Are biodiversity efforts keeping up with the effects of climate change?

Some of the worst effects of climate change have been on display in recent weeks.

But natural disasters like hurricanes, heat waves and flooding are made worse by another way humanity is altering the planet – the loss of nature.

Giuliana Viglione is an editor at the website Carbon Brief where she covers food, land and nature.

"Biodiversity loss just gets a lot less attention than climate change. And I think one of the issues with biodiversity in particular is it's much less tangible," Viglione told NPR.

Biodiversity is the variety of all living things on the planet; how they interact and depend on each other — like a butterfly pollinating a flower; a coral reef sheltering a fish.

But more than a million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction – many within decades – because of human activities. And that delicate fabric of life is at risk.

"I mean, from a sort of global view, biodiversity is the health of our planet," Viglione said.

"And so we should care about that, as beings on this planet. And it's really the fault of humanity that we're in this situation. We rely on biodiversity for everything. We rely on it for our food, for clean water, for clean air."

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Can the losses be reversed?

It was two years ago, during the UN biodiversity convention in Montreal, that nearly 200 nations agreed to take several steps to stem biodiversity loss.

The agreement covered a range of pressing issues- from managing human—wildlife conflict, to reducing subsidies for industries that harm the natural world.

This week and next, world leaders are gathering in Colombia for the 16th United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to check up on their collective progress in slowing biodiversity loss.

As many of those same leaders who met in Montreal come together again, the extinction of plants and animals continues at an alarming rate. Can they successfully turn those plans into action against what the United Nations is calling "humanity's senseless and suicidal war with nature?"

NPR's Nathan Rott is following the story, and joined All Things Considered host Juana Summers to elaborate on what it could tangibly accomplish.

"This is a conference of nearly every nation on the planet, every country that signed on to protect the world's plants, animals and ecosystems under something called the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. It's very similar to the U.N. meetings on climate change."

Rott explains that this year's meeting is a check-in from Montreal.

"World leaders signed on to this huge global framework that's really supposed to help humanity achieve harmony with nature. That is literally how they frame it. There was a pledge to protect 30% of the world's land and water by 2030, a pledge to reduce subsidies to industries that are harming nature, like fossil fuel companies, pledges to reduce food waste to provide money for poorer countries in the global south. 23 different pledges in total."

But Rott says that regardless of how successful this conference is these nations have a long way to go before their goal is tangible.

One of many issues being discussed at the UN convention on biological diversity is the accelerating rate of animal extinction, and the people are going to great lengths to save animals.

The question of animal conservation

NPR's climate correspondent Lauren Sommer went to Hawaii to see a group of people who are going to great lengths to protect one of the island's rare species – tiny, colorful snails.

They are Hawaii's native tree snails. The colorful, jewel-like snails were once so abundant, it's said they were like Christmas ornaments covering the trees. Almost all of the 750 different species were found only in Hawaii.

Today, more than half of those species are gone, the extinctions happening in the span of a human lifetime. David Sischo and his team with Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources have the heavy task of saving what's left.

Listen to the full episode to hear the increasing load on these conservationists trying to fight against the decimation of climate change.