HR0964 102ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0964 LRB102 28529 LAW 40406 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The people of Illinois have an important relationship with nature and have called on their local, state, and federal government to preserve and protect nature, both within the State of Illinois and across the United States; and

WHEREAS, Illinois is the home of species and habitats that are of ecological, spiritual, cultural, historic, recreational, and scientific value to the people of Illinois and need to be protected for current and future generations; and

WHEREAS, Illinois and the United States are facing an unprecedented biodiversity crisis, largely driven by human activity; and

WHEREAS, Addressing the biodiversity crisis requires coordinated action across national and state boundaries; and

WHEREAS, Human-driven activities are significantly damaging the Earth's ecosystems by altering 75 percent of the area of terrestrial environments and 66 percent of marine environments; these activities are directly exploiting wildlife and plant species, accelerating climate change, directly harming nature, introducing invasive species, polluting air, land, and water, and exacerbating other threats; and

WHEREAS, Human-driven activities are threatening approximately one million species with extinction in the coming decades, including over 40 percent of amphibians, 33 percent of corals, sharks, shark relatives, and marine mammals, over 60 percent of cycads, over 30 percent of conifer trees, and approximately 10 percent of over 5 million insect species; these activities are additionally causing population sizes of wild species to decline by an average of 68 percent for mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles, including the loss of nearly 3 billion birds in North America since 1970; and

WHEREAS, Human activity is accelerating the decline of important economic and cultural services with the productivity of nearly one-fourth of the land surface reduced, with over one-third of land surface and 75 percent of freshwater resources devoted to crop or livestock production, with approximately half a trillion dollars of global crops at risk from pollinator loss, and with 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by land clearing, crops, and fertilization; and

WHEREAS, Coordination at a global, national, regional, and local scale is necessary to address the biodiversity crisis; and

WHEREAS, The decline of biodiversity disproportionately impacts indigenous and other communities that rely on nature for essential services, including Native Americans and Alaska Natives, who offer unique perspectives and traditional ecological knowledge critical to preserving biodiversity; and

WHEREAS, The United States possesses an abundance and great diversity of species of fish, wildlife, and plants that are of significant value to the United States for intrinsic, aesthetic, ecological, educational, cultural, recreational, economic, and scientific reasons; and

WHEREAS, The decline of biodiversity presents a direct threat to the security, health, and well-being of the people of the United States by causing economic harm through the loss of valuable ecosystem services, including zoonotic disease buffering, pollination, water filtration, soil replenishment, provision of game species, medicinal products, recreational opportunities, and others; and

WHEREAS, Communities of color, low-income communities, tribal communities, and other populations that have been systematically and deliberately targeted for the siting of environmentally degrading activities and excluded from conservation efforts face disproportionate impacts from biodiversity loss; and

WHEREAS, There is no coordinating policy to maximize the effectiveness of the federal government's conservation efforts and collaboration with the states, local governments, tribes, private landowners, and other nongovernmental stakeholders; and

WHEREAS, The United States should play a leading role on the international stage in addressing the biodiversity crisis, yet the United States is not a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Migratory Species, and other relevant international agreements; additionally, the U.S. does not issue a national biodiversity outlook, contrary to most other countries, and does not have a national biodiversity strategy as part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we urge the federal government to:

(1) Establish a national biodiversity strategy to ensure the conservation and restoration of the nation's biodiversity;

(2) Secure and restore the ecosystem services provided by nature for current and future generations;

(3) Deliver on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals;

(4) Set ambitious yet necessary goals for protecting biodiversity in the coming decades;

(5) Promote social equity and justice in the conservation of the nation's biodiversity;

(6) Coordinate the actions of federal agencies to advance the conservation of biodiversity;

(7) Promote collaboration among the federal, state, and tribal governments, nongovernmental stakeholders, and civil society and internationally to advance conservation;

(8) Honor the federal trust obligations to tribal nations and Native Americans; and

(9) Provide global leadership in addressing the biodiversity crisis; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge the federal government to develop the national biodiversity strategy with significant public input and in collaboration and coordination with federal and state agencies; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge the federal government's national biodiversity strategy to include direction on:

(1) Supporting the national goal of conserving at least 30 percent of United States lands and waters to protect biodiversity by 2030;

(2) Setting other goals necessary to reduce the threats to biodiversity as indicated by the best available scientific information;

(3) Taking action to protect threatened, endangered, and at-risk species from further imperilment or extinction; and

(4) Reviewing existing laws, plans, programs, and strategies that are relevant to addressing threats to biodiversity to assess how they can contribute to the objectives of this resolution and, as found necessary, to recommend new laws, plans, programs, and strategies and fund existing conservation programs and develop new funding sources; and be it further

RESOLVED, That suitable copies be delivered to the President, the U.S. Senate Majority Leader, the U.S. Senate Minority Leader, the U.S. Speaker of the House, the U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader, and all members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation.