UN Secretary General Guterres gives a speech at the COP15 opening ceremony.
Guterres’ language of “humanity as a weapon of mass destruction” has to be critically engaged with. | Photo: UN Biodiversity via flickr | CC BY 2.0

Stopping the Biodiversity Apocalypse: Existential Threats and Ecological Justice at COP15 in Montreal

Global biodiversity is in a deep crisis. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke of a “biodiversity apocalypse” and of “humanity as a weapon of mass destruction”. The COP15 gathering in Montreal from 7-19 December is tasked with finding a new global framework for effectively protecting global biodiversity. Despite of the scale and speed of biodiversity deterioration, the language of security obscures the key aspect of ecological injustice: not all of humanity is causing environmental destruction but specific modes of economic development and the inequitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens between Global North and South, as well as non-human nature.     

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