Carbon Pulse

11 January, 2024

Biodiversity credit markets risk distracting governments from their role in financing nature by taking up limited time and capacity, the non-profitCampaign for Nature has claimed in a paper. “Inflated” claims on the potential scale of voluntary biodiversity credit markets could result in governments abdicating their public responsibilities for nature, the campaign group said. Mark Opel, the conservation finance adviser at Campaign for Nature, said: “Biodiversity credits … enable magical thinking that somehow innovative finance is going to come to the rescue and meet the promises in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), without any additional government changes in policy.”

Full article here.

Media Statement

September 6, 2023

At the African Climate Summit, His Excellency Iván Duque, former President of Colombia, His Excellency Hailemariam Desalegn, former Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and His Excellency Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, former Prime Minister of Uganda called on leaders and ministers to ensure that the nature finance commitment made at COP15 to deliver at least $20 billion per annum from developed countries to developing countries by 2025 is given the prominence it requires.

Read the full statement here.

Joint NGO Media Statement

August 31, 2023

Ahead of the G20 Heads of State Summit, we, the undersigned, call on leaders to give prominence to finance for nature in the Leaders Declaration. 

G20 leaders must recognize spending on nature as investments in the cornerstone of our global economy, a source of jobs and economic growth, and non-monetary essentials like clean air and water and food security, rather than a ‘nice to have’.

Read the full statement here.

Vancouver Sun Op-Ed

24 August, 2023

Chief Frank Brown and Russ Feingold

As B.C. faces drought, heatwaves, and the worst wildfire season in history, it is increasingly evident that serious consequences of climate change are with us now. To confront these impacts, scientists have said that we need transformational change, and that must begin with bold action from governments.

Read the full article here.

Media Statement

30 June, 2023

The approval by the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) governing board to establish a new fund to finance the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) is a welcome step forward in the urgent need to mobilize more funding for nature in developing countries where biodiversity is concentrated.

Read the full statement.

Nature

20 June, 2023

Brian O’Donnell, the director of Campaign for Nature, a conservation advocacy group based in Durango, Colorado, says that the success of the framework depends on donor countries making good on their pledges to increase biodiversity funding. In addition to agreeing to contribute $30 billion annually by 2030, wealthy countries said that they would help to find $200 billion per year from private and public sources by 2030. But the countries have not yet started to deliver on these promises.

Read more.

Project Syndicate - Op-Ed

5th June, 2023

Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - My work has taken me far and wide, across oceans and vast expanses of land, and I have been lucky enough to see firsthand some of the richest biodiversity hotspots on Earth. But at the end of the day, I always return home – to Liberia, to Africa, which offers the most extraordinary natural landscape and wildlife. The African continent is undoubtedly the planet’s biodiversity powerhouse.

Read more.

Carbon Pulse

17th May, 2023

The funds to meet a $20 billion finance target for biodiversity by 2025, a key component of last year’s landmark Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), should not come from biodiversity credits according to the Samoan Minister for Environment speaking during an event on Wednesday, with other stakeholders also suggesting the nascent market is not likely to be ready to scale sufficient finance within less than three years.

Read more.

CNN

December 19, 2022
More than 190 countries have adopted a sweeping agreement to protect nature at the United Nations' biodiversity conference in Montreal.

The gavel went down in the early hours of Monday on an agreement which includes 23 targets aimed at halting the biodiversity crisis, including a pledge to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030. Only 17% of land and 10% of oceans are currently considered protected. Campaigners have hailed it as a "major milestone" for conserving complex, fragile ecosystems on which everyone depends.

But some countries were unhappy, criticizing the agreement for not going far enough. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has said it cannot support the agreement and has complained that it was rushed through without following proper processes.

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Associated Press

December 19, 2022
Los negociadores en una conferencia sobre biodiversidad de Naciones Unidas lograron el lunes de madrugada un acuerdo histórico que supondría el esfuerzo más significativo hasta ahora para proteger la tierra y los océanos y proporcionar financiamiento crucial para salvar la biodiversidad en el mundo en desarrollo.

El marco global se acordó el día antes del final previsto de la Conferencia de Biodiversidad de Naciones Unidas o COP15, en Montreal. China, que ostenta la presidencia de la cumbre, publicó un borrador al inicio de la jornada que dio el impulso necesario a unas conversaciones en ocasiones acaloradas.

