“The unsustainable, fossil fuel-dominated pattern of energy development and consumption is a major underlying contributor to the current climate and biodiversity crisis. To achieve biodiversity goals, the world urgently needs an energy and power revolution with clean and low-carbon development at the core”, remarked Dr. Cheng Zhiqiang, Deputy Secretary-General of GEIDCO in his keynote speech at the Ecological Civilization Forum of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Kunming.
Dr. Cheng Zhiqiang noted that biodiversity and climate change are closely intertwined. It’s essential to recognize this interlinkage and promote their coordinate governance in order to reverse the biodiversity loss around the world. Since the industrial revolution, fossil energy has become the main source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and a leading cause of the climate and biodiversity crisis, with wide-ranging impacts on habitat loss, overexploitation of biological resources, environmental pollution, and invasive alien species.
“Clean energy is the golden link between climate governance and biodiversity protection’, remarked Dr. Zhiqiang Cheng. Significant clean energy development in both scale and speed will help put an end to the reliance on fossil energy, curb carbon emissions from the source, and facilitate carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. All these in turn can effectively reduce the impact of climate change on biodiversity, and achieve biodiversity goals. The revolution of energy and electric power will steer towards a clean, electrified, and interconnected pathway, with global energy interconnection (GEI) playing a crucial role. Hailed as a holistic, balanced, dynamic, and pragmatic framework of action to promote the coordinated governance of climate and biodiversity, GEI will speed up clean replacement in energy production and electricity replacement in energy consumption, and enable optimized clean energy allocation on a large scale. Moreover, GEI will facilitate the efforts in ecological restoration and protection of endangered species, accelerate related technology and mechanism innovation, and advance biodiversity protection in all key aspects, including addressing climate change, environmental pollution, and habitat loss, and promoting the sustainable use of biological resources and ecological restoration.
The Ecological Civilization Forum is the only parallel event held offline at COP15. Echoing the theme of "Ecological civilization: building a shared future for all life on Earth", the forum aims to share experiences and achievements in global biodiversity conservation, promote people's well-being and green development, and facilitate exchanges and cooperation in related fields, in a collective effort to contribute wisdom and strength to a shared future for all life on Earth and the harmonious coexistence of man and Nature.
Recently, GEIDCO has published two monographs, i.e., The Road to Global Carbon Neutrality and Biodiversity and Revolution of Energy and Electric Power, based on extensive studies on global energy, climate, and biodiversity governance issues. In active support of the COP15, these two books are an innovative move and systematic solution from GEIDCO to further advance carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, promote ecological civilization and a shared future for all life on Earth.
