Biodiversity alliance calls on governments to act on nature restoration
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The Belgian Biodiversity Alliance, a coalition of nature organisations, is calling on regional governments to submit an ambitious Nature Restoration Plan to Europe. “This is urgent,” they say. “Without a healthy natural environment, droughts and floods will cost society millions of pounds every year.”
The alliance is launching its Bring Back Nature campaign with a petition to “put pressure on Belgium as Europe’s worst pupil in terms of nature”, it said on Tuesday, World Wildlife Day.
Belgium must submit a Nature Restoration Plan this year to comply with the European Nature Restoration Act. The country’s three regions are each working out their part of this plan, but the organisations are scathing in their interim assessment. “No ambition, no structural investments and no concrete path to restoration,” they say.”
95 per cent of protected nature in Belgium is in poor condition, especially fragile natural areas such as marshes, peatlands, heathland and flowery grasslands. Due to desiccation, fragmentation and pollution, plants and animals are losing their habitats, resulting in a visible impoverishment of the landscape.
“This is a tipping point,” says Noah Janssen, general manager at Flemish conservation agency Natuurpunt. “There is a huge opportunity to make our nature healthy and less vulnerable, making our landscape biodiverse, climate-robust, liveable and workable again. To dawdle now or submit a weak Nature Restoration Plan would be a historic mistake.”
The High Fens in eastern Belgium © PHOTO IMAGEBROKER
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