Mail & Guardian

April 4, 2022
Can humanity curb spending that harms the world’s biodiversity and instead focus funding on protecting it? That question is at the heart of negotiations in Geneva, which will set the stage for a crucial United Nations COP15 biodiversity summit in China later this year. 

Almost 200 countries are to adopt a global framework to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30% protected by 2030.

These ambitions will only be met with a new approach to biodiversity funding and a rethink of the huge sums spent on subsidies harmful to nature such as fossil fuels, agriculture and fishing, according to observers. This can often result in environmental destruction and encourage unsustainable levels of production and consumption.

The exact figure that the world spends on these harmful subsidies is debated, although the group Business for Nature estimates that it could be as much as $1.8-trillion every year, or 2% of global GDP. 

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China Dialogue

April 4, 2022
Negotiators and observers left the latest meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) with renewed momentum but with many issues still unresolved, including how to find the missing US$700 billion needed annually to protect and restore nature.

The two-and-a-half week session in Geneva saw the first purely face-to-face negotiations since before the Covid-19 pandemic began. With just a few months before COP15 – the major CBD meeting, to be held in China – it was also billed as the last chance to make significant changes to the draft text that came out of the last CBD meeting in October, which had been widely criticised.

The Geneva talks saw many additions to the text, but most are in square brackets, meaning they have yet to be agreed upon. An extra meeting has now been scheduled for June in Nairobi to try and find consensus.

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IUCN

March 29, 2022
As the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) talks close in Geneva, Director of IUCN’s International Policy Centre Sonia Peña Moreno reflects on two weeks of negotiations, some missed opportunities, and her hopes for future meetings. Going forward, Parties to the CBD must reconnect with reality and continue to craft a simple, action-oriented post-2020 global biodiversity framework that clearly spells out what must be done to safeguard nature and the services it provides to humanity.

The first in-person meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in over two years opened on Monday 14 March in Geneva, Switzerland. If the opening statements were an indication, the meetings began with high expectations. Parties to the Convention stated their hope to advance a global plan to protect and restore biodiversity for the next decade and beyond (a post-2020 global biodiversity framework).

However, as the days went by, progress became elusive and was replaced by a lack of agreement. The draft text, even on seemingly uncontroversial issues, became full of brackets – denoting text that has yet to be agreed. The overwhelming number of sessions and side-meetings translated into fatigue, and the positive tone became one of frustration.

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The Seattle Times

March 29, 2022
Environmentalists are criticizing slow progress at a U.N.-backed meeting of nearly all the world’s countries toward beefing up protections for biodiversity on Earth, ahead of a crucial meeting expected later this year in China where delegates could sign a global agreement.

A total of 195 countries — but not the United States — which are parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity wrapped up a two-week meeting Tuesday that aimed to make progress toward a deal to prevent the loss of biodiversity and avoid the extinction of many vulnerable species. It also addresses the emergence of pathogens like the coronavirus, which damage both lives and livelihoods.

Delegates agreed to hold an interim meeting in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, in June before a high-level conference known as COP15 in Kunming, China, at a still-undecided date later this year.

“Biodiversity is securing our own survival on this planet. It is not a joking matter,” said Francis Ogwal of Uganda, a meeting co-chair. “Every day that you live as a human being is on biodiversity.”

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BBC

March 29, 2022
A global agreement to reverse the loss of nature and halt extinctions is inching closer, as talks in Geneva enter their final day.

International negotiators are working on the text of a UN framework to safeguard nature ahead of a high-level summit in China later this year.

Observers have slammed the "snail's pace" of negotiations and are pressing for a strengthening of ambitions.

Divisions remain, including over financing the plans.

"The science is very clear, we do not have any more time to waste; we need to take action now," Bernadette Fischler Hooper, head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told BBC News.

"Not only on biodiversity loss, but also on climate change which is a very inter-linked issue. So that is what's at stake here; it's actually the future of the planet and its people."

The final version of the draft UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will be negotiated in Kunming, China, at the Cop15 summit, which is expected to take place at the end of August.

