Campaign for Nature

September 10, 2021
Members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature meeting in France for the World Conservation Congress approved today a much-anticipated motion to protect at least 30% of land and ocean by 2030, known as 30x30. Motion 101 calls on IUCN members to support:

• recognition of “the evolving science, the majority of which supports protecting, conserving and restoring at least half or more of  the planet is likely necessary to reverse biodiversity loss, address climate change and as a foundation for sustainably managing the whole planet.”

• “at a minimum, a target of effectively and equitably protecting and conserving at least 30% of terrestrial areas and of inland waters … and of coastal and marine areas, respectively, with a focus on sites of particular importance for biodiversity, in well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) by 2030 in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.”

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EuroNews

September 3, 2021
A major conference on biodiversity opens in the French city of Marseille on Friday.

Over 1,000 governmental and civil society organisations will discuss how to protect some of the one million species threatened by human actions.

"The answer is very simple. We have natural capital. We have nature. We were taking, and taking, and taking for decades to build up our society. Now we should stop," Bruno Oberle, director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told Euronews.

"We should take less and we should reinvest in this natural capital more. So taking less and giving more back to nature. This means, for example, bigger conservation area, well managed, well-protected at the right places, 30% of the surface of the planet until 2030."

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Global Citizen

August 31, 2021
By now you've probably heard of COP26 — the shorthand name for the next major UN climate summit, rescheduled for November in Glasgow after being delayed a year by the coronavirus pandemic.

But another big "Convention of the Parties" (COP) starts a month earlier — one that is far less talked about but also critically important. That is COP15: the two-part UN biodiversity summit that will kick off in October online and finish next May in the southern Chinese city of Kunming.

Efforts to protect the natural world have yet to achieve the same high profile as those to limit climate change, despite advocacy by British naturalist David Attenborough and many others.

Losses of crucial ecosystems like rainforests and wetlands, as well as animal species, have accelerated even as governments, businesses, financiers, and conservation groups seek effective ways to protect and restore more of the Earth's land and seas.

So what is COP15, and what does it hope to achieve?

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Mongabay

August 31, 2021
In 2018, philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss put $1 billion toward initiatives to help a range of stakeholders conserve 30% of the planet in its natural state by 2030 via protected areas, other effective conservation measures (OECMs), and Indigenous- and community-led conservation. One of the products of that commitment is the Campaign for Nature, an advocacy, communications, and alliance-building effort to turn that 30×30 target into a reality.

The Director of Campaign for Nature is Brian O’Donnell, who previously headed the Conservation Lands Foundation and worked as the Public Lands Director of Trout Unlimited. O’Donnell told Mongabay that in the three years since its launch, more than 70 countries have endorsed the “30×30” goal, ranging from G7 nations to Costa Rica. Those endorsements have been supported by the development of sub-initiatives and alliances, including the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and Global Oceans Alliance.

And critically, says O’Donnell, one of the key tenets of the campaign — centering conservation efforts around the rights of Indigenous Peoples — has continued to gain traction and prominence in 30×30 discussions.

“Campaign for Nature seeks to ensure that Indigenous and local community rights are advanced in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, as Indigenous peoples and local communities have demonstrated that they are incredibly effective stewards of biodiversity and success for a Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will rely on this,” O’Donnell told Mongabay.

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The Guardian

August 18, 2021
A key United Nations biodiversity summit has been delayed for a third time due to the pandemic, the Chinese environment ministry has announced, as environmentalists pledged the delay would “not mean taking our foot off the pedal”.

In a statement, the Chinese ministry of ecology and environment confirmed that Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, would be delayed, and that negotiations for this decade’s targets will be split into two phases so that governments can meet face-to-face in Kunming, China, in the first half of 2022.

The talks had been scheduled for October this year after two previous delays due to the coronavirus pandemic. The first phase of the meeting, which will be largely procedural, will be held in the Chinese city between 11 and 15 October, with most people attending virtually. Countries will then negotiate the targets for the global biodiversity framework that governments will aim to meet by the end of the decade in Kunming from 25 April to 8 May 2022.

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Campaign For Nature

August 18, 2021
Following the first draft of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), officials announced today new dates for the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15). The biodiversity summit, where 196 countries will agree on an action plan for ending the nature crisis, is now scheduled to take place in two parts: virtually in October 2021 from the 11 to the 15 and in person April 25 through May 8, 2022 in Kunming, China. The Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI), and the Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) will hold face-to-face meetings in January 2022 in Switzerland. 

The aim of the delay is to allow for equitable and safe face-to-face negotiations before and at COP15 which, due to the coronavirus pandemic, cannot happen before the initial date set for October 2021.  

Despite the meeting’s delay, the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, a coalition of 65 countries led by Costa Rica, France and the United Kingdom, are driving forward with ambitious plans to protect and conserve nature and donor nations are beginning to commit to increase finance for nature.

