Campaign for Nature

May 21, 2021
Today, G7 Ministers responsible for Climate and Environment issued a sweeping communiqué laying out an urgent action plan for how to tackle the twin biodiversity and climate crises. 

In the communiqué, they assert their commitment to “conserving or protecting at least 30% of global land and at least 30% of the global ocean by 2030  to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and address climate change.” They further urge that Indigenous Peoples, and local communities be included as “full partners in the implementation of this target.”

This historic call for greater and more coordinated climate and biodiversity action comes in the leadup to a meeting in Kunming, China this year, when delegates from 190 countries will agree on an action plan for ending the biodiversity crisis that can address the accelerating loss of species and protect the vital ecosystems that safeguard human health and economic security. 

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Climate Home News

May 20, 2021
Germany has launched a $1 billion fund which aims to halt global biodiversity loss and provide long-term financial support for protected areas across three continents. 

The launch comes after countries failed to meet internationally agreed 2020 targets to prevent the destruction of plants and wildlife. 

The Legacy Landscapes Fund aims to mobilise enough funding from private and public donors to provide 15 years of financial support for 30 conservation areas. 

At a launch event on Wednesday, Germany’s finance minister Gerd Muller said the fund would “provide lasting, reliable core funding for at least 30 biodiversity hotspots in Africa, Asia and Latin America”. 

The German government and several private donors have invested the first $100 million in the fund which will be used for seven pilot projects in four African countries, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Bolivia. Funding will be used to pay park rangers, support local communities, fund surveillance and monitoring and maintain infrastructure. 

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Vox

May 20, 2021
As President Joe Biden moves quickly to reinstate the full slate of environmental policies weakened by former President Donald Trump, including the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act, he’s signaling that climate change and biodiversity loss are now major priorities for the US.

Earlier this month, the Interior Department also launched a campaign to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030, joining more than 50 other countries that have committed to that goal. Biden is pursuing the target, known as 30 by 30, alongside a new and more ambitious commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Yet there’s one big problem with this post-Trump environmental renaissance: The US still hasn’t joined the most important international agreement to conserve biodiversity, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). And it isn’t just a small, inconsequential treaty. Designed to protect species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity, the treaty has been ratified by every other country or territory aside from the Holy See. Among other achievements, CBD has pushed countries to create national biodiversity strategies and to expand their networks of protected areas.

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Reuters

May 19, 2021
Germany helped launch a new billion-dollar fund on Wednesday to tackle rapidly depleting global biodiversity, as countries missed key land and marine conservation targets but prepare to ramp up efforts in the decade ahead.

Protecting biodiversity has risen up the global agenda, not least because scientists say the destruction of remote natural habitats facilitates the spread of diseases such as the new coronavirus to humans as they come into closer contact with other species.

The United Nations hopes to secure an agreement at the next Biodiversity Convention meeting in China in October to protect and conserve 30% of the Earth's land and water by 2030.

"The concept of '30 by 30' is quite a big political ask, but we need these kinds of targets because they are a perfect way to harness political will," said James Hardcastle, a conservationist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), referring to the campaign by its tagline.

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Global Landscapes Forum

May 18, 2021
The past couple of years have seen a wave of reports on Earth’s biodiversity and its dire state, finding that 1 million species are under threat of extinction and that populations of monitored animals have declined 68 percent since 1970. But how much are these scientific findings making it through to the zeitgeist? Are their numbers changing how much people care?

A new report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), found that the number of people engaging in conversations and actions on biodiversity loss numbers hundreds of millions and is on the rise. This “eco-wakening,” as the report deems the trend, is most quickly climbing in Asia and emerging markets, with top growth and engagement rates in India, Pakistan and Indonesia, as measured between 2016 and 2020.

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The Conversation

May 11, 2021
President Joe Biden calls climate change “the existential crisis of our time” and has taken steps to curb it that match those words. They include returning the U.S. to the Paris Agreement; creating a new climate Cabinet position; introducing a plan to slash fossil fuel subsidies; and announcing ambitious goals to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

But climate change is not the only global environmental threat that demands attention. Scientists widely agree that loss of wildlife and the natural environment is an equally urgent crisis. Some argue that biodiversity loss threatens to become Earth’s sixth mass extinction. But unlike efforts to fight climate change – which center on clear, measurable goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – there is no globally accepted metric for saving biodiversity.

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The Hill

May 8, 2021
How much do you know about the natural world around you? According to a recent survey by SWNS Digital, a majority of people know less than one might assume. 

The results of the survey revealed to researchers some of the common misconceptions that people have about the “shrinking natural world,” like the incorrect assumption that it is more concerning for the environment when an animal goes extinct rather than a plant or insect. According to the survey of 2,000 respondents, approximately 64 percent believed this to be true. 

The survey also revealed that the average person believes that the planet loses 101 species per year to extinction, when in reality the number is actually at least 100 times that amount. 