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DW

March 29, 2022
Two weeks of talks that were meant to prepare for a global accord on reversing the destruction of biodiversity have led to just minor steps forward, as the sessions closed on Tuesday.

Although there was some success at the Geneva talks, observers are now calling for the same political leadership that was seen in the run-up to the Paris accord on climate change to breathe urgency into the negotiations.

"This could be a really historic moment in many ways that we've been waiting for for a long time," Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told DW from Geneva.

"In the last two weeks, I think we made a significant step forward on a number of very important elements of the biodiversity framework," Lambertini said. "But much progress needs to be done."

"As we move forward, political leadership is going to be critical to resolve some of the stickiest points and to drive consensus. And so we are calling upon heads of states, prime ministers and ministers of environment to drive that leadership," Lambertini said — calls that were echoed by Greenpeace.

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IUCN

March 14, 2022
The new UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report1 synthesizes the latest science on the impacts on and vulnerability of natural and socio-economic systems to climate change, and challenges and options for adaptation.

A key message from the IPCC report is that “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” All approaches are needed, including “safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystems” and protecting “approximately 30% to 50% of the Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean areas, including near-natural ecosystems.”

Human-induced climate change and extreme weather events have substantially damaged ecosystems, and led to increases in the risk of extinction of more than 10,000 species, including the extinct Bramble Cay melomys. Such events simultaneously result in serious implications for human well-being by impacting on food and water security , and higher incidence of associated diseases.

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Phys.org

March 11, 2022
Global efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution, protect a third of wild spaces, and ultimately live "in harmony with nature" will dominate UN biodiversity negotiations starting Monday, held in person after a two-year pandemic delay.

Almost 200 countries are due to adopt a global framework this year to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30 percent protected by 2030.

The aim is also to safeguard the "services" nature supplies: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that yields the food we eat. 

The meeting in Geneva will set the stage for a crucial UN biodiversity summit, initially due to be held in China in 2020 and postponed several times. It is now expected to take place at the end of August.

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Euronews

March 10, 2022
The CDP event celebrates the companies and cities which are working to achieve greater sustainability, and the highlights are being broadcast on Euronews, in a special programme hosted by Méabh McMahon.

NGOs worldwide have called for the Earth to become 'nature positive' by 2030, a goal leaders of the G7 group of industrialised countries have endorsed. Nature positivity entails halting and reversing today’s catastrophic loss of nature and biodiversity.

2030 is a crucial deadline, Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary at the Convention on Biological Diversity told Euronews, because “what is at stake is the loss of biodiversity reaching unprecedented rates in the history of mankind.”

“We need to see a better integration of nature and climate change in decision-making on an equal footing at the national level,” she argued, adding: “No time to waste. Scientists have told us we either take action now or perish.”

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Campaign for Nature

March 1, 2022

Leading environment groups have agreed that the US, the countries of the European Union, the UK, Japan, Canada and other wealthy countries should support a target of at least $60 billion annually of international finance for biodiversity in developing countries. To stop biodiversity loss and achieve a nature-positive economy, this financing effort must be part of a broader and holistic package to close the biodiversity finance gap, including increased domestic and private finance for biodiversity and the elimination of  public and private investments that are harmful to biodiversity.

The recommended $60 billion figure was released in advance of a major round of United Nations biodiversity negotiations set to take place in Geneva, Switzerland this month—an important moment on the road to the final biodiversity summit in Kunming, China later this year.

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IFLR

February 21, 2022
While climate change concerns have so far dominated ESG thinking, awareness of nature risk is catching up fast and already being integrated into sustainability frameworks, according to sources. 

The biodiversity-related principal adverse indicators in the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, the planned update to the EU Taxonomy to incorporate biodiversity risk, the Network for Greening the Financial System's own biodiversity study group, along with the meteoric rise of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), represent well the momentum building behind regulatory attempts to transform nature risk awareness into concrete impact in financial markets. 

The World Economic Forum estimates that more than half of the world’s economic output ($44 trillion) is at least moderately or highly dependent on nature, meaning that if natural systems collapse, so will the world’s economic and financial systems. 

