President Ali to the world: protect nature or risk global food collapse

President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali has become the first sitting president from the Americas to appear on The Rest is Politics: Leading, one of the United Kingdom’s most popular political podcasts hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart.

Using the global platform, President Ali delivered an urgent call for the preservation of the planet’s rapidly vanishing biodiversity, warning that continued species loss threatens ecosystems, food security, medicine, and cultural heritage worldwide.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Campbell, President Ali stressed that humanity has already lost 60 per cent of its biodiversity assets in the past half-century, a crisis he described 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 emphasised. “You and I and the world need to work on changing this.”

Highlighting biodiversity’s role in advances in medicine, pharmaceuticals, indigenous knowledge, and sustaining life itself, President Ali underscored Guyana’s own 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.

He also commended UK High Commissioner Jane Miller for her efforts to showcase Guyana’s natural beauty and deepen bilateral ties.

“We don’t want to find ourselves as part of the global problem. We want to use everything that is available before us to be part of the global solution,” he said.

This advocacy follows Guyana’s hosting of the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA) Summit in June, where the Georgetown Declaration was endorsed and an ambitious roadmap was unveiled to protect biodiversity, halt its loss, and accelerate nature-positive action.

The Summit brought together over 140 countries and organisations, including governments, Indigenous leaders, scientists, NGOs, financial institutions, youth representatives, and private sector actors, united in a shared commitment to safeguarding the planet’s natural wealth.