UNEP

March 10, 2021
One year from the onset of the pandemic, recovery spending has fallen short of nations’ commitments to build back more sustainably. An analysis of spending by leading economies, led by Oxford’s Economic Recovery Project and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), finds only 18.0% of announced recovery spending can be considered ‘green.’

The report, Are We Building Back Better? Evidence from 2020 and Pathways for Inclusive Green Recovery Spending, calls for governments to invest more sustainably and tackle inequalities as they stimulate growth in the wake of the devastation wrought by the pandemic.

The most comprehensive analysis of COVID-19-related fiscal rescue and recovery efforts by 50 leading economies so far, the report reveals that only $368bn of $14.6tn COVID-induced spending (rescue and recovery) in 2020 was green.

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International Institute for Sustainable Development

March 8, 2021
The UK Government has published an independent review that provides a global assessment of the economic benefits of biodiversity and the costs of biodiversity loss, and recommends actions to simultaneously enhance biodiversity and deliver economic prosperity.

In 2019, the UK Government commissioned Cambridge University economist Partha Dasgupta to provide a global review on the economics of biodiversity. Following the publication of an interim report in April 2020, the final publication titled, ‘The Economics of Biodiversity: the Dasgupta Review,’ was issued ahead of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The publication’s formal launch, hosted by the Royal Society, took place on 2 February 2021.   

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The Guardian

March 8, 2021
The economic benefits of protecting nature-rich sites such as wetlands and woodlands outweigh the profit that could be made from using the land for resource extraction, according to the largest study yet to look at the value of protecting nature at specific locations.

Scientists analysed 24 sites in six continents and found the asset returns of “ecosystem services” such as carbon storage and flood prevention created by conservation work was, pound for pound, greater than manmade capital created by using the land for activities such as forestry or farming cereals, sugar, tea or cocoa.

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PhysOrg

March 8, 2021
The economic benefits of conserving or restoring natural sites "outweigh" the profit potential of converting them for intensive human use, according to the largest-ever study comparing the value of protecting nature at particular locations with that of exploiting it.

A research team led by the University of Cambridge and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) analysed dozens of sites—from Kenya to Fiji and China to the UK—across six continents. A previous breakthrough study in 2002 only had information for five sites.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, come just weeks after a landmark report by Cambridge Professor Partha Dasgupta called for the value of biodiversity to be placed at the heart of global economics.

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The Washington Post - OpEd

March 7, 2021
The recent horrors in Texas, as millions went without electricity and water during a historic winter storm and cold snap, remind us of the ticking time bomb that is our nation’s aging infrastructure. In the early 20th century, we made bold investments in our infrastructure that powered our success, and our continued prosperity depends upon our ability to innovate and adapt. Yet we have failed to invest for decades, leading to the American Society of Civil Engineers consistently giving America’s infrastructure C-minus to D-plus marks.

As climate change brings more frequent and intense weather events, our infrastructure will continue to face challenges it was not built to withstand. The most vulnerable among us will suffer disproportionately. If this is to be a time of equitable renewal amid a global pandemic, then we must meet this once-in-a-generation opportunity to address our crumbling infrastructure, climate change and social equity with a natural solution.

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The Hill - OpEd

March 6, 2021
Too much of the chaos and tragedy that our world is experiencing is a consequence of our broken relationship with nature. 

A virus has spilled over from wildlife to humans, causing a catastrophic global pandemic. Climate change is fueling weather events that are unprecedented in scale and devastation. From wildfires in the United States, Australia, the Amazon and the Arctic, to dangerous and record-breaking winter storms in Texas. 

There is no easy cure for what ails the environment. No silver bullet can restore the natural world overnight. What we know is that for our planet to remain livable over the long-term, it is going to take thousands of place-based conservation efforts, led by Indigenous peoples and local communities who oversee the most healthy, biodiverse and intact lands and waters left on Earth. 

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NewEurope

March 4, 2021
On the occasion of the World Wildlife Day, the European Commission reiterated its invitation on March 3 to all world institutions to raise their voices to build the momentum for nature and help convince more governments to be ambitious at the crucial Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CoP 15) later this year.