Due to the sheer scale of the risk – together with scientific studies that show the world has already entered the sixth mass extinction phase – sources say that considerations around nature or biodiversity risk, which have traditionally been excluded from financial decision making, can no longer be relegated to the margins. 

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The Washington Post

February 3, 2022
The European Union’s environment chief said Thursday that 2022 must be the year for an ambitious agreement on the oceans, for action that protects the world’s biodiversity, and for starting negotiations to tackle the global crisis of plastic pollution especially at sea.

Virginijus Sinkevicius, the EU commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, told a U.N. news conference that precious time to save nature and the oceans has been lost over the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 27-member bloc is determined to move ahead quickly to steer “a global green transition.”

“This year must be the year of the oceans. This year must be the year of biodiversity. … (and) it is essential to get plastics under control and the only way to do it is globally,” he said. “This year we must find a window of opportunity to reach agreements that will change the world for better.”

Sinkevicius said a top priority for the EU is to reach “a Paris moment for biodiversity” -- like that in Paris in 2015 when world leaders reached the landmark climate agreement which set a target of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since that time.

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Nature

January 19, 2022

Biodiversity is being lost at a rate not seen since the last mass extinction. But the United Nations decade-old plan to slow down and eventually stop the decline of species and ecosystems by 2020 has failed. Most of the plan’s 20 targets — known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets — have not been met.

The Aichi targets are part of an international agreement called the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and member states are now finalizing replacements for them. Currently referred to as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF), the new targets are expected to be agreed this summer at the second part of the convention’s Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Kunming, China. The meeting was due to be held in May, but is likely to be delayed by a few months. Finalizing the framework will be down to government representatives working with the world’s leading biodiversity specialists. But input from social-science researchers, especially those who study how organizations and governments work, would improve its chances of success.

A draft of the GBF was published last July. It aims to slow down the rate of biodiversity loss by 2030. And by 2050, biodiversity will be “valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. The plan comprises 4 broad goals and 21 associated targets. The headline targets include conserving 30% of land and sea areas by 2030, and reducing government subsidies that harm biodiversity by US$500 billion per year. Overall, the goals and targets are designed to tackle each of the main contributors to biodiversity loss, which include agriculture and food systems, climate change, invasive species, pollution and unsustainable production and consumption.

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The Guardian

December 30, 2021
It was supposed to be a “super year for nature”: 2020 was going to be “a major opportunity to bring nature back from the brink”. But then the coronavirus pandemic set in and long-held plans to tackle the environmental crisis, kickstarted at Davos in January, where the financial elite underscored the risks of global heating and biodiversity loss to human civilisation, never happened. The biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, Cop15 in Kunming, China, where world leaders were expected to strike a deal to halt and reverse the destruction of ecosystems by reaching a Paris-style agreement for nature was postponed until 2021. The Cop26 climate summit was also postponed for a year.

As we enter 2022, there has still not been a super year for nature. Substantive negotiations for the biodiversity Cop15 meeting in China, the little sister to the climate convention, are likely to be delayed a fourth time as a result of the Omicron variant. Preparatory talks planned for January 2022 in Geneva have been pushed back – again – until March in a process that is feeling increasingly cursed, despite the best efforts of organisers.

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The Straits Times

December 3, 2021
The second part of UN biodiversity summit COP15, set to take place in Switzerland in January, has been postponed over the new coronavirus variant Omicron, organisers said on Thursday (Dec 2).

"Uncertainties posed by the Omicron variant and resulting travel measures and restrictions" have forced physical meetings to be postponed, they said in a statement.

The Geneva meeting originally supposed to take place from Jan 18 to 22 could instead be moved to March.

In a sign of Omicron's threat, about 2,000 people, including 1,600 children, have been placed in quarantine after two cases of the variant were found on one of the campuses of the renowned International School of Geneva, Swiss health authorities said on Thursday.

The first round of the COP15 gathering was held in October in south-west China's Kunming, though many attended the meeting virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It saw the adoption of a declaration to recognise the importance of biodiversity in human health, strengthen species protection laws and improve the sharing of genetic resources.

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