And wait for David Lammy to start speaking. And wait for David Lammy to start speaking. But we cannot do it alone start speaking. But we cannot do it alone. We start speaking. But we cannot do it alone. We work start speaking. But we cannot do it alone. We work with start speaking. But we cannot i do it alone. We work with more than 400 partners in and across 100 countries, mapping biodiversity, helping identify areas for protection and tropical important plant areas. Advising on sustainable use of natural resources, supporting habitat restoration. And very importantly too, informing Nature Based Solutions to the challenges linked to Climate Change. And we thank the Uk Government and our supporters for helping us to carry out this work. Without support we cannot of course do it. So in ethiopia for example, which is one of the worlds main producers of coffee, millions of smallholders rely on coffee for income. But the production has been severely affected by Climate Change. Especially raised temperatures. And working with local farmers and ethical Coffee Roasters and guided by our herbarium collection, scientists have found species of wild Coffee Native to the area that grow at higher temperatures. Ten years on, this coffee is sold in supermarkets and many of you have been drinking knowingly or unwaveringly earlier today. So this work has helped protect forest, increase local biodiversity, Support Carbon Sequestration and provide very importantly farmers with a higher income. Soak similar work is taking place with other Copy Species in other countries and other commodity crops, including rice. Kew also has 2 Billion seeds stored in the vault in the millennium Seed Bank. These serve as a Safety Net against extinction but also as resources for restoration projects. Around the world in south america, Sub Saharan Africa and beyond. And our scientists also work with partners to identify genetic resources within the Seed Bank to provide resilience to crop and other plant species, to Climate Change, drought, pests and disease. All life depends on plants and fungi. We can see the plants, it is harder to see the plants, it is harder to see the fundi most of the time but they are there. Plants and fundi also provide critical ecosystem services, especially the carbon sequestration. But reaching zero by 2020 or indeed to achieve 2013 wont be possible without working with nature. And at the current rates of Biodiversity Loss we risk losing many of natures secrets before we have even unlocked them. And with that we also lose ways of mitigating and adapting to Climate Change. And adapting to climate Change And Adapting to climate chance,. , and adapting to climate chance. ,. , change. Just to reminder you are watching change. Just to reminder you are watching bbc change. Just to reminder you are watching Bbc News change. Just to reminder you are watching Bbc News and. Change. Just to reminder you j are watching Bbc News and we are watching Bbc News and we are currently waiting for foreign secretary David Lammy to give a major speech, putting, he says, climate and nature of the heart of Foreign Policy. We are listening to professor christopher gilligan. This is where that speech is going to be. We are going to be listening to that in any moment now. We were expecting it five minutes ago. In the meantime we speak into the head. Actually, we believe the professor is just finishing and the foreign secretary has entered so we will talk to gareth afterwards. Entered so we will talk to gareth afterwards. Well, Thank Ou Ve Gareth afterwards. Well, thank you very much gareth afterwards. Well, thank you very much Kew Gareth afterwards. Well, thank you very much Kew Gardens i gareth afterwards. Well, thank| you very much Kew Gardens for hosting my first Set Speech as foreign secretary. I have wanted to do this for years, so i am going to enjoy it. And this of course is just after you hosted the colombian president of this Years Nature Cop this morning. Complex in ukraine and The Middle East have dominated my time in office so far but i was very clear in opposition that in thisjob i would clear in opposition that in this job i would focus on the most profound and universal source of global disorder, the climate and nature emergency. 0ver my political career it has become clearer to me how this crisis defines our time. And as a young backbencher i admired Robin Cook making climate a geopolitical issue for the first time. He was a pioneer ahead of his time. Four years ago, i spoke about the essential link between climate Justice And Racialjustice in a ted talk. And as Shadow Foreign Secretary i set out how our response to this crisis both can create an unparalleled economic opportunity but also is essential to the geopolitical challenge of our age. Time and time again it is the most vulnerable who bear the most vulnerable who bear the brunt of the crisis. From a nine year old londoner killed in part by unlawful levels of Air Pollution near her home, to communities that are dear to my heart in the caribbean, whose leaders tell me they feel neglected as they struggle with stronger, more frequent tropical storms caused by a crisis not of their making. So our goal is progressive. A livable planet for all, now and in the future. But we need a hard headed, Realist Approach towards using all levers at our disposal from the diplomatic to the financial. And i say to you now, these are not contradictions. Because nothing could be more central to the uks national interest than delivering global progress on arresting rising temperatures. My arresting rising temperatures. My argument to you today is that demands for action from the worlds most vulnerable and the worlds most vulnerable and the requirements for delivering security for british citizens are fundamentally aligned. And this is because the crisis is not some discreet Policy Area divorced from geopolitics and security. The threat may not feel as urgent as a terrorist oran feel as urgent as a terrorist or an imperialist autocrat but it is more fundamental. It is systemic, it is pervasive. And accelerating towards us at pace. Look around the world, countries are scrambling to secure critical minerals just as Great Powers once raced to control oil. We cannot let this become a source of conflict. In the arctic and Antarctic Global Warming is driving geopolitical competition over the resources lying beneath the ice. And in the amazon there have been the worst droughts ever recorded, partly as a result of deforestation. In the caribbean, i saw on Day One in thisjob the devastation caribbean, i saw on Day One in this job the devastation caused by hurricane beryl. The earliest forming category five hurricane on record. And in places like this a whole, south sudan, syria, rising temperatures are making water and productive land even scarcer. These are not random events delivered from the heavens. These are failures of politics, failures of regulation and frankly failures of international cooperation. And these failures pour fuel onto existing conflicts and regional rivalries, driving Extremism And Displacing communities and increasing humanitarian need. And it would be a further failure of imagination to hope that they will stay from our shores, that we can keep them away. Lets take migration. We are already seeing that Climate Change is uprooting communities across the world. And by 2050 world banks worst case estimate is that Climate Change could drive 200 Million people to leave their homes. We could take health. The World Health Organization says Climate Change is now the biggest threat to human health. We saw in the pandemic how quickly an infectious disease could spread from animals to humans and then from animals to humans and then from city the other side of the world to here in britain. This becomes only more likely as the climate and Nature Crisis grows. And this crisis threatens the things we take most for granted from the food that we eat to the air that we breathe. But despite all of this there remains a tendency for climate and Nature Policy to end up psi load. Too often it is felt the preserve of experts and campaigners fluent in sometimes the impenetrable dialect of cops but distant of but distant from others working in foreign dialect of cops but distant from others working in Foreign Policy and on national policy and on national security. And that has to security. And that change. Dont get me wrong, we absolutely need campaigners like those in this Room Or Expert like those working here at kew and im grateful to them all. But today i am committing to you that while i am foreign Secretary Action on the climate and Nature Crisis will be central to all that the Foreign Office does. This is critical given the scale of the threat but also the scale of the opportunity. The chance to achieve clean and secure energy, lower bills and drive growth for the uk. And to preserve the natural world around us on which all prosperity ultimately depends. The truth is that in the last few Years Something went badly wrong. Badly wrong in our national debate on Climate Change and zero. I take no pleasure in saying that. From the High Point of bipartisan consensus at cop26, Net Zero became under the tories a battleground. A battleground of the worst type of narrow minded westminster tactical warfare. Westminster tactical warfare. We have seen in the Inflation Reduction Act in the united states, in the green deal in the European Union and the accelerating transition in china, Foreign Policy, economic and industrial policy are increasingly intertwined. But while others embedded Climate Geopolitics in their Foreign Policy, the last government frittered away the currency we had accumulated in the past. They became climate dinosaurs, crushing offshore wind, blocking onshore wind, moving the goalposts on electric vehicle targets, doubling down on oil and gas. Leaving british Love Wildlife in crisis, our biodiversity declining at an unprecedented rate. Our precious national parks in decline, our rivers, lakes and seas awash with toxic sewerage. I remember
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