This restoration is essential to guarantee the adaptation and resilience of ecosystems to climate change, as well as to maintain the essential ecosystem services they provide us.
In Catalonia, to leave behind the chronic deficits in the conservation of the natural environment and its biodiversity, it is necessary to advance in 4 fundamental pillars: the start-up of theNature Agency, to guarantee clear and effective governance and competences; the effective deployment of theCatalonia’s natural heritage and biodiversity strategy, which sets goals to be achieved by 2030, aligned with global and European Union mandates; the execution of Natural Heritage Fund, essential to have the necessary economic funds to deploy actions to protect, manage and restore the natural environment; and the impulse of the new Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law, necessary to update the outdated Natural Areas Act of 1985 and to ensure proper governance and appropriate measures to promote nature conservation.
To achieve this urgent goal, it is essential to have the active participation of civil society . This new strategy must be designed in collaboration with the scientific community of the territory, but it must also listen to those voices who work day after day and take care of the territory, since they are the people who know it best and the they love It is necessary to guarantee innovative and efficient tools to promote the direct participation of local populations and other agents involved in the planning and management of biodiversity.
Without the involvement of private properties, which house a large part of our country’s natural heritage, and without the joint work of the scientific community and the different sectors that use the territory, it will not be possible to achieve the objective of effectively restoring 30% of ecosystems.
With the #LesVeusDelTerritori campaign, we want to give visibility to the people and initiatives of the territory that promote a way of living and managing the territory that makes nature conservation and the economic activities that take place there compatible. A way of living the territory under the protection of European environmental policies and that needs an effective administration that looks after this objective. Catalonia still has a long way to go, and only by going through it collectively will we be able to face this challenge successfully.
Text taken from the XCN website
