In
2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, we call
on the Australian Government to:Acknowledge
the critical importance of safeguarding biodiversity
as part of Australia's climate change response and commit
to correspondingly urgent action to address the systemic
drivers of biodiversity loss. In so doing, due
recognition should be given both to the threat that global
warming poses to biodiversity and ecosystems such as
the Great Barrier Reef, and to the vital role these have
in mitigating dangerous climate change including by permanently
storing carbon.
Climate change is dramatically impacting
on Australia’s biodiversity. Scientists warn of the
effects of warming and ocean acidification on the Great
Barrier Reef and coral reefs in Western Australia. Ecosystems
in the Murray Darling are collapsing, with numbers of migratory
birds in the Coorong dramatically reduced and redgum wetlands
dying. Bird populations in northern Victorian woodlands
are collapsing.
Protecting biodiversity is a key
to tackling climate change. Natural ecosystems,
especially forests and peatlands, store massive amounts
of carbon which must be kept out of the atmosphere to
avoid adding to global warming. These stores are
effectively permanent precisely because they are biodiverse,
making them self-regenerating and resilient. Natural
ecosystems take decades or centuries to accumulate carbon. If
degraded or destroyed, these carbon stores are irreplaceable
in any relevant time scale.
