Dramatic appeal by António Guterres to the ministers of 40 countries gathered to discuss the environmental crisis, drought and floods. “We need everyone’s action or it will be the end”
The fires and heat waves that are ravaging vast swathes of the planet show that humanity is facing “collective suicide,” warned the UN Secretary-General on the Guardian, as governments around the world scramble to protect. people from the impacts of extreme heat.
António Guterres told ministers from 40 countries gathered to discuss the climate crisis: «Half of humanity is in danger, due to floods, droughts, extreme storms and fires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our dependence on fossil fuels ». And he added: “We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands ».
To the words of the UN secretary are added the data from the Brazilian Amazon, which lost about 18 trees per second in 2021 due to the more than 20% increase in deforestation in the country compared to the previous year. This is what emerges from the MapBiomas report elaborated on satellite data, which highlights how Brazil lost about 16,557 square kilometers (1.65 million hectares) of indigenous vegetation in 2021, an area larger than Ireland in the North. In 2020, the green area sold was 13,789 square kilometers. Nearly 60% of the land deforested in 2021 was in the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest in the world, the report said. “In the Amazon alone, 111.6 hectares per hour or 1.9 hectares per minute have been cleared, which is equivalent to about 18 trees per second,” said MapBiomas, a monitoring project run by a network of NGOs, universities and technology companies.
#Climate #change #secretary #United #Nations #risk #collective #suicide #Amazon #lost #trees