Outrage + Optimism [Podcast]

September 15, 2021
Today, only 15 percent of land and 7 percent of our ocean are protected. Nature needs more.

The science is very clear – to prevent a mass extinction crisis, support a growing global population, and address climate change, we must conserve at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

...So why now? The science is very, very clear - If we act now we can limit the disaster, and we could even reverse the trends of climate change in an equitable, just fashion. But how?

This week we’re joined by Rita El Zaghloul, Coordinator of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature & People on behalf of Costa Rica. She is the driving force behind ambition at The HAC’s 30x30 campaign, slamming the pedal to the metal on their aim to agree to this plan at the COP15 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in October. The best part about it? It centers indigenous leadership and indigenous rights, while mobilizing financial resources both publicly and privately to ensure protected areas are properly managed, all the while protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

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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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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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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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The Guardian

February 22, 2021
When it comes to the environment, few countries rival Costa Rica in terms of action and ambition.

The tiny Central American nation is aiming for total decarbonisation by 2050, not just a “net zero” target. It has regrown large areas of tropical rainforest after suffering some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Costa Ricans play a major role in international environmental politics, most notably Christiana Figueres, who helped to corral world leaders into agreeing the Paris accord.

Now Costa Rica has turned its attention to securing an ambitious international agreement on halting biodiversity loss. In January, more than 50 countries committed to the protection of 30% of the planet’s land and oceans as part of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, spearheaded by Costa Rica, which is a co-chair alongside France and the UK.

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Treehugger

January 28, 2021
Earth’s biodiversity is in trouble. A landmark 2019 assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that around one million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.1 At the same time, human actions have dramatically transformed 75 percent of the Earth’s surface and 66 percent of its ocean ecosystems.

To solve this problem, a group of more than 50 countries have come together under the banner of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People and pledged to protect 30 percent of Earth’s land and oceans by 2030. The initiative is being referred to in the media as HAC 30x30.

“Our future depends on preventing the collapse of the natural systems that provide our food, clean water, clean air and stable climate,” Rita El Zaghloul, HAC coordinator at the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica, told Treehugger in an email. “In order to preserve these crucial services for our sustainable economies, we must protect enough of the natural world to sustain them.”

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Republic of the Philippines

January 13, 2021
The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has expressed openness to the outcomes of the One Planet Summit, hosted by the French government, United Nations, and World Bank, on 11 January 2021.

“We welcome fresh commitments from world leaders, which the ACB views with much optimism and enthusiasm. These pledges pivot initiatives to conserve and restore ecosystems in the ASEAN region and across the globe, especially now that we are ushering in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration,” ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim said.

At the summit, governments, such as the United Kingdom (UK) and France, announced earmarking funds for nature-based solutions.  UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK will commit at least GBP 3 billion (USD 4 billion) to climate change solutions that protect and restore nature and biodiversity over five years. The summit also saw USD 10 billion earmarked for the Great Green Wall, a project to restore degraded lands in the Sahel along an 8,000-kilometre band from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, along with new financial commitments from Norway and Germany.

Some 50 nations expressed support for the plan to carve out 30 per cent of global lands and oceans for protection by 2030 (30x30 goals).

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Xinhua

January 12, 2021
World leaders on Monday reiterated the urgent need for concerted global action to safeguard biodiversity and for a global governance framework on climate issues in the post-pandemic era.

"We have been poisoning air, land and water -- and filling oceans with plastics," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, while addressing world leaders at the One Planet Summit for biodiversity.

Organized by the French government in partnership with the UN and the World Bank, the One Planet Summit brought together world leaders to commit action to protect and restore biodiversity. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the event was largely virtual.

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Independent

January 12, 2021
A group of 50 countries has pledged to protect at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030 in a bid to tackle the world’s worsening biodiversity crisis.

The commitment to restoring nature was announced on Monday at the One Planet Summit, a key meeting for world leaders hosted by France, the World Bank and the UN.