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Global Citizen

August 16, 2021
For thousands of years, the natural world has allowed human societies to flourish by providing food, water, and materials for shelter and medicine. But the environments that supply these resources — bodies of water, fertile landscapes, tropical forests — are being depleted at an ever-accelerating pace.

The planet’s ecosystems can tolerate only so much extraction on an annual basis; beyond these limits, they can’t replenish and rebound to their normal levels. In 2021, countries exceeded the planetary limit on July 29, meaning 5 full months of natural resource extraction will take place in environments that have already been functionally exhausted.

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Conservation International

August 9, 2021
Nature is in crisis: Nearly 1 million species face extinction due to human activities and climate change.

To help prevent widespread ecological collapse, many world leaders have rallied around a common goal to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 — a target informally known as the “30 by 30" initiative.

However, the environmental movement has a complicated past when it comes to working with the world’s Indigenous peoples. Though they are custodians of more than a quarter of Earth’s land and seas and protect 80 percent of global biodiversity, Indigenous peoples have frequently been sidelined from environmental efforts — in some cases, even removed from their territories in the name of conservation.

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New Straits Times

July 30, 2021
In mid-July, the Secretariat of the United Nations-administered Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) provided the first detailed look at a new Global Biodiversity Framework, on which nations will vote at a summit scheduled for Kunming, China, in October.

Once this is formally in place, it will establish goals and 21 specific targets that will guide global efforts this decade to preserve and protect nature and its essential services to people.

The target drawing most attention is one championed by the international Campaign for Nature — conserving at least 30 per cent of land and sea areas worldwide within equitably managed, ecologically-representative and well-connected protected area systems.

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The Guardian

July 12, 2021
Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss.

The goals set out by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)to help halt and reverse the ecological destruction of Earth by the end of the decade also include protecting at least 30% of the world’s oceans and land and providing a third of climate crisis mitigation through nature by 2030.

The latest draft of the agreement, which follows gruelling virtual scientific and financial negotiations in May and June, will be scrutinised by governments before a key summit in the Chinese city of Kunming, where the final text will be negotiated.

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Campaign For Nature

July 12, 2021
Officials released today “Draft 1” of a global biodiversity framework--known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)--that includes three elements critical to addressing catastrophic biodiversity loss and the extinction crisis: a target to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, a target to retain intact natural areas, and a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ rights over their lands, territories and resources.

Nature is in a state of crisis, which poses a threat as serious as climate change to the future of humanity. Evidence shows that the ongoing and rapid loss of natural areas across the world poses a grave threat to the health and security of all living things.   

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Reuters

June 28, 2021
A growing global push to safeguard nature by pledging to protect about a third of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 will fall short unless biodiversity-rich Southeast Asian nations get behind the ambitious proposal, environmentalists have warned.

Leaders of the G7 wealthy nations this month backed a coalition of about 60 countries that have already promised to conserve at least 30% of their land and oceans by 2030 (30x30) to curb climate change and the loss of plant and animal species.

Cambodia is the only Southeast Asian nation to have signed up to the goal so far, although it has been endorsed by countries in other parts of Asia-Pacific, including Japan, Pakistan and the Maldives.

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Reuters

June 28, 2021
A growing global push to safeguard nature by pledging to protect about a third of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 will fall short unless biodiversity-rich Southeast Asian nations get behind the ambitious proposal, environmentalists have warned.

Leaders of the G7 wealthy nations this month backed a coalition of about 60 countries that have already promised to conserve at least 30% of their land and oceans by 2030 (30x30) to curb climate change and the loss of plant and animal species.

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New York Times

June 13, 2021
President Biden joined with leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations on Sunday to take action aimed at holding down global temperatures, but failed to set a firm end date on the burning of coal, which is a primary contributor to global warming.

Mr. Biden and six other leaders of the Group of 7 nations promised to cut collective emissions in half by 2030 and to try to stem the rapid extinction of animals and plants, calling it an “equally important existential threat.” They agreed that by next year they would stop international funding for any coal project that lacked technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions and vowed to achieve an “overwhelmingly decarbonized” electricity sector by the end of the decade.

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Campaign for Nature

June 13, 2021
Today G7 Heads of State announced a joint commitment to a historic “Nature Compact” during their meeting in Cornwall, UK.  The Nature Compact is the most wide-ranging and ambitious set of coordinated actions to address the crisis facing nature ever agreed to by G7 countries. 

 Three of the Campaign for Nature’s key priorities feature prominently in the G7 Nature Compact, including:

• An agreement to support new global targets to protect and conserve at least 30% of global land and at least 30% of global ocean by 2030.  The agreement states that the nations will lead by example by effectively protecting and conserving the same percentage of their national land, inland waters and coastal and marine areas by 2030.   

• A commitment to prioritize the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in co-design, decision-making and implementation of the systems change needed for the Nature Compact’s success.

• A pledge to dramatically increase investment in nature from all sources including the percentage of public climate finance directed towards nature.  

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