PM: Focus on ‘future sustainability’ while making investment
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has needed focusing on “future sustainability” while making investment as she located a four-point proposal to save lots of the planet from the adverse impact of climate change.
“To save the earth and save us (from the adverse impact of climate change), we have to focus on future sustainability while making investment,” she said in her first proposal, reports BSS.
The prime minister made the proposal while delivering a statement at a high-level event of a virtual biodiversity summit on the sidelines of the 75th UN General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday (Bangladesh time early Thursday morning).
The title of the summit was “Urgent Action on Biodiversity for Sustainable Development”, while the theme of the function was “Leaders Dialogue 2: Harnessing science, technology and innovation, capacity building, access and benefit-sharing, financing and partnerships for biodiversity.”
In her second proposal at the event, Sheikh Hasina said creating greater public awareness through education system and research, and strengthening national legislations and monitoring mechanisms are key actions for safeguarding biodiversity.
“Global usage of benefit-sharing should be ensured for the real owners of the genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge,” she said in her third proposal.
In the fourth proposal, the premier said: “Reaching the Paris goals may be the difference between our extinction and our survival. We should implement them.”
Mentioning that Bangladesh fully subscribes to the “Urgent action on biodiversity for sustainable development”, Sheikh Hasina said: “We reside in an inter-dependent world where every species on the world has a specific role to play in our ecosystem.”
She, however, said in line with the WWF and the Zoological Society of London, the world’s wildlife populations have fallen by typically 68% just from 1970 to 2016.
Pointing out that Bangladesh is heavily reliant on freshwater, the prime minister said freshwater biodiversity is declining at the most effective rate on the planet, while 85% of global wetlands have been completely lost because the Industrial Revolution.
Sheikh Hasina said the populations of freshwater mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes have fallen by typically 4% every year since 1970.
“We’re aggravating climate change and lack of biodiversity, and for that reason, increasing the risk of ‘zoontic’ diseases like Covid-19,” she said.
The premier continued: “We’re not merely triggering extinction of other species, we are actually moving towards ultimate extinction of human beings if our current actions continue to be unchecked.”
Sheikh Hasina said in Bangladesh, biodiversity conservation has been recognized in its constitution as a simple principle of state policy. “Our Father of the country Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman enacted the wildlife preservation order as soon as in 1974,” she noted.
The prime minister said Bangladesh is probably the few countries that enacted law to implement the convention on Biological Diversity. “Our Parliament passed Bangladesh Biological Diversity Act 2017 targeted at preserving biodiversity,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina said the federal government has declared a lot more than 5 percent of total terrestrial area and about 5% of the marine area as ‘Protected and Ecologically Critical Areas’.
