Thriving and just societies: Lord Zac Goldsmith
Channel: IIED
Date: 2020-11-17

Lord Zac Goldsmith, Minister of State for Pacific and the Environment, said that COVID-19 was a reminder that we're not separate from the natural world in a speech as part of a London Climate Action Week event that called for greater finance to be invested in nature recovery.

Emphasising the importance of nature-based solutions, he said: "It should be self-evident that we cannot expect to cut tropical forests down at a rate of 30 football pitches per minute, bring the world's great fisheries to the very brink of collapse, put two in every five of the world's plants and around a million species on a path to extinction, without paying a terrible price. But that is nevertheless what we are doing.

"Millions and millions of people are employed in businesses around the world that are delivering that change. But we've made very little progress with nature, and its destruction is not only causing climate change, it threatens the world's poorest people who depend most directly on the free but criminally undervalued services that nature provides. A billion people depend on forests and a similar number of people depend on fish for their main source of protein. 

"So delivering a green recovery isn't merely a 'nice to have', it is a duty... While nature-based solutions could, we believe, provide at least a third of the most cost-effective solution to climate change, they currently receive less than three per cent of the finance."

Lord Goldsmith was speaking at an online event organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) on Tuesday, 17 November 2020. The event, 'Thriving and just societies: integrating climate, nature and development in a COVID-19 green recovery', focused on bringing together experts to discuss integrated action on climate, nature and development, in the context of a green recovery from the pandemic.

More details: https://www.iied.org/thriving-just-societies-integrating-climate-nature-development-covid-19-green-recovery