Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday expressed concern that the earth with all its species will eventually move towards extinction if the current actions of humans keep going on unchecked. 

"We are not only causing the extinction of other species but we are also actually moving towards ultimate extinction of human race if our current actions continue to go unchecked," she said.

The premier said this in her pre-recorded speech in the 'Leaders Dialogue: Harnessing science, technology and innovation, capacity building, access and benefit-sharing, financing and partnerships for biodiversity' of the 'United Nations Summit on Biodiversity' with the theme 'Urgent Action on Biodiversity for Sustainable Development' at the UN Headquarters.

Sheikh Hasina put forward four action points -- focus on future sustainability while investing and for safeguarding biodiversity, create greater public awareness through education system and research, and strengthen national legislations and monitoring mechanisms are key actions -- before the world leaders to save the planet and human beings.

The other two action points are: Global access to benefit-sharing must be ensured for the true owners of the genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge and achieving the Paris goals could be the difference between human being's extinction and survival. 

She said the world's wildlife populations have fallen by an average of 68 percent just from 1970 to 2016 according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London.

In Bangladesh, she said, biodiversity conservation has been recognised in its Constitution as a fundamental principle of state policy and Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman enacted the wildlife preservation order as early as in 1974. "Bangladesh is one of the few countries that enacted a law to implement the convention on Biological Diversity."

The Prime Minister mentioned that Parliament passed Bangladesh Biological Diversity Act 2017 aimed at preserving biodiversity. “We’ve declared more than 5 percent of the total terrestrial area and about 5 percent of the marine area as Protected and Ecologically Critical Areas.”

BDST: 1305 HRS, OCT 01, 2020
AP/SMS