The Guardian

September 18, 2020

Sir David Attenborough’s soothing, matter-of-fact narrations have brought the natural world to our living rooms for nearly seven decades and counting. From Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the jungles of central Africa, the 94-year-old broadcaster has dazzled and delighted millions with tales of life on Earth – mostly pristine and untouched, according to the images on our screens. But this autumn Attenborough has returned with a different message: nature is collapsing around us.

“We are facing a crisis. One that has consequences for us all. It threatens our ability to feed ourselves, to control our climate. It even puts us at greater risk of pandemic diseases such as Covid-19,” he warned in Extinction: The Facts on BBC One primetime, receiving five-star reviews.

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Campaign For Nature

September 17, 2020
Today, The Paulson Institute, The Nature Conservancy and Cornell University released a major new report, “Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity Financing Gap.” This is the most in-depth and comprehensive analysis ever completed about biodiversity financing. Timed in conjunction with the run-up to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the report highlights the total investment needed to fund biodiversity conservation around the world and identifies the actions that must be taken by the public and private sector in order to reach that level of investment.

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Campaign for Nature

September 15, 2020
The Fifth edition of the United Nations Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-5) released today paints a painful picture of the intensifying collapse of the natural world with none of the targets set in Aichi ten years ago fully met. The report makes clear that this unprecedented failure is due to human pressure on our natural world and the lack of political prioritization and funding to protect, preserve and restore biodiversity and the ecosystem services that we rely on to survive. 

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The Guardian

September 9, 2020
Wildlife populations are in freefall around the world, driven by human overconsumption, population growth and intensive agriculture, according to a major new assessment of the abundance of life on Earth.

On average, global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles plunged by 68% between 1970 and 2016, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London (ZSL)’s biennial Living Planet Report 2020. Two years ago, the figure stood at 60%.

The research is one of the most comprehensive assessments of global biodiversity available and was complied by 134 experts from around the world. It found that from the rainforests of central America to the Pacific Ocean, nature is being exploited and destroyed by humans on a scale never previously recorded.

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The Street Journal

September 5, 2020
Conservationists have warned that environmental destruction, such as deforestation and the exploitation of wild animals, could lead to increasing numbers of pandemics. 

A UN summit on biodiversity, being held in New York in September, will be told by biologists there is evidence of a strong link between loss of biodiversity and deadly new diseases, such as Covid-19.

Scientists will warn world leaders that the rapid rate of deforestation and the uncontrolled expansion of farming is providing a ‘perfect storm’ for diseases to pass from wildlife to humans, The Guardian reported.

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IISD

September 3, 2020
IUCN has launched the first-ever Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions. The Standard guides users through Nature-based Solutions (NbS) applications and sets benchmarks for their progress.

Launched on 23 July 2020, the IUCN Global Standard for NbS consists of eight criteria and associated indicators that address considerations related to biodiversity, economy, and society, as well as resilient project management. IUCN has indicated that a governing body of the Standard will revise the criteria every four years.

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UNDP

September 2, 2020
To coincide with the 75th UN General Assembly, and leading up to the UN Biodiversity Summit, UNDP, UNEP, CBD and partners are creating a four-day Nature for Life Hub — a virtual space where global and local leaders will share stories on the importance of nature for sustainable development.

The Nature for Life Hub will invite a virtual audience to participate in thought-provoking exchanges, and will engage a wide variety of sectors, including governments, businesses, financial institutions, youth and local communities. Each day will culminate in key messages to be issued by the coalition of partners to be fed into the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework negotiation process, CBD COP 15 and Climate COP 26 negotiation processes.

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New Straits Times

September 2, 2020
Roads encroach on animal habitats and populations, posing a hazard to wildlife. 

In Malaysia, as elsewhere, the rise in roadkill incidents contributes to biodiversity loss, which is a threat to the wellbeing of humans every bit as dangerous as climate change.

The solution includes safe corridors of transit between habitat areas — passages and bridges — and better driving habits. 

On an exceptionally large scale, we need to ensure the connectivity between national and international protected areas and animal habitats.

A global effort to conserve biodiversity got underway recently. Campaign for Nature (CFN) called on governments worldwide to protect at least 30 per cent of the planet's land and oceans by 2030, deemed by scientists to be the minimum area needed to halt biodiversity loss. 