La parte más significativa del acuerdo era un compromiso de proteger el 30% de la tierra y el agua consideradas como importantes para la biodiversidad para 2030. En este momento están protegidas el 17% de la tierra y el 10% de las zonas marinas.

“Nunca ha habido una conservación global de esta escala”, dijo a la prensa Brian O’Donnell, director del grupo conservacionista Campaign for Nature. “Esto nos da una oportunidad de evitar el colapso de la biodiversidad (...) Ahora estamos en la escala que los científicos creen que puede marcar una diferencia en la biodiversidad”.

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The New York Times

December 19, 2022
Roughly 190 countries early on Monday approved a sweeping United Nations agreement to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 and to take a slew of other measures against biodiversity loss, a mounting under-the-radar crisis that, if left unchecked, jeopardizes the planet’s food and water supplies as well as the existence of untold species around the world.

The agreement comes as biodiversity is declining worldwide at rates never seen before in human history. Researchers have projected that a million plants and animals are at risk of extinction, many within decades. While many scientists and activists had pushed for even stronger measures, the deal, which includes verification mechanisms that previous agreements had lacked, clearly signals increasing momentum around the issue.

“This is a huge moment for nature,” Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, a coalition of groups pushing for protections, said about the agreement. “This is a scale of conservation that we haven’t seen ever attempted before.”

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Edie

December 2, 2022
The meeting that is meant to be the final part of COP15 takes place in Montreal, Canada, from 5 December to 17 December, following a string of delays and postponements to efforts to create a new global treaty for biodiversity.

The summit was originally planned for Kunming, China, in 2020. It was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequently split into two parts, with the first part successfully completed in Kunming in October 2021 and the second meeting in Kunming taking place this spring.

The second meeting was unsuccessful, with no final deal agreed upon. Interim talks in Nairobi were, therefore, added to the UN’s calendar for this summer, and a final meeting scheduled for Kunming in autumn. However, China saw a spike in Covid-19 cases in the first quarter of the year and places including Beijing and Shanghai were put into lockdown because of China’s ‘zero Covid’ approach. And so, more than two years after the summit was meant to have taken place, delegates from UN nations will meet this week to finally agree on a “Paris Agreement style” deal for nature.

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Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

November 28, 2022
The planet is in the midst of an environmental emergency, and the world is only tinkering at the margins. Humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels and voracious appetite for natural resources are accelerating climate change and degrading ecosystems on land and sea, threatening the integrity of the biosphere and thus the survival of our own species. Given these risks, it is shocking that the multilateral system has failed to respond more forcefully. Belatedly, the United States, the EU, the UK, and some other advanced market democracies have adopted more aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets, but their ability to deliver is suspect, while critical emerging economies like China and India have resisted accelerating their own decarbonization. Even more concerning, existing multilateral commitments, including on climate change, fail to address the other half of the planet’s ecological crisis: collapsing biodiversity, which the leaders of the Group of 7 nations rightly call an “equally important existential threat.”

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Nature

November 28, 2022
Human actions are rapidly transforming the planet, driving losses of nature at an unprecedented rate that negatively impacts societies and economies, from accelerating climate change to increasing zoonotic pandemic risk. Recognizing the accelerating severity of the environmental crisis, the global community committed to Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. In 2022, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will adopt new targets for conserving, restoring and sustainably managing multiple dimensions of biodiversity, including nature’s contributions to people (NCP). Collectively, these three policy frameworks will shape the sustainable development agenda for the next decade. All three depend heavily on safeguarding natural assets, the living components of our lands and waters.

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EuroNews

November 16, 2022
The architects of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement have urged world leaders to secure a similar deal on nature at the upcoming COP15 biodiversity conference.

Global warming cannot be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius without protecting nature, they warn. 

As the COP27 United Nations climate summit enters its final few days, government officials and campaigners are now setting their sights on the high-stakes meeting for nature next month. 

It will take place in Montreal, after host country China postponed the event four times due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, the architects of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement - which seeks to limit global warming to well under 2 degrees Celsius - issued a statement urging world leaders to secure a similar deal on nature.

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