Agenda item 5 ECOSOC High-level Segment Statement submitted by organizations in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council * The Secretary-General has received the following statements, which are being circulated in accordance with paragraphs 30 and 31 of Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.
Agenda Item 5—354. Triglav Circle
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972 made no distinction between Nature and the Environment. In subsequent Earth summits, however, ‘Nature’ has been a virtual non-entity. The General Assembly adopted the World Charter for Nature in 1982 and promptly abandoned it. Nature reappears in the General Assembly since 2009 in modest annual resolutions on Harmony with Nature. Encapsulated in the clause “harmony with nature,” it also remains a sub-item of Sustainable Development. In the Sustainable Development Goals, no mention of Nature is articulated beyond a reference in Target 12.8 which calls for “life styles in harmony with nature.” Yet nature should be the main focus of any examination of the SDG’s and recovery from COVID-19.
The Foreword to the UN Secretary General to the United Nations Environment Program Report, Making Peace with Nature is an emphatic call to the world to address holistically the human nature relationship. Only ‘Peace with nature’ can insure that people live in better health and dignity on a healthy planet.
Why and how to do this:
In Sanskrit, a proverb says “Nature protects if it is protected.” We cannot live apart from nature and its ecosystems. When ecosystems are hurt, the health and well-being of life is threatened . It is indisputable that more than 60 percent of human sicknesses are zoonoses: viral spillovers from animals to humans causing illnesses, such as, COVID-19, AIDS, SARS, and MERS. Many factors lead to zoonotic spillovers. Recently, scientists trace them to the environmental impact of agriculture, deforestation, changing and decreasing wildlife habitats with land use.
Particular initiatives would be very helpful:
– Health to be explicitly connected with the other issues included in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
– More emphasis placed on the question of biodiversity. It is no less important for the future of humankind than the sources of energy or climate change.
– The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment should be repeated.
– Recognition that in nature everything is interconnected and that a more holistic approach to goals and targets is needed. “Nature deficit disorder” affecting particularly city dwellers and the young is now a well-known problem that education must address. Alienation from nature is embedded in the sensibility of modernity. A critical perspective must move beyond the selective sensibility applied to present relations with nature. That’s why pre-modern worldviews are very relevant. In the outlook of indigenous people there still is recognition that nature sustains them and that they are sustaining nature. This reciprocity has been lost in modernity. The philosopher, Jacques Derrida said “We are inevitably living together on the planet; the real challenge is how we live together well on the planet”. He means a new kind of connectedness, the wholeness and sacredness of nature as a product of living together in a sustainable way on the planet. Living together well means more ecologically, less anthropocentrically. Perhaps that does not bring complete harmony with nature but it is a lesser and achievable utopia.