CNN

March 24, 2021
"It is a sad thing to think that nature speaks and that mankind does not listen." This remark, made in 1870 by the poet and novelist Victor Hugo, is even more relevant today. At a time when biodiversity -- the fragile web of life of which we are all a part -- threatens to disintegrate, we must not forget that we are, in many respects, the authors of our own misfortune.

Intersecting and escalating crises -- climate disruption, the collapse of biodiversity, the declining health of the ocean and the depletion of natural resources -- clearly demonstrate that we cannot continue on our current path. Our relationship with nature, traditionally based on domination and exploitation, has already altered some 75% of the land's surface and 40% of the marine environment. The global rate of species extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years, and around 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). This cannot continue.

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The Washington Post

March 18, 2021
Humanity has no better friend on this planet than the ocean. It provides more than half the oxygen we need to breathe. It supplies food that helps sustain more than 3 billion people. It absorbs many of the pollutants we keep pumping into the atmosphere: carbon dioxide, ozone-depleting chemicals.

The ocean is the kind of unwaveringly supportive friend who tolerates our toxicity and shields us from the worst consequences of our actions. It’s the friend that people have taken for granted for far too long. By overfishing and mining and drilling the sea floor, humanity is risking not just the ocean’s health but our own.

But new research suggests a strategic, globally coordinated effort to protect more of the world’s waters could not only bolster marine biodiversity but dramatically increase the number of fish available for harvest and boost the amount of carbon taken up by the ocean, aiding the fight against climate change.

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Project Syndicate

March 18, 2021
The world must protect at least 30% of the global ocean in order to restore marine life, increase seafood supply, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Meeting this goal would generate annual benefits – in terms of increased economic output and improved ecosystem services – that far exceed the investment required.

Last November, something happened in the middle of the South Atlantic that was unusual enough to make a local northern rockhopper penguin raise one of its long spiky yellow eyebrows. The tiny archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory, set aside more than 687,000 square kilometers (265,000 square miles, an area larger than France) of ocean to establish the world’s fourth-largest marine protected area (MPA).

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The Guardian

March 18, 2021
A key United Nations summit to negotiate an accord for nature similar to the Paris climate agreement has been postponed for a second time, it has been announced.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement that Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, had been moved to October due to delays related to the coronavirus pandemic. The negotiations in Kunming, China, had been scheduled for May after they were moved from October 2020.

Countries are expected to reach an agreement over targets to protect the natural world, including proposals to conserve 30% of the world’s oceans and land by 2030, introduce controls on invasive species and reduce plastics pollution.

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WEF

March 18, 2021
2021 ought to be the “super year” for nature, where we collectively agree on how to deal with the greatest risk to humanity: we have become totally out of balance with nature. But there is a solution that is scientifically proven and cost-effective, and new research has found a way forward.

We’ve already lost 60% of terrestrial wildlife and 90% of the big ocean fish. Approximately 96% of all mammals on earth are humans and our domesticated livestock. Only 4% is everything else, from bears to elephants to tigers. We now risk the extinction of 1 million species during this century. Losing these species and all the goods and services they give us would mean the collapse of our life support system and everything we care about and need to survive: our food, our health, our economy, our security – everything.

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The New York Times

March 17, 2021
For the first time, scientists have calculated how much planet-warming carbon dioxide is released into the ocean by bottom trawling, the practice of dragging enormous nets along the ocean floor to catch shrimp, whiting, cod and other fish. The answer: As much as global aviation releases into the air.

While preliminary, that was one of the most surprising findings of a groundbreaking new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study offers what is essentially a peer-reviewed, interactive road map for how nations can confront the interconnected crises of climate change and wildlife collapse at sea.

It follows similar recent research focused on protecting land, all with a goal of informing a global agreement on biodiversity to be negotiated this autumn in Kunming, China.

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Time Magazine

March 17, 2021
It’s been well established by now that the agricultural systems producing our food contribute at least one fifth of global anthropogenic carbon emissions—and up to a third if waste and transportation are factored in. A troubling new report points to a previously overlooked source: an industrial fishing process practiced by dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, China, and the E.U.

The study, published today in the scientific journal Nature, is the first to calculate the carbon cost of bottom trawling, in which fishing fleets drag immense weighted nets along the ocean floor, scraping up fish, shellfish and crustaceans along with significant portions of their habitats.

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National Geographic

March 17, 2021
The campaign to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030, supported by more than 70 nations, is known mostly for soaring ambition and scant achievement so far. Just 7 percent of the seas are protected and only 2.7 percent are highly protected.

