Campaign for Nature

November 11, 2020
This week, leaders of 450 public development banks representing 10% of total global investment will gather to discuss the role public finance can play in driving sustainable development that benefits people and the planet. 

The Finance in Common Summit will underscore the role nature-positive public finance can play in establishing a healthy environment, critical to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Climate Agreement targets and the new, ambitious framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Central to this framework is a target to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. 

Read More

Project Syndicate

November 11, 2020
Public development banks will be critical to global efforts to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout. To realize their potential, they should complement their climate investments by setting explicit nature-based goals and targets.

This week’s Finance in Common Summit will mark the first time that leaders of the world’s 450 public development banks (PDBs) come together to discuss how to reorient investments toward sustainable development. Given the current global economic uncertainty and compounding environmental threats, the gathering comes at a critical moment. It is a welcome opportunity to consider how public financial institutions can help steer funding toward conservation and sustainable use of natural resources – thus opening up an asset class that supports both people and the planet.

Read More

Our Daily Planet

October 30, 2020
Yesterday leaders from 190 countries were supposed to have met in Kunming, China for final negotiations on a biodiversity treaty designed to address the world’s urgent extinction and biodiversity crises. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has made attendance of the UN Biodiversity Conference impossible.

However, a panel of experts from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (an independent intergovernmental body open to all member countries of the UN) released a report that links zoonotic diseases like COVID-19 to “unsustainable exploitation of the environment,” including the wildlife trade and land-use change.

Read More

Independent

October 30, 2020
The world must tackle the biodiversity and climate crises to stand a chance of preventing future pandemics, the world's leading experts on nature are warning.

That includes setting up an international body of leaders to minimise risks, the scientists say.

Where there is a clear link to high pandemic risk, taxes on meat consumption and production should be considered, and incentives should be provided to switch away from high-risk industries such as fur farming, they suggest.

Read More

Mongabay

October 30, 2020
Avoiding the loss of human life and the economic fallout caused by future pandemics will require a seismic change in our approach to the causes of the emergence of disease-causing viruses, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES.

Peter Daszak, who chaired the July 2020 workshop that produced the report, noted that we’ve identified only about 2,000 of the 1.7 million viruses that exist in birds and mammals. Scientists estimate that between 540,000 and 850,000 of these could infect humans.

Read More

New Europe

October 30, 2020
The European Council has endorsed the objectives of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the nature protection and restoration targets contained therein, which aim at setting biodiversity on the path to recovery.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has once again shown us the fundamental importance of ecosystems and biodiversity for our health and economic and social stability,” Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety Svenja Schulze said. “Biodiversity is our life insurance: it supplies clean air and water, food, building material and clothing. It creates jobs and livelihoods. With the destruction of nature there is also the risk of disease outbreaks and pandemics. Saving biodiversity and global nature conservation is a key to preventing new infectious diseases. As President of the Council I am pleased that today we reached unanimous agreement on stepping up our efforts to address biodiversity loss,” she added.

Read More

National Geographic

October 29, 2020
Absent major policy changes and billions of dollars invested in protecting land and wildlife, the world may see another major pandemic like COVID-19, an international group of scientists warned today.

Conserving biodiversity can preserve human lives, according to their new report, which reviews the latest research on how the decline of habitat and wildlife leaves humans exposed to new, emerging diseases.

Read More

Campaign For Nature

October 29, 2020

Today, leaders from 190 countries were scheduled to gather in Kunming, China for final negotiations on a biodiversity treaty designed to address the world’s urgent extinction crises. Instead, these leaders are at home, battling the spread of a zoonotic disease that likely emerged from deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats. 

A timely new report by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) asserts that preventing future pandemics before they emerge requires targeted action to address the underlying causes of pandemics--which  are the same global environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss and climate change.  Among the solutions the report lays out is the conservation of critical areas for biodiversity,  the financing of this protection,  and the design of a green economic recovery from COVID-19--which offers “an insurance against future outbreaks.”

Read More

Forbes

October 26, 2020
A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that protecting an additional 5% of the ocean can increase future fish catch by 20% or more. Growing up in a fishing community in the Philippines, lead researcher Dr. Reniel Cabral believes that marine protected areas (MPAs) can benefit both conservation and fisheries goals simultaneously. In the past, MPAs have been used as conservation tools, however a focus on fisheries may provide a necessary incentive for many coastal nations to adopt or expand them.

