Message from World Wilderness Conference

"The human race was born, and for millennia was raised in wild nature. Even as technology and economic development have increasingly removed us from natural environments over the last few hundred years, wilderness has nonetheless continued to sustain us, generating the essential services that make possible our economic and social prosperity, our physical health and our spiritual well-being.

However, we are rapidly degrading our home. Runaway carbon emissions are driving the climate towards irreversible tipping points, we are contaminating our planet with pervasive toxicity, we are destroying the diversity of life on our planet, we are exhausting freshwater supplies and causing acidification in our oceans, and we are over-exploiting our oceans, causing fisheries to collapse. As a result, we are deepening poverty, weakening social structures and threatening global security. This situation is in stark contrast to the world we can have if wilderness and its contribution to natural life support systems are properly valued. Our essential choice – indeed, the imperative – has never been clearer:

With a healthy foundation of wilderness, we can realize our full potential as humans. But when wilderness is degraded, the promise of human societies dims. Without wilderness, the legacy for future generations is a deeply impoverished planet: biologically, culturally, economically and spiritually. We must act immediately to keep Earth’s wilderness intact."

This was the strong and emotional message that concluded the World Wilderness Congress, in November 2009 in Merida, Mexico. 1800 delegates from 50 countries for WILD 9, the 9th World Wilderness Congress. After nearly 3 years of preparation, WILD9’s agenda for wilderness brought leaders, communities and partners from around the world to Merida, in the Yucatan. With the central theme of wilderness, people and climate change, the WILD9 process addressed the most imperative environmental issues, resulting in 44 targeted resolutions, and many specific outcomes. The Mensaje de Merida was put together by delegates from all over the globe and is an international call to action with specific policy guidelines to integrate wilderness and biodiversity conservation into global climate change strategy.

This article was adapted from the WILD 9 website. The full message can be downloaded below.