Paris: World-respected British primate expert Jane Goodall wants a coming United Nations summit on biodiversity to lead to action rather than "words and false promises". As officials from around 200 countries meet in the Colombian city of Cali for the COP16 meeting starting Monday, the indefatigable zoologist said there was little time left to reverse the downward slide. "I hope that not only will some decisions be made to protect biodiversity.
.. but that this will be followed by action because the time for words and false promises is past if we want to save the planet," Goodall told AFP.
At 90, Goodall is still crisscrossing the globe in a bid to help defend the chimpanzee, who she first went to Tanzania to study more than 60 years ago. A UN Messenger of Peace since 2002, Goodall has been outspoken about the damage done to nature. But she also highlighted how other issues, notably climate change, were worsening the biodiversity crisis.
"The trouble is everything, all the problems that we face...
they're all interrelated." Taking her cue from a recent scientific evaluation, Goodall said the world had just "five years in which we can start slowing down climate change and so on". "Good news, there's groups of people working on every one of the problems.
Unfortunately, so many are working in their own little narrow path," she said. "You may solve one problem, and if you're not thinking holistically, that may create another problem." Besides biodiversity, COP16 organisers have sa.