Leaders back bold action to tackle biodiversity crisis

Jul 24, 2025 News

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…as first Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit opens in Guyana

 

By Renay Sambach

Kaieteur News – The inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit was on Wednesday launched in Georgetown, Guyana, with heads of states calling for greater global support for biodiversity protection as the world faces a crisis where biodiversity is under threat.

During his address at the opening ceremony, President Irfaan Ali highlighted that Guyana is a true treasure trove of biodiversity. He said Guyana is home to more than 1,200 species of birds, custodians of approximately 225 species of mammals and home to nearly 8,000 species of plants, many of which are found nowhere else on earth.  Ali also highlighted that over 85 per cent of Guyana’s land remains forested and undisturbed.

Ali underscored that the Global Biodiversity Alliance is a call to arms, a rallying cry to governments, institutions, investors, communities, and citizens. The alliance is built on three convictions: that biodiversity is the infrastructure of life, that the measuring biodiversity is the foundation of meaningful action and that investing in biodiversity is not a luxury but a necessity.

President Ali outlined five pillars of the alliance which includes conserving 30 per cent of land and oceans by 2030; integrating biodiversity into national and corporate plans; unlocking innovative financing; empowering indigenous peoples and local communities; and ensuring transparency through global monitoring tools.

The Guyanese leader outlined that the Global Biodiversity Summit is focused on igniting a global movement to protect the living fabric of the planet. “I am proud that this movement begins here, in Guyana with the support and partnership of all of you in this room. We cannot overcome these challenges individually. We must build strong, resilient, sustainable partnerships so that we can overcome all the headwinds and storms that will come our way,” he noted.

President Ali urged greater cooperation for biodiversity protection, noting that biodiversity is under siege, with every year the world losing about 10 million hectares of forest and one million species face extinction. To further exacerbate the crisis the world faces, Ali highlighted that wetland are vanishing three times faster than forests and that the world is approaching an irreversible tipping point in key ecosystems, from coral reefs to savannahs to rainforests.

Ali said, “These changes are not remote or abstract, they are real, immediate, and devastating.  They affect the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe.  They affect our jobs, our health, our economies, our cultures, our peace.  They affect our very survival.”

Despite the heavy loss of global biodiversity, Ali noted that the destruction continues. “Too often, the true value of biodiversity is ignored in national accounts, absent from financial statements, and invisible in boardrooms and budget plans. The invisibility ends here,” he underscored.

Ali stressed that despite the intrinsic value, biodiversity remains grossly underfunded.

“Today, we invest just $200 billion per year in nature, but to meet the global biodiversity framework targets, we need at least $700 billion annually. That means we must more than triple global finance for nature.  And we must ensure that this finance flows to where it is most needed especially in the global south,” he said.

President Ali disclosed that the alliance is committed to scaling blended finance to de-risk investment in nature-based enterprises, piloting biodiversity credits that reward stewardship, expanding debt-for-nature swaps, modeled on our own experience and supporting community-driven finance models that place indigenous leadership at the center.

To this end, he invited development banks, asset managers, impact investors, and sovereign wealth funds to join the alliance in its efforts. World leaders attending the Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit in Guyana added their voices to urgent calls for stronger international action to halt environmental degradation.

During the first plenary led by President Ali, several heads of state and government and other officials were invited to deliver interventions on the Global State of Biodiversity, highlighting key achievements, challenges and opportunities.

Barbados Prime, Minister Mia Mottley in her address at the summit said, “You cannot address the issues of saving the planet without addressing the issues of both climate and biodiversity and pollution at the same time.”

She underscored that those living the reality of environmental challenges must not only advocate strongly on the international stage, but act even more decisively at the local level. Mottley also highlighted a new initiative in collaboration with the Barbados Wetland Trust, through which they were able to resuscitate and reopen the Graham Hall Nature Sanctuary closed for nearly 20 years for the benefit of both birds and the people of Barbados. She disclosed that Barbados is working to restore its remaining wetlands, many of which have been destroyed, and is in the process of establishing two additional entities aimed at preserving biodiversity. “This will allow us to elevate the work that we must do to preserve our coastal areas. One from the erosion of sargassum, which is deadly on our eastern coast, but also from the natural erosion taking place as a result of agriculture run off and other factors,” the PM noted.

Big challenges

For his part, Iván Duque Márquez, former President of the Republic of Colombia, said, “The challenges we face are big, we have lost in the last five decades almost 70 per cent of the world’s wildlife. We have seen that land degradation, and also negative use of land, has become the second largest source of greenhouse gasses emissions, and we know that if we don’t act promptly and with the right instruments, we are going to see most of our ecosystems suffer like no other time before.”

The former president said that he was confident the Global Biodiversity Alliance will introduce practical elements for action, which involve market-driven, nature-based solutions. He further underscored that the world is facing an enormous amount of debt.

He further outlined the need to define that protecting biodiversity is linked with food security, natural security, and safeguarding global supply chains. He said too that there is a need to create elements that avoid further degradation of ecosystems.

“We are in an Amazon country, and the Amazon has lost in the last four decades the equivalent of France and Germany together inland. And people may believe that stopping that level of deforestation seems impossible. Well, the response is no, because we’re in a country like Guyana, that has been able to keep 95 per cent of its territory in tropical jungle successfully,” he outlined.

Additionally, María José Pinto, the Vice President of the Republic of Ecuador, said her country is one of the most biodiverse countries on earth. “But we know that biodiversity is not only counted in species, it is measured in well-being of people in the health of our ecosystems and the opportunities we create for those who come after us,” she noted.

Outlining Ecuador’s vision for biodiversity, she said it drives equity, well-being, and innovation and brings conservation and economic transformation together by placing both people and nature at the heart of development. “Ecuador calls on the global community and especially the financial, technological and political leaders gathered here to recognise a fundamental truth. Biodiversity is not just a global responsibility, it is a global opportunity,” she added.

She made a call for the expansion of innovative mechanisms through debt-for-nature swaps, including legal frameworks, and platforms for climate and biodiversity finance that reach local actors.

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• biodiversity, biodiversity crisis, financing, global, Irfaan Ali, President Irfaan Ali, Summit

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