GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – President Irfaan Ali has issued a call for urgent international action to halt the planet’s escalating biodiversity crisis, warning that continued species loss will threaten food security, medicine, and cultural heritage worldwide.
Speaking on The Rest is Politics: Leading, one of the UK’s most popular political podcasts hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, President Ali contended that humanity has already lost 60 per cent of its biodiversity assets in the past half-century. He described that loss as “the new frontier that must be addressed”.
“If we continue to lose this biodiversity, we’re going to lose our ability to be food secure as a world because biodiversity is critically linked to food security,” he stressed. “You and I and the world need to work on changing this.”
Highlighting biodiversity’s role in breakthroughs in medicine, pharmaceuticals, indigenous knowledge, and sustaining life itself, the Guyanese leader underscored his country’s commitment to environmental stewardship.
Campbell noted the recent discovery of two previously unknown bird species in Guyana by visiting British birdwatchers—an example, President Ali said, of the rewards of conservation.
“We don’t want to find ourselves as part of the global problem. We want to use everything available before us to be part of the global solution,” President Ali said.
His appeal comes just weeks after Guyana hosted the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA) Summit, where over 140 countries and organisations endorsed the Georgetown Declaration and unveiled a roadmap to halt biodiversity loss and accelerate nature-positive action.
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