Read More

The Hill

October 23, 2020
On October 7, California Governor Gavin Newsom took the bold step of committing the state to a goal of protecting 30 percent of California’s land and coastal waters by 2030. 

The move makes a lot of sense for California. It is a global biodiversity hotspot because of its unique plant diversity, and harbors rich and productive marine ecosystems. But this bounty is threatened by the confluence of the climate crisis, overexploitation and development. Its latest manifestation has been the apocalyptic fires that have burned more than four million acres. 

California has very old trees, including the giant sequoias that are over 3,000 years old. There’s been a lot of fires in those 3,000 years, but the ancient forests survived, because fire was part of the ecology of the system. But the forests could not survive the human assault. Logging these natural treasures started a chain of events that led to the present fires, exacerbated by the heat waves caused by global warming.

The solution to the current crisis is protecting the wild, and restoring and rewilding degraded lands and coasts, in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. A commitment to 30 percent by 2030 — ‘30x30’ — is a great way to start.

Read More

Campaign for Nature

October 23, 2020
Today, the Environment Council of the  European Union committed to protecting at least one-third of its land and seas  by 2030. The 30% protection target is a central component of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, which was formally and finally endorsed today by the European Union’s Environment Council after its May 2020 release by the European Commission. In the strategy, the EU also commits to advocating for the 30% target at the global level.

Read More

The New York Times

October 23, 2020
The European Union’s Environment Council on Friday endorsed the proposal by the president of the European Union to create protected areas for 30 percent of the continent’s land and water by 2030, along with legally binding measures to tighten forest protections.

But Europe’s governing body also was criticized by environmental and climate activists for not curbing agricultural subsidies that drive pollution.

Britain, Canada and the state of California have made similar conservation pledges in recent months. Their promises, mostly without detailed road maps, come in the wake of a major United Nations-backed scientific report that calls for transformative changes in the way humans use the Earth’s land and waters in order to avoid dire consequences, including threats to the global food supply and health.

[…]

The conservation group, Campaign for Nature, approved the move, saying in a statement that “the litmus test will now be the effective implementation of the strategy,” particularly by the member nations of the European Union.

Read More

The Guardian

October 22, 2020
A US senator has introduced a proposal to conserve 30% of the country’s lands and seas in the next 10 years, amid a surge of similar proposals.

The initiative, brought by the New Mexico senator Tom Udall last week, is called the “30 by 30” plan. In the US, 12% of land area is protected, according to Udall, mostly in Alaska and the west. If passed, the resolution would align the United States with international goals to protect and preserve nearly a third of the world’s land and water by 2030.

“The United States faces a conservation and climate crisis, with nature in a steep decline and greenhouse gas emissions not declining at the rate scientists say is needed,” according to the proposal. “Nature, like the climate, is nearing a tipping point.”

Read More

Thomson Reuters

October 20, 2020
As recent headlines about forest blazes, melting glaciers and sinking islands have made clear, the natural world is in peril. And with repeated warnings about the grim state of biodiversity - and, at the same time, promising predictions about the role of nature in boosting our economies and protecting our health - we need a change in the way we are protecting nature, more than ever before. 

Right now, government officials in countries around the globe, from Canada to Australia, are beginning to take note of a solution critical to a global effort to stop the breakdown of nature. That is partnering with indigenous peoples and local communities who have successfully conserved the biodiversity on their lands for millennia, using traditional knowledge passed down through generations. 

Read More

Scuba Diving

October 19, 2020
Loss of tourism revenue from continued COVID travel restrictions is straining the budgets of marine protected areas around the world, reducing conservation activities and stressing the communities reliant on a steady flow of eco-tourists. These strains come as the push to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030 gains global momentum.

[…]

“There is a myth, right? That we have to choose between the economy and the environment,” said Dr. Enric Sala. An ecologist, Sala is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who founded the Pristine Seas program and is one of the leaders of the Campaign for Nature. Both initiatives aim to persuade world leaders to establish new marine protected areas.

Read More