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The story
Scientists and diplomats from 130 countries start a meeting in Paris today to examine a huge report on how human activity is crippling global biodiversity. They'll hear how a million species face extinction and how most UN targets to sustain biodiversity won't be met.
Key words and phrases
groundwork
initial work or planning which makes future work easier
• Firstly, I’d like to thank our manager, who laid the initial groundwork for this meeting.
• My partner always books the flights and does the groundwork before a trip.
degrading
making the quality of something worse
• Residents say that noise pollution from the new road is degrading their quality of life.
• Fake news is degrading trust in the press.
mass
on a large scale
• Economic instability in the region has led to mass migration.
• Scientists warn of a mass extinction of global species in the report.
To do
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