Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
October 31, 2019
Brazil contains the largest expanse of tropical ecosystems within protected areas, but a significant proportion of these reserves may be vulnerable to the effects of ongoing global climate change, according to a study published in the journal Conservation Biology.
October 31, 2019
[…] how we view our relationship with land and sea could be make-or-break for our civilisation and also help determine the fate of every other creature on Earth. The world is suffering massive ecosystem degradation, unprecedented wildlife decline and extinctions—all of this in the face of possible runaway climate change.
Governments and businesses now have an opportunity to take a critical, collective step to arrest this decline: to agree to protect at least 30 percent of the world on land and sea.
October 31, 2019
China will step up efforts to establish and optimize the system for natural protected areas, said a forestry official.
The system would include a series of policies and mechanisms, such as ecological compensation and transfer payments, said Li Chunliang, deputy head of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration at the first World Forum on Nature Conservation.
October 30, 2019
President Sebastián Piñera said the decision had caused him "pain" but his government needed "to prioritise re-establishing public order".
The COP25 climate summit was scheduled for 2 to 13 December, while the Apec trade forum was next month.
The UN said it was now looking at alternative venues.
October 29, 2019
Expanding the planet’s protected natural areas to safeguard vanishing forests and other ecosystems, and the species they protect, is unlikely to be effective on its own as human encroachment into reserves grows, scientists warned Tuesday.
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Both chronic underfunding of efforts to protect the land, and a lack of engagement with local communities that live there are hurting conservation efforts, they found.
October 29, 2019
Governors from eight Amazonian states in Brazil and Peru meeting at the Vatican agreed that the Amazon is threatened and called for a "green economy" that would allow people to generate income without destroying the forest.
October 28, 2019
For marine biodiversity, some regions of the ocean are more important than others. In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists compiled the findings of multiple studies to identify all of the most important marine areas.
The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, showed several important marine areas remain unprotected.
October 27, 2019
According to results published in Nature Climate Change, researchers said new approaches in agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy could feasibly contribute about a third of the Paris Accord mitigation target by 2050– equivalent to 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year.
October 26, 2019
This is a big year for Costa Rica’s one and only Isla del Coco, Cocos Island National Park, as it received this week the “Blue Park” award for its condition as Global Ocean Refuge in the Gold category of the Marine Conservation Institute which promotes Marine Protected Areas that comply with certain standards of management and effectiveness.
October 21, 2019
Former members of the United States Congress enthusiastically endorse the global goal of protecting at least 30 percent of the planet by 2030.
[…] As a group of Democrats and Republicans, we hope to underscore the need for bipartisan action - both domestically and internationally - to confront this escalating challenge.
October 17, 2019
A recent U.N. report found that more than 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction. In a conversation with Mongabay, Robert Watson, who chaired the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that produced the report, discusses the economic value of biodiversity.
October 12, 2019
For indigenous peoples, sustainability is a necessity, for without it their own livelihoods are at risk. Traditional ecological knowledge and practices have been so successful that, although indigenous lands account for less than 22 percent of the world’s land area, their traditional territories are home to approximately 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity.
October 10, 2019
As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model examining how nature and humans can survive together.
October 4, 2019
This report documents losses of North American avifauna over the 48 years between 1970 and 2018. Based on their use of range-wide population trajectories and size estimates, they found wide-spread population declines of birds indicating a net loss approaching 3 billion birds, or 29 percent of 1970 abundance.
October 2, 2019
Last week, UN chief António Guterres gathered the world’s political, business and civil society leaders in New York in an effort to jump start action on climate change.
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CHN is publishing this (non-exhaustive) list of initiatives, promises and goals with a view toward accountability.
