In a powerful speech to open CoP15, the UN Biodiversity Conference, in Montreal, UN Secretary General António Guterres said that “We are waging a war on nature” and called for “a peace pact with nature”.

The transformation of crop, livestock and timber production to make practices sustainable would mitigate the greatest drivers of extinction risk for terrestrial plant species across diverse ecosystems, according to a paper published in Conservation Biology. Knowing this allows us to begin making this ‘peace pact with nature’.

The study utilised data from Brazil, South Africa and Norway in a novel metric, to identify opportunities to reduce the extinction risk of plant species. The work was a collaboration among international scientists and conservationists, led by Newcastle University.

Read more at: Newcastle University

The STAR metric - country example (Photo Credit: IUCN)