Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
January 24, 2020
Business as usual isn’t working for the planet. Human-driven activities, such as deforestation and overfishing, have put one million species at risk of extinction, according to a ground-breaking 2019 United Nations report. The report is a thunderous wake-up call for the world on the need to make protecting nature job No. 1.
January 24, 2020
Cosmetics firms can look at reducing palm oil use, while wineries can cut chemicals to help animal pollinators. Companies should examine ways to make production chains more friendly to biodiversity, said eminent scientist Sandra Diaz.
January 23, 2020
One of the most important questions Amazon scientists are asking today is, how much deforestation and global climate change can this tropical biome tolerate before rainfall is drastically reduced — forcing a rainforest-to-savanna conversion, and releasing huge amounts of stored forest carbon into the atmosphere in the process?
A recent study tried to answer that question. The findings: the Amazon basin could be less than 30 years from a catastrophic collapse that would turn it into a dry savanna, according to a study published in the journal One Earth.
January 23, 2020
Indigenous people currently manage or have tenure on 40% of the world’s protected areas and remaining intact ecosystems. The deep connection to land and water that characterizes Indigenous cultures around the world suggests a natural alliance with conservationists working to protect those places.
But, as the authors of a recent paper in Biological Conservation argue, realizing this potential requires rethinking past approaches to conservation and ensuring that Indigenous people have substantive decision-making roles regarding their territories.
January 23, 2020
Two years after moving the metaphorical minute hand of its Doomsday Clock to within two minutes of midnight — a figurative two-minute warning for all humanity — the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists revealed Thursday that it has moved that minute hand another 20 seconds closer to the midnight hour.
January 23, 2020
Business titans who for decades brushed off warnings about climate change arrived at the annual World Economic Forum this week ready to show their newfound enthusiasm for the cause.
Having previously played down the need for the reform that scientists had urged, finance leaders and company chiefs conspicuously rallied around a consensus that accelerating global temperatures pose a significant risk to society — and to business.
January 23, 2020
A new NOAA-funded study has documented for the first time that ocean acidification along the US Pacific Northwest coast is impacting the shells and sensory organs of some young Dungeness crab, a prized crustacean that supports the most valuable fishery on the West Coast.
January 21, 2020
The world is using up more than 100 billion tonnes of natural resources per year for the first time ever while global recycling of raw materials has fallen, according to a report released Tuesday (Jan 21).
The share of minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass feeding into the global economy that is reused declined in two years from an already paltry 9.1 per cent to 8.6 today, the Circularity Gap Report 2020 found.
January 21, 2020
Sharjah, UAE: Organised by Sharjah’s Environment and Protected Areas Authority (EPAA), the 21st Sharjah International Conservation Forum for Arabian Biodiversity (SICFAB), which begins on February 3rd, will address several important topics over a period of four days at the Desert Park. SICFAB will include an introduction to marine and coastal management covering coral, turtles, sharks, marine mammals, mangroves and seaweed.
January 21, 2020
In an encouraging move with the potential to create transformative market change, China recently amended its Forest Law to include a nationwide ban on buying, transporting, and/or processing illegally sourced timber, as well as an added focus on traceability.
January 20, 2020
Refugees fleeing the effects of the climate crisis cannot be forced to return home by their adoptive countries, a United Nations panel has ruled, in a landmark decision that could open the door to a flood of legal claims by displaced people around the world.
The UN's Human Rights Committee was making a judgment on the case of Ioane Teitiota, who applied for protection from New Zealand after claiming his life was at risk in his home country of Kiribati. The Pacific island is at risk of becoming the first country to disappear under rising sea levels.
January 20, 2020
Business leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week are supporting a new science-based approach to tackling their companies' impacts on both climate change and all the Earth's natural systems.
The fight against climate change cannot be won without both decarbonizing our economies and restoring balance to the "global commons": land, oceans, freshwater and biodiversity, alongside climate.
January 20, 2020
Talk is cheap, says the acting executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, who begged governments around the world to make sure that 2020 is not another year of conferences and empty promises, but instead is the year to take decisive action to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and the destruction of habitat-sustaining ecosystems, as The Guardian reported.
Acting Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema warned that the absence of concrete action to stop deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis will mean that humanity has given up on the planet.
January 19, 2020
Businesses are more dependent on nature and biodiversity than expected, according to The New Nature Economy Report, released today.
Analysis of 163 industry sectors and their supply chains found that over half of the world’s GDP –$44 trillion of economic value generation – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and, as a result, exposed to risks from nature loss.
January 19, 2020
L'OCCITANE Group today announced the creation of a fund to support ecosystems that are severely affected by natural disasters, such as the devastating fires in the Amazon and Australia. Determined to protect biodiversity for future generations, the L'OCCITANE Ecosystem Restoration Fund aims to respond to climate emergencies on an ad hoc basis. The fund will be financed by a voluntary internal donation campaign among L'OCCITANE's shareholders.
