World Economic Forum

September 27, 2022
The race to protect the natural world and its biodiversity reaches a critical milestone this December as countries gather for the United Nations’ COP15 meeting.

The stakes for the summit - in Montreal, Canada - could hardly be higher. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says: “We are losing our suicidal war against nature”.

COP15 aims to give biodiversity the same levels of international protection as the climate.

The race to protect the natural world and its biodiversity reaches a critical milestone this December as countries gather for the United Nations’ COP15 meeting.

The stakes for the summit - in Montreal, Canada - could hardly be higher. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says: “We are losing our suicidal war against nature”.

COP15 aims to give biodiversity the same levels of international protection as the climate.

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Reuters

September 21, 2022
World leaders on Tuesday stepped up financial support and conservation commitments to combat the global biodiversity crisis that threatens more than one million plant and animal species with extinction.

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Germany pledged 1.5 billion euros per year in international biodiversity funding — more than doubling its current commitments.

Nations will soon gather in Montreal, Canada, for a critical U.N. biodiversity summit (COP15) to finalise and adopt a framework to protect and conserve nature.

Over half of the world's GDP depends heavily on the natural world, according to a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum.

The December conference "needs to be a turning point for our conservation efforts", said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he announced the new funding. "With this contribution, we want to send a strong signal for an ambitious outcome of the biodiversity COP15."

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Business Green

September 21, 2022
World leaders have stressed the importance of increased funding for conservation efforts, after this week highlighting how the upcoming COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Montreal in December represents an essential opportunity for tackling global biodiversity loss.

Speaking at the Countdown to COP15: Landmark Leaders' Event for a Nature-Positive World event in New York yesterday, a series of world leaders declared the success of COP15 represented a priority for their governments, as they called on countries to work together to secure "an ambitious global biodiversity agreement" in Montreal.

Leaders said an ambitious new global accord was urgently required "in the face of an escalating nature crisis that is threatening health, food security, and livelihoods, while undermining climate action and sustainable development".

Leaders from 93 regions and the European Union reaffirmed their commitment to reverse biodiversity loss and secure a 'nature-positive' world by 2030, throwing their weight behind the global campaign to protect and conserve at least 30 per cent of all land and oceans by 2030.

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The Guardian

September 1, 2022
It is now less than 100 days until Cop15, the UN convention on biological diversity. At these talks, which are taking place in Montreal, Canada in December, governments from around the world will come together to agree targets aimed at halting the destruction of the natural world and protecting biodiversity. With the Earth experiencing the largest loss of life since the extinction of the dinosaurs, what is decided at this meeting could shape the future of the planet and humanity.

Madeleine Finlay speaks to biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston about how negotiations have been going so far, and what’s next on the road to Cop15.

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The Guardian

August 30, 2022
With only a few short months until Cop15 in Montreal, governments are gearing up to create targets on biodiversity for the next decade. The world has so far failed to meet any UN targets on halting the loss of nature, yet awareness of the challenge is greater than ever. Here we examine why this UN meeting matters and how it could herald meaningful action on nature loss.

Nature is in crisis and for the past three decades governments have been meeting to ensure the survival of the species and ecosystems that underpin human civilisation. The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 saw the creation of three conventions: on climate change, desertification and biodiversity. The aim of the convention on biological diversity (CBD) is for countries to conserve the natural world, its sustainable use, and to share the benefits of its genetic resources.

Every 10 years, governments agree new targets on protecting biodiversity, which they aim to meet by the end of the decade. The last round of targets was agreed at Cop10 in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, when governments pledged to halve the loss of natural habitats and expand nature reserves to 17% of the world’s land area by 2020, among other targets.

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The Guardian - Opinion

August 30, 2022
They are known as “the twins”, born in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro but diplomatically separated and left to develop at different speeds. One is the UN’s climate change convention, or UNFCCC, now a fully fledged global agreement with huge annual summits attended by heads of state and rock stars pledging to reduce emissions.

The other, the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), aims to protect the world’s 10 million species of animals and plants, but it meets less often, is modest by comparison, and has yet to make its mark with the public in the same way as climate.

This year, for the first time the “big brother” climate meeting, Cop27, and the “little brother” nature meeting, Cop15, will converge within days of each other before Christmas, albeit 5,600 miles apart, in Egypt and Canada. Both will attract thousands of delegates, lobbyists and non-government groups and there is much optimism that a good result in one will improve the chances of success in the other.

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Eco-Business

August 12, 2022
Biodiversity encompasses the full variety of life – all genes, species and ecosystems – and it is in danger. That means we are too. As this article explains, a major conference in December 2022 could have a big impact on our collective fate by helping to end biodiversity loss and restore nature.

COP15 is shorthand for the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In fact, COP15 includes meetings of parties to three international agreements: the CBD and its two subsidiary protocols, namely the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing.

The CBD was agreed at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992. It has three objectives: the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. Some 195 countries and the European Union are now parties to the CBD. The United States is the only member state of the United Nations that has not ratified the agreement. The CBD’s Cartagena Protocol has 173 parties and its Nagoya Protocol has 137.

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Fast Company

August 8, 2022
Navigating the investment landscape is increasingly complex. Supply chain issues, soaring inflation, rising energy prices, spiraling cost of raw materials—the list goes on.

Increasingly, “alarming” levels of global biodiversity loss—or, in investment-speak, the permanent destruction of natural capital—must also be taken into account. In fact, the situation has reached a crisis point where investors are now recognizing the direct line of risk between their portfolios and the natural resources they depend on.

