PETALING JAYA: In conjunction with Earth Day 2022 on Friday (April 22), the Regent of Pahang has called on the younger generation to join him in championing environmental preservation.
Tengku Mahkota Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah said it was important to maintain the balance of nature to ensure a better future for all.
“As recently expressed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, on the wellbeing of the planet: 'The hopes of the world rest on young people'.
“This is a heavy responsibility which we have no choice but to accept.
“It is vital to reset the planet on the trajectory to a better future, starting immediately,” he said in a statement released Thursday (April 21).
Governments, businesses, financial institutions, civil society and all citizens should also step up efforts to reverse the loss of nature and the aberration of climate change, he said.
Tengku Hassanal added that the latest assessment by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this year reaffirmed that climate change is already causing more frequent and more severe storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather events.
“Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and current commitments to address climate change are far below what's needed to limit warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels, a threshold scientists deem necessary to avoid even more catastrophic impacts.
“Particularly troubling is that the world's wealthiest countries are responsible for disproportionately more emissions than developing countries, which experience the most severe impacts,” he said.
Sharing his experience witnessing the devastating impact of December's floods in Pahang, Tengku Hassanal said immediate action at every level and long-term strategic planning are needed.
“At least 125,000 people were displaced, and 54 lives lost in one of the nation's deadliest natural catastrophes in recent memory. An estimated RM20bil in economic losses was caused, including around RM1.4bil in damage to infrastructure nationwide.
“When it comes to biodiversity loss, climate change and land degradation, immediate action at every level and long-term strategic planning must be seriously considered by all. No one is a bystander. Each one of us has a responsibility.
“We need a transformational change of mindset, making care for nature a core value of every action of our daily life,” he said.
Tengku Hassanal said the Covid-19 virus that was passed from wild species to humans is a stark reminder of the consequences when the balance of nature is disturbed.
He said the world needs a significant transformational change but human activities continue to destroy the “web of life” on which we depend.
“About 60% of nature's ecosystem services are being degraded and at an accelerating pace, according to a 2019 UN assessment, which declared that one million species of flora and fauna are under threat of extinction by 2050.
“Most of my generation had yet to be born when, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, a legally binding UN Convention on Biological Diversity was signed almost unanimously by the member states.
"Its main objectives: conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components and access to and benefit-sharing of genetic resources.
“Decadal frameworks for action and targets to address biodiversity loss have since been attempted, most recently the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (2011-2020).
"Alas, while some individual countries successfully reached one or more of the 20 targets, none were fully met by the world as a whole by the 2020 deadline,” he shared.
This year, he said the international community is considering another set of decadal goals in a new UN Global Biodiversity Framework, the draft of which sets out an ambitious plan of broad-based actions to transform society's relationship with nature.
Global negotiation of those goals and targets will resume in Nairobi in June, with plans for their final adoption in Kunming, China in late summer, he added.