Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
February 28, 2020
This week, delegates from more than 100 countries and territories gathered in Rome for the first round of negotiations on a Paris Agreement-style global treaty to address the extinction crisis threatening one million species worldwide and the ecosystems on which humanity relies to survive.
February 28, 2020
The European Commission and the Oceanographic Institute, Prince Albert I of Monaco Foundation organise a high-level ceremony to celebrate the coalition of "World aquariums against plastic pollution" at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco on Tuesday 3 March, World Wildlife Day.
HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, and Inger Andersen, United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director will attend and speak at the event.
February 27, 2020
In the paper titled, ‘How to Halt the Global Decline of Lands,’ the lead authors of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) ‘Assessment of Land Degradation and Restoration’ present five systemic policy barriers to land restoration and propose 10 solutions for overcoming them.
February 26, 2020
All species, including humans, depend for their survival on the delicate balance of life in nature. Yet biodiversity—the diversity within species, between species, and within ecosystems—is declining faster than it has at any other time in human history. Although the world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living creatures, humanity has already caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants. How we grow food, produce energy, dispose of waste and consume resources is destroying nature’s delicate balance of clean air, water and life that all species—including humans—depend on for survival.
February 26, 2020
Extinction risk could decrease by more than 50% if at least 30% of land were to be conserved across the tropics, a new study reveals.
February 25, 2020
Within 50 years, a third of all plant and animal species could be caught up in a mass extinction, as a consequence of climate change driven by ever-rising temperatures. What is new about this warning is the method, the precision, the timetable and the identification of a cause.
And – entirely felicitously – support for the prediction is backed by a series of separate studies of individual species survival in a world rapidly warming because of human commitment to fossil fuels.
February 25, 2020
At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos in January this year, there was unprecedented interest in and commitment to fighting the climate and nature emergencies facing humanity. Although the world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things by weight, humanity has already caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of all plants. Supporting the concept of stakeholder capitalism, leading CEOs, government leaders and heads of civil society organizations came together in the Swiss Alps to galvanize support for an integrated nature action agenda across the issues of climate, biodiversity, forests, oceans and sustainable development.
February 24, 2020
Climate change could turn into a "catastrophic" threat to national and global security in the coming decades, warns a report released Monday.
"Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades," the report says. "Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century."
February 24, 2020
It’s 2020. We’ve officially entered the defining decade to tackle the climate crisis. As businesses ramp up climate action commitments through science-based targets and net-zero or carbon neutral goals, they are realizing there are untapped opportunities to work with nature instead of against it. Nature-based climate solutions will provide the lever of change to make faster progress toward those goals, and it just might help them go above and beyond.
February 24, 2020
Nature experts and government delegates gather this week in Rome to hash out an international deal for endangered species, trying to avoid a mass extinction event caused by human activity.
Having been hastily relocated from Kunming in China following the coronavirus outbreak, negotiators from more than 140 countries have until February 29 to study a draft text.
February 24, 2020
Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told negotiators on Monday that as agriculture and food systems are “at the heart of the concept of sustainable development”, they are central to deliberations regarding the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework, which is expected to be adopted at the UN Biodiversity Conference in October.
“Biodiversity is fundamental for ecosystems, for human beings, and is the basis of food diversity," said Mr. Qu, opening the second meeting of the Open-ended Working Group established by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which FAO is hosting.
February 24, 2020
Negotiations over a 10-year agenda for nature are about to begin. Our ecological future depends on the engagement of every global citizen.
The year 2020 has been designated a “super year for nature”, when the global community will rededicate itself to halting biodiversity loss with a 10-year action agenda, scheduled for agreement at the conference of the parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Kunming in China in October.
February 23, 2020
In October 2020, the Convention on Biological Diversity will adopt a strategy — the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework — to replace the Aichi Targets. The Framework is intended as a step towards meeting the vision of a world ‘living in harmony with nature’ by 2050.
In order to reach that vision, there must be recognition of the interdependency of human rights and a healthy planet. As the Framework is negotiated, Forest Peoples Programme is therefore collaborating with a number of allies (including those listed below) to highlight the importance of human rights for biodiversity stewardship.
February 22, 2020
As climate change deepens, forests –– those lush, abundant, mysterious stands of trees that for millennia have quietly produced the air we breathe and the water we drink –– have never been more critical to our survival. It’s become clear that, as leading scientists have said, “Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forests.” For a climate stable future, we must keep forests standing, as they are one of the most effective tools we have to combat climate change. Thankfully, the basic prescription for saving much of the world’s forests is refreshingly simple: hold corporations accountable for their role in driving deforestation and uphold Indigenous rights to their ancestral lands.
February 22, 2020
New findings released in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications indicate that expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands and Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monuments did not cause overall economic harm to the Hawaii-based longline tuna fishing fleet.