The coalition of countries, led by the UK, Costa Rica and France, together account for around 28 per cent of the world’s land animals and a quarter of the land’s carbon reserves.

The group aims to galvanise greater action on stemming biodiversity loss ahead of a key UN biodiversity summit, which is to be held in Kunming, China later this year in May.  

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PEW

January 12, 2021
In 2021, the parties to the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are expected to adopt a new 10-year global biodiversity framework with goals and targets for ocean protection.

In support of a growing call to protect and conserve 30% of the ocean by 2030, on Jan. 12 an informal coalition of nongovernmental and other civil society organizations shared with representatives from CBD a statement calling for a robust global biodiversity framework that will safeguard our ocean ecosystems for the long-term benefit of communities, fishers, biodiversity, and Earth’s climate.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation

January 11, 2021

A global coalition to protect at least 30% of the planet's land and ocean by 2030 has swelled its ranks to about 50 countries, as governments said at a summit hosted by France Monday that biodiversity loss and climate change should be tackled jointly.

First launched in 2020, the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People added more than 20 nations, including Japan, Germany, Kenya, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Ecuador.

Its member countries combined are home to an estimated 30% of animal and plant species on land and a quarter of carbon stores in biomass and soil, the coalition said.

Their boundaries also contain 28% of ocean areas that are most important to preserve global marine biodiversity, and more than a third of carbon stocks in the Earth's seas.

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La Nación

January 11, 2021
Este lunes 11 de enero de 2021 será el lanzamiento de la Coalición de Alta Ambición para la Naturaleza y las Personas (HAC, por sus siglas en inglés), iniciativa que busca proteger, como mínimo, 30% de las superficies terrestre y marina del planeta de aquí al 2030.

Se trata de una iniciativa enfocada en el secuestro de carbono, para salvar especies amenazadas, la cual es liderada por Costa Rica y Francia, con el Reino Unido como aliado en temas marítimos.

El proyecto será presentado en el marco de la cuarta edición de la cumbre One Planet Summit, organizada por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), Francia y el Banco Mundial.

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France 24

January 11, 2021
There is a growing coalition of nations calling on countries to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 under the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, with Costa Rica leading the charge. Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada tells FRANCE 24 that losing ecosystems and biodiversity creates problems for humanity.

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Der Spiegel

January 11, 2021
Auf dem Klima- und Artenschutzgipfel »One Planet Summit« beraten Staats- und Regierungschefs aus aller Welt über verstärkte Bemühungen zur Rettung der Umwelt. Den ersten Schritt macht dabei Frankreich. Gastgeber Präsident Emmanuel Macron warb bei dem virtuellen Treffen am Montag in Paris für ein Projekt in Afrika, das mit Milliarden-Investitionen gefördert werden soll: die große Grüne Mauer.

Dafür sollen Tausende Kilometer Bäume wie ein grünes Band in der Sahelzone gepflanzt werden – von Dakar bis Dschibuti. Dies soll die Ausbreitung der Sahara und somit die Wüstenbildung stoppen und die Region auch vor Hungersnöten und Dürre schützen. Das Projekt ist seit vielen Jahren geplant, kam bisher jedoch nur langsam voran. Die Sahelzone in Afrika ist besonders vom Klimawandel betroffen.

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Campaign For Nature

January 11, 2021
As the natural world continues to disappear at an unprecedented rate, a group of over 50 countries—which (as of 10 January 2021) together harbour 30% of global terrestrial biodiversity (using vertebrates as a proxy) and a quarter of the world’s terrestrial carbon stores (biomass and soil), and 28% of ocean biodiversity priority areas and over a third of the ocean carbon stores—have announced their commitment to protect at least 30% of the globe’s land and ocean by 2030, and to champion an ambitious global deal to halt species loss and protect ecosystems that are vital to human health and economic security. Their announcement kicks off what Costa Rica, France and the United Kingdom call an urgent year for action on biodiversity and the climate. 

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