Cali, Colombia | AFP – UN chief Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that humanity faced an “existential crisis” caused by the rapacious destruction of life-sustaining nature.

“Every year, we see temperatures climbing higher. Every day, we lose more species. Every minute, we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers and lakes. Make no mistake. This is what an existential crisis looks like,” the secretary-general told delegates to the UN’s COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia.

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