All is not lost. As investors finally start to quantify the risk of global biodiversity loss in terms of dollars, it could spark the level of change that has been so urgently needed for so long. Indeed, investment is now being billed as a key area of debate at the upcoming UN COP-15 summit on biodiversity.

Alongside the significant economic opportunity there is of course also a climate imperative on financial companies to halt the ecological destruction of the Earth. Thankfully, these companies are starting to take notice and establish roots in the movement to reverse biodiversity loss.

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UNDP

August 4, 2022
Reiyia is among leaders fighting for the rights of Indigenous communities and calling for stronger action, as up to 80 percent of the negotiating text in the 20 action targets of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework draft agreement have remained unresolved, threatening progress at the up-coming COP15 conference. While almost 100 countries support the proposal to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030 under the framework, with the protection of Indigenous rights a critical element of this initiative, countries failed to agree on fundamental issues.

These prominent issues include how much funding would be committed to conserve biodiversity; or what percentage figures the world should strive to protect, conserve and restore to address the extinction crisis. Experts have called for the recognition of the land, territories and traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). Additionally, Indigenous advocates and allies are pushing to secure the free, prior and informed consent of IPLCs in conservation policies as key for the framework to succeed.

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World Economic Forum

July 25, 2022
A recent report from The Environment Agency found a quarter of England’s mammals and almost a fifth of UK plants are threatened with extinction. With only an abysmal 50% of biodiversity remaining, the UK today ranks in the bottom ten of all countries globally. The present situation may look grim, but the future is potentially bleaker if we don’t act fast. The UN predicts the colossal extinction of one million species by 2039 - it’s clear we need to take action now to drive the change in the world, and humanity’s very survival, needs.

The absence of an urgent response from global leaders to the crisis has taken the loss of the world’s biodiversity to a crisis point, as it now poses as great a risk to humanity as global warming. Ongoing deprioritisation over more immediate global problems, such as the cost of living crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic has stagnated action and accelerated the loss of biodiversity. The delaying of the world’s foremost biodiversity conference, the COP15 summit, four times is proof of this. But humanity sleepwalking into extinction is a disaster, even if it takes fifteen years, and is worthy of urgent global attention.

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Diálogo China

July 21, 2022
After two years of postponements and a change in format, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP15 biodiversity talks will now take place in Montreal, Canada, this December. There is still much work to do in the coming months, if countries are to secure a new global agreement on protecting biodiversity in the coming decade.

At the recent UN Ocean Conference, which took place in Lisbon earlier this month, China Dialogue Ocean spoke with Elizabeth Mrema, the CBD’s executive secretary, about progress so far, on why the talks were relocated from China to Canada, and what needs to happen in the run-up to the event.

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Campaign For Nature

July 21, 2022
At the Africa Nature Finance Forum, held yesterday on the sidelines of the inaugural African Protected Areas Congress (APAC) 2022, government leaders and experts from across Africa called for an urgent increase in financing to protect the world’s biodiversity.

“By 2100, we may lose half of our bird and animal species, 20-30% of the productivity of African lakes and significant numbers of our plant species,” said Hon. Lee White, Minister of Water, Forests, the Sea, and Environment, Gabon. “In this context, without strong action, we will create instability and security issues all over the African continent. One of the key elements is the mobilization of predictable and sustainable resources. This is why we need to think about innovative and sustainable finance for nature.” 

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IUCN

July 19, 2022
The IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) taking place in Kigali this week offers an opportunity for BIODEV2030 stakeholders from six African countries - Benin, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Uganda – to demonstrate their progress in mainstreaming biodiversity in priority business sectors.

BIODEV2030 is working in a total of 16 countries, testing different approaches to mainstream biodiversity and catalyse voluntary commitments in key economic sectors. At a global level, BIODEV2030 is sharing its outcomes and lessons learned to inspire other countries to take similar action in support of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework being negotiated under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

In addition to the countries mentioned above, BIODEV2030 is operating in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, and Tunisia, as well as in Fiji, Guyana, and Vietnam.  Such diversity creates a unique opportunity for the countries to learn from each other, based on a shared multi-stakeholder diagnosis and dialogue, which reflects each country’s particular realities.

“Mainstreaming is a subject that is often misunderstood and largely theoretical, which is why a practical, evidence-based approach at the country level is so welcome,” said Sonia Peña Moreno, Director of IUCN’s International Policy Centre.  

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China Dialogue

July 19, 2022
On 21 June, China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) announced that the second phase of COP15 – the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity – would be relocated from the southern Chinese city of Kunming to Montreal, Canada, and held 5–17 December.

The news confirmed rumours that had been circulating for some time, and sparked widespread discussion. I have been working closely on COP15 for three years and was not surprised by the change of venue. But it remains disappointing.

Originally scheduled for October 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic saw the meeting initially postponed to May 2021, and then split into two phases. The first, made up of non-negotiation agenda items, was held last October and most international participants attended virtually. The second phase was due to take place in the first half of this year.

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PHYS.ORG

July 18, 2022
Delegates from across Africa launched Monday in Rwanda the first continent-wide gathering about the role of protected areas in ensuring the future of our planet.

The IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) is being held just a few months before the COP15 summit in December when global leaders are aiming to adopt a much-delayed pact to shield nature from the damage wrought by human activity.

"Protected areas are critical for the survival of the planet," International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) director general Bruno Oberle said on the opening day of the talks in the capital Kigali.

"And the more we manage them for the benefit of people and nature,the more we will build a future where everyone—human and animal—thrives," he said on Twitter.

Organisers said APAC will aim to shape the role of protected and conserved areas in safeguarding Africa's wildlife, delivering vital ecosystem services, and promoting sustainable development while conserving the continent's cultural heritage and traditions.

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