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Mongabay

May 7, 2021
The world is brimming with bad news about people failing to take care of the Earth. But there is a way to change the narrative, says Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke. The key, according to him, is to strive for a “nature positive” world that is less about destruction and more about restoration.

“We know we’re on a rocket sled into the abyss, and we need to turn that around 100%, going the other direction on a rocket sled towards a positive solution,” Locke told Mongabay in an interview. “Tinkering is not possible. We can’t just [take] an old crystal radio set where you just kind of turn the dial a little bit [to] move from one station to another. It won’t work. We need to be on the internet, instead of listening to the radio — that kind of level of change.”

Locke is the lead author of a new paper published April 30, a few days before the start of a six-week virtual meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), an intergovernmental scientific advisory body to the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). At this meeting, the SBSTTA will provide advice on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, Guido Broekhoven, head of policy research and development at WWF, told Mongabay in an interview.

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UN News

April 21, 2021
The second World Ocean Assessment (WOA II) is the work of hundreds of scientists from across the globe and follows an initial report published in 2015.  

It warns that many benefits the ocean provides are increasingly being undermined by human actions, the UN chief said, describing the findings as alarming. 

“Pressures from many human activities continue to degrade the ocean and destroy essential habitats – such as mangrove forests and coral reefs – hindering their capacity to help address climate change impacts”, Mr. Guterres said in a video message. 

“These pressures also come from human activities on land and coastal areas, which bring dangerous pollutants into the ocean, including plastic waste. Meanwhile, overfishing is estimated to have led to an annual loss of $88.9 billion in net benefits”. 

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The Guardian

April 15, 2021
Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat, a study suggests.

These fragments of wilderness undamaged by human activities are mainly in parts of the Amazon and Congo tropical forests, east Siberian and northern Canadian forests and tundra, and the Sahara. Invasive alien species including cats, foxes, rabbits, goats and camels have had a major impact on native species in Australia, with the study finding no intact areas left.

The researchers suggest reintroducing a small number of important species to some damaged areas, such as elephants or wolves – a move that could restore up to 20% of the world’s land to ecological intactness.

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European Environment Agency

April 15, 2021
Climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystems are linked and all have devastating consequences for our economic and social stability, health and well-being. Working with nature is increasingly recognised as an efficient way to tackle these growing challenges, according the new EEA report ‘Nature-based solutions in Europe: Policy, knowledge and practice for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.’

The EEA report provides up-to-date information for policymakers on the how to apply nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and at the same time making use of multiple societal benefits that these solutions can bring. Drawing on selected examples across Europe, the report shows how impacts of extreme weather and climate-related events are already tackled in this way. It also assesses global and European policies and how nature-based solutions are increasingly being integrated in the efforts to shift towards sustainable development.

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Phys.org

April 9, 2021
Unless nations dramatically improve on carbon cutting pledges made under the 2015 Paris climate treaty, the planet's richest concentrations of animal and plant life will be irreversibly ravaged by global warming, scientists warned Friday.

An analysis of 8,000 published risk assessments for species showed a high danger for extinction in nearly 300 biodiversity "hot spots", on land and in the sea, if temperatures rise three degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, they reported in the journal Biological Conservation.

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Bloomberg Green

April 8, 2021
The lemurs of Madagascar and Himalayan snow leopards are among the hundreds of endemic species that will all but disappear if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked. 

The plants and animals that are unique to a single location such as one island or one country, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, according to research by a global team of scientists published in the Biological Conservation journal on Friday. They’re almost three times more likely to go extinct, according to an analysis of almost 300 biodiversity hotspots on land and sea. 

“Unfortunately, our study shows that those biodiversity rich-spots will not be able to act as a safe haven from climate change,” said Mariana Vale, a researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a co-author of the study. “This could greatly increase extinction rates worldwide.”

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BBC

April, 8, 2021
Speaking at an IMF and World Bank meeting, Prince William said protecting nature continued to play only a small part in combating global warming.

He said investing in reforestation and sustainable agriculture were "cost effective" ways of tackling the issue.

Banks have come under increasing pressure to step up efforts to help fight climate change.

Just this week, Barclays' London headquarters was the target of a protest staged by climate activist group Extinction Rebellion. Members held placards and broke several windows as they called on the bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies.

Addressing central bankers and finance ministers at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, the duke said the world's natural habitats continue to decline at an "alarming rate".

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NBC News

April 7, 2021
In 1948, after Nazi Germany exterminated millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II, the United Nations adopted a convention establishing a new crime so heinous it demanded collective action. Genocide, the nations declared, was “condemned by the civilized world” and justified intervention in the affairs of sovereign states.

Now, a small but growing number of world leaders including Pope Francis and French President Emmanuel Macron have begun citing an offense they say poses a similar threat to humanity and remains beyond the reach of international criminal law: ecocide, or widespread destruction of the environment.

The pope describes ecocide as “the massive contamination of air, land and water,” or “any action capable of producing an ecological disaster,” and has proposed making it a sin for Roman Catholics.

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