“It is very optimistic to think we’ll reach ‘30 by 30,’” says Patricia Majluf, a Peruvian fisheries scientist who has worked to create a deep-sea protected area off Peru in the face of strong resistance from the fishing industry. Peru has protected less than half a percent of its offshore waters. The proposed Nazca Ridge Marine Protected Area, on an undersea mountain range that stretches out into the Pacific from the Peru coast, is expected to be finalized this spring. It would boost Peru’s protected waters to 8 percent.

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Nature

March 17, 2021
After a year of pandemic-induced delays, 2021 is set to be a big year for biodiversity, climate and the ocean. Later this year, world leaders are expected to gather for meetings of the United Nations conventions on biological diversity and climate to set future agendas. Ocean policies will be a priority for both.

Momentum is building for what is called the 30 × 30 campaign — a goal to protect 30% of the planet (both land and sea) by 2030. Last December, the 30% ocean goal was backed by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, which comprises the heads of state of 14 coastal nations, including some of the largest countries, such as Indonesia, and the smallest, like Palau. This is an important step.

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CFN

March 17, 2021

A new study published in the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature today offers a combined solution to several of humanity’s most pressing challenges. It is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood and provide a cheap, natural solution to address climate change—in addition to protecting embattled species and habitats.

An international team of 26 authors identified specific areas that, if protected, would safeguard over 80% of the habitats for endangered marine species, and increase fishing catches by more than eight million metric tons. The study is also the first to quantify the potential release of carbon dioxide into the ocean from trawling, a widespread fishing practice—and finds that trawling is pumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean every year, a volume of emissions similar to those of aviation.

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Scientific American - OpEd

March 12, 2021
Representative Deb Haaland, who is expected to be sworn in as President Biden’s new secretary of the interior next week, already faces a pressing deadline. Under the wide-ranging executive order on climate change that Biden signed during his first full week in office, the interior secretary has until the end of April to recommend steps that the United States should take “to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.”

The goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030—known as “30 by 30”—is the latest iteration of a longstanding conservation pipe dream, but Biden is not the only world leader now taking it seriously. Thanks in part to a $1 billion campaign funded by Swiss medical technology entrepreneur Hansjörg Wyss and endorsed by the National Geographic Society and the Nature Conservancy, the 30 by 30 goal was formally adopted in January by the newly formed High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, which includes more than 50 countries from six continents. The coalition members, led by the United Kingdom, Costa Rica and France, are urging their fellow signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity to embrace the target, too.

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World Economic Forum - OpEd

March 11, 2021
Most MPAs seek to protect critical ocean habitats and species from one or more existential or predicted threats. The vast majority of such threats, such as pollution and exploitation of nature, are human induced. For an MPA to function effectively there must be science-based monitoring of progress, management of human activities and the environment, surveillance, and enforcement of rules and regulations put into place to abate the threat and protect species and ecosystems.

To do this at scale requires significant effort. Achieving 30 percent protection and conservation of the whole ocean—both coastal and high seas—requires that we protect and conserve 109 million square kilometres (42 million square miles), an area more than 11 times the size of the entire United States.

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New York Times

March 11, 2021
With a million species at risk of extinction, dozens of countries are pushing to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and water by 2030. Their goal is to hammer out a global agreement at negotiations to be held in China later this year, designed to keep intact natural areas like old growth forests and wetlands that nurture biodiversity, store carbon and filter water.

But many people who have been protecting nature successfully for generations won’t be deciding on the deal: Indigenous communities and others who have kept room for animals, plants and their habitats, not by fencing off nature, but by making a small living from it. The key to their success, research shows, is not extracting too much.

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The Hill - OpEd

March 6, 2021
Too much of the chaos and tragedy that our world is experiencing is a consequence of our broken relationship with nature. 

A virus has spilled over from wildlife to humans, causing a catastrophic global pandemic. Climate change is fueling weather events that are unprecedented in scale and devastation. From wildfires in the United States, Australia, the Amazon and the Arctic, to dangerous and record-breaking winter storms in Texas. 

There is no easy cure for what ails the environment. No silver bullet can restore the natural world overnight. What we know is that for our planet to remain livable over the long-term, it is going to take thousands of place-based conservation efforts, led by Indigenous peoples and local communities who oversee the most healthy, biodiverse and intact lands and waters left on Earth. 

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NewEurope

March 4, 2021
On the occasion of the World Wildlife Day, the European Commission reiterated its invitation on March 3 to all world institutions to raise their voices to build the momentum for nature and help convince more governments to be ambitious at the crucial Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CoP 15) later this year.

“Humanity is destroying nature at an unprecedented rate, and we risk losing nearly 1 million species,” Commission Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans said. “This is a direct threat to our own health and wellbeing, as we are fully dependent on the planet’s rich web of life. We must urgently restore balance in our relationship with nature and reverse biodiversity loss. Action starts with awareness and the work done via coalitions like ‘United for Biodiversity’ is crucial to help put our natural environment on the path to recovery,” he added.

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