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Reuters

September 1, 2020
It’s not an overstatement to say that our oceans are in crisis. Warming waters and ocean acidification caused by greenhouse gas emissions; fertiliser run-off creating dead zones where there’s no oxygen for life to survive, and over-fishing are all contributing to the destruction of biodiversity and loss of the ocean’s ability to mitigate climate change by storing carbon.

Research done for the High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy highlights the crucial role played by oceans, which account for 70% of the planet’s surface. It sets out ocean-based climate action that will cumulatively contribute as much as 21% of the emissions reduction needed to put us on a 1.5 degree pathway. These include sustainable seafood production; ocean-based renewable energies; the greening of shipping, and the conservation of mangroves and seagrass that store carbon.

To meet the goals of the Paris climate change agreement, a big proportion of the ocean has to be returned to a natural state, according to the Global Deal for Nature, a paper that sets a science-based target of protecting at least 30% of land and oceans by 2030.

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Fronteras

September 1, 2020
It seems counterintuitive to many of us — in order to keep our landscape healthy, we need to let it burn sometimes. That's the lesson that many indigenous leaders are hoping we can learn in order to help our wildfire-ravaged forests and grasslands in the West recover. For tens of thousands of years before Western settlers came to California and Arizona, indigenous peoples cared for the land and made it thrive — often using fire as a tool. And today, there are efforts underway to relearn those lessons and restore our land. I spoke with Debra Utacia Krol, indigenous affairs reporter at the Arizona Republic, more about it.

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The Guardian

August 30, 2020
Scientists are to warn world leaders that increasing numbers of deadly new pandemics will afflict the planet if levels of deforestation and biodiversity loss continue at their current catastrophic rates.

A UN summit on biodiversity, scheduled to be held in New York next month, will be told by conservationists and biologists there is now clear evidence of a strong link between environmental destruction and the increased emergence of deadly new diseases such as Covid-19.

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The New York Times

August 29, 2020
The world's largest wetland is ablaze, but the fire is often invisible.

In Brazil's Pantanal, the vegetation compacted under the marshy flood water during the wet season dries out as ponds and lagoons evaporate, leaving flammable deposits underground that can continue to smolder long after visible flames die down.

Firefighters across Brazil are battling raging towers of flames from the Amazon rainforest to the Cerrado savannah, but the fires beneath their feet are a particular challenge in the Pantanal. The only way to combat an underground fires is to dig a trench around it, said state firefighter Lieutenant Isaac Wihby.

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The Business Times

August 29, 2020
When we hear the names "Rio", "Cartagena", "Nagoya" or "Aichi" we think about cities but not about biodiversity. When we hear the word "coronavirus" all of us have many associations - but few of us would think immediately about biodiversity either. This is a missed opportunity.

Coronavirus will not be a one-off event. The number and diversity of epidemic events has been increasing over the past 30 years and the WHO reckons that over 60 per cent of infectious diseases reported globally have been "zoonotic" in nature, meaning that they were spread from animals to humans - as appears to have been the case with the current coronavirus. Not surprising, powerful global changes, such as growth in connectivity, growth of urbanisation with high-density living, increased deforestation as well as growing displacement of people and climate change, reinforce this development.

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Mongabay

August 28, 2020
Despite surging forest fires and deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest, Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment announced it will suspend all operations to combat illegal deforestation and fire in the Amazon and Pantanal on Monday, August 31.

In a statement published on its official web site, the ministry said it would demobilize staff and resources across two agencies: the environmental protection agency IBAMA and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio). The suspension affects 1,805 firefighters, 401 inspectors, six helicopters, 144 vehicles, and ten aircraft.

The ministry said the decision is a product of a federal budget cut of 60.6 million Brazilian reais ($11.26 million).

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Business Green

August 28, 2020
Investors and businesses seeking guidance on how to harness nature based solutions to boost profits and meet sustainability objectives can draw on a new report, titled Nature based solutions to the climate crisis, published yesterday by the Manchester-based Ignition project.

The report analyses a range of nature-based solutions to construction and urban planning challenges: street trees, green roofs and walls, urban parks and green spaces, and sustainable drainage systems.

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