The Manilla Times

October 15, 2020
Indigenous peoples and local communities offer the best hope for solutions to our planetary emergency. These solutions are grounded in traditional, time-tested practices and knowledge.

Indigenous peoples already steward 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity, as well as nearly one-fifth of the total carbon sequestered by tropical and subtropical forests. Moreover, indigenous territories encompass 40 percent of protected areas globally.

Yet the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities are barely heard and are often excluded from decision-making. Their rights over land, territories and resources are routinely overlooked, and they are frequently threatened and often victimized by murder, assault, intimidation and detention.

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The Independent

October 15, 2020
Last month, political leaders from 64 countries around the world all pledged to “reverse biodiversity loss” in the next decade by protecting 30 per cent of land and ocean by 2030.

This 30x30 goal aims to preserve lands, waterways and seas, in order to protect the natural world and fight the climate crisis.

A new study highlights the huge impact returning 30 per cent of ecosystems to their natural state would have, both in terms of saving huge numbers of species, and in reducing levels of the dangerous greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Some 27 researchers from 12 countries contributed to the report, which assessed forests, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands and arid ecosystems.

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StudyFinds

October 14, 2020
For all of the negativity, tragedy, and awfulness COVID-19 has brought, the pandemic has also provided an opportunity for the global economy to “reset” and institute policies and practices that can potentially reverse decades of damage done to the environment and species losses. Unfortunately, a study from Rutgers University finds the vast majority of the global community has failed to take advantage of the pandemic from an environmental perspective.

Instead, some nations (the United States, Brazil, and Australia) are actually heading in the wrong direction. Researchers say these nations are undoing or relaxing pre-existing laws, policies, and initiatives intended to protect the planet.

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New Straits Times

October 11, 2020
Several members of the biodiversity community were abuzz last week with news that IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform on Science-Policy Advice on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, was being considered for this year's Nobel Peace Prize (NPP), nominated by a senior German government minister and others.

On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced an extremely deserving winner from within the UN family, the World Food Programme (WFP).

But when one looks at the history of the NPP, I believe there's a very good chance IPBES, which today is just eight years into existence, will be recognised in similar fashion one day.

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Project Syndicate

October 13, 2020
From the energy industry to industrial agriculture, the private sector has long reaped large financial rewards from environmental destruction. But the costs of that destruction are growing, and businesses' responsibility – and motivation – to reverse it becoming more apparent.

The latest edition of the United Nations’ Global Biodiversity Outlook, published by the Convention on Biological Diversity, makes for bleak reading. As the report notes, biodiversity is essential to address climate change, ensure long-term food security, and prevent future pandemics. And yet the world is missing every target that has been established to protect it. If this is to change, business must step up.

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Northglen News

October 13, 2020
World Economic Forum has drawn the attention of the global business community to the critical relationship that exists between nature conservation and the state of the world economy.

In a video message released today, research findings show that it would cost the world just $140 billion a year to protect 30% of the planet from destruction. That’s less than what the world spends each year on video games and less than a third of what governments spend on subsidizing activities that destroy nature. This is also a fraction of the $10 trillion that was spent on Covid-19 packages in the first two months of the pandemic.

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Al Jazeera - OpEd

October 12, 2020
The crisis signs could not be clearer: fires, floods, droughts, pandemic, species extinction … Earth is screaming with all its might. We need to listen and act.

We must defend the planet’s life support against relentless corporate greed and rediscover humanity as part of the natural world, for current and future generations. Restoring balance requires governments to heed the knowledge of communities who have listened deeply and worked with Mother Nature for generations – and to recognise and respect the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.

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Mongabay

October 9, 2020
In 2010, the member nations of the U.N.’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 195 countries plus the EU, agreed that at least 17% of global land and 10% of the ocean needed to be protected by 2020.

A new global review finds that many countries have fallen short of these targets, and the expansion of protected areas over the past 10 years has not successfully covered priority areas such as biodiversity hotspots and areas providing ecosystem services.

The research team overlaid maps of protected areas, threatened species, productive fisheries, and carbon services, and found that 78% of known threatened species do not have adequate protection.

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China Dialogue

October 8, 2020
Originally scheduled as a last push for world leaders to connect before the COP15 negotiations on a global deal for nature protection, the ongoing pandemic downgraded the UN’s biodiversity summit into more of a push of the reset button.

The meeting, streamed live from New York, featured speeches by more than 100 heads of state, and other dignitaries including Prince Charles and chiefs of multiple UN bodies.

The summit was preceded by the launch of the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, a high-level initiative to commit to reverse nature loss by the end of the decade. The text of the pledge stresses the links between climate change, nature degradation, human health, poverty and inequality, and economic security.

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EurekAlert

October 7, 2020
A failure by governments to deliver on commitments under a global nature conservation treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity, could have devastating effects.

The warning comes after a consortium of scientists, led by Dr Sean Maxwell and Professor James Watson from The University of Queensland, reviewed national area-based conservation efforts, including protected areas.

In 2010, almost all nations agreed that area-based conservation efforts must cover at least 17 per cent of land and 10 per cent of ocean by 2020, in areas that are important for biodiversity and ecosystem services.

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The Mercury News

October 7, 2020
Saying more needs to be done to preserve nature as a way to help address climate change, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday committed the state to a goal of protecting 30% of California’s land and coastal waters by 2030.

Newsom signed an executive order directing the state’s Natural Resources Agency to draw up a plan by Feb. 1, 2022, to achieve the goal in a way that also protects the state’s economy and agriculture industry, while expanding and restoring biodiversity — the vast variety of animals and plants — that live in areas as varied as the Bay Area’s tidepools to arid deserts in Southern California to mountain forests across the Sierra Nevada.

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Forbes

October 6, 2020
There is no future for business as usual. Our current economic system, which arguably has succeeded in creating unprecedented economic output, wealth and human welfare over the past 70 years, has led to exacerbated social inequalities and loss of nature at an extent that threatens the stability of our economies and societies – and could maybe even lead to a collapse of civilisation as we know it.

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The Guardian

October 5, 2020
Much of the Amazon could be on the verge of losing its distinct nature and switching from a closed canopy rainforest to an open savannah with far fewer trees as a result of the climate crisis, researchers have warned.

Rainforests are highly sensitive to changes in rainfall and moisture levels, and fires and prolonged droughts can result in areas losing trees and shifting to a savannah-like mix of woodland and grassland. In the Amazon, such changes were known to be possible but thought to be many decades away.

New research shows that this tipping point could be much closer than previously thought. As much as 40% of the existing Amazon rainforest is now at a point where it could exist as a savannah instead of as rainforest, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

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The Christian Science Monitor

October 2, 2020
A new framework for defending the environment is emerging across the world allowing people to sue on behalf of the environment. More than 60 leaders signed a Pledge for Nature at the U.N. summit this week.

From Bolivia to New Zealand, rivers and ecosystems in at least 14 countries have won the legal right to exist and flourish, as a new way of safeguarding nature gains steam, U.S. environmental groups said on Thursday.

Rights of nature laws, allowing residents to sue over harm on behalf of lakes and reefs, have seen “a dramatic increase” in the last dozen years, said the groups the Earth Law Center, International Rivers, and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.

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Eureporter

October 2, 2020
On 30 September President Ursula von der Leyen represented the EU at the UN Biodiversity Summit in New York which brings together world leaders to step up global actions for nature and confirm their determination in agreeing a new ambitious global biodiversity framework at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, planned for 2021.

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