“Humanity is destroying nature at an unprecedented rate, and we risk losing nearly 1 million species,” Commission Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans said. “This is a direct threat to our own health and wellbeing, as we are fully dependent on the planet’s rich web of life. We must urgently restore balance in our relationship with nature and reverse biodiversity loss. Action starts with awareness and the work done via coalitions like ‘United for Biodiversity’ is crucial to help put our natural environment on the path to recovery,” he added.

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Mongabay

March 3, 2021
Protected areas cover around 13% of the earth’s surface, but contain an estimated 83% of its endangered wildlife. However, mounting evidence suggests that protected areas may not be living up to their name, with around a third of the planet’s protected land area under intense pressure from human activity. Now, a new study reveals 6% of the world’s protected land has been cleared and converted to crop fields.

The study, conducted by researchers Varsha Vijay of the University of Maryland’s National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center and Paul R. Armsworth of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at the University of Tennessee, has combined data on protected areas, cropland, biodiversity levels, biomes, human density and income to see just how much of the planet’s agricultural land is coming at the expense of protected habitat and the factors that play into this.

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New Scientist

March 3, 2021
Released from quarantine in a hotel in Wuhan, China, this January, Peter Daszak made for the wildlife market linked to the first cases of a mystery pneumonia in the closing days of 2019. Back then, the Huanan seafood market was a jostling scrum of stalls selling not just seafood, but all manner of domestic and exotic wild animals, the living cheek by jowl with the dead.

It is now an empty shell, closed since the first cluster of cases of what morphed into the covid-19 pandemic. Daszak, a zoologist, visited earlier this year as a member of the World Health Organization-backed team sent to investigate the origins of the virus causing that illness, SARS-CoV-2, and assess what role the now-infamous market might have played.

No one yet knows, and hypotheses will take years to test. But it is clear that the Huanan outbreak was just a symptom of a sickness, not a cause of it. For two decades, evidence has been building of the link between how we encroach on, degrade and exploit the natural world and the risk of “zoonoses” – animal diseases that spill over into humans.

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UN News

March 2, 2021
The UN chief highlighted that the global economy increased almost fivefold in the past fifty years, but that growth was at a massive cost to the environment. 

“Nature’s resources still do not figure in countries’ calculations of wealth. The current system is weighted towards destruction, not preservation”, he said. 

“The bottom line … is that we need to transform how we view and value nature. We must reflect nature’s true value in all our policies, plans and economic systems”, Mr. Guterres urged, adding that by doing so, investment can be directed into actions that protect and restore nature. 

“The rewards will be immense”, he said. 

The call by the Secretary-General comes as countries convened at the UN Statistical Commission are set to deliberate a new statistical framework to measure economic prosperity and human well-being, which includes the contributions of nature. 

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National Geographic

March 1, 2021
When Grand Canyon National Park was established a century ago, the Colorado River running through it was treated as an afterthought. In the decades following, states scrambled to squeeze every drop of water out of the Colorado for farming and drinking, with a cascade of huge dams constructed along its course.

Native fish like suckers and chubs, found nowhere else in the world, were replaced with invasive catfish and bass that were more attractive for anglers. In time, the mighty river that had once carved out one of America’s most iconic landscapes was reduced to a trickle, no longer able to fulfill its destiny of reaching the sea.

What happened to the Colorado is a powerful example of a river’s decline, but it’s hardly an exception. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and wetlands have increasingly come under similar assault from poorly planned dams, pollution, habitat loss, sand mining, climate change, and the introduction of invasive species.

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National Parks Traveler

February 28, 2021
Tucked inside President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad are three paragraphs calling for recommendations to conserve 30 percent of  U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Scientists have championed the 30x30 initiative globally for years to protect biodiversity and mitigate climate change impacts, but only now is the effort gaining administration attention.

“Over the coming months, Interior will evaluate how to best measure and assess the country’s progress toward the 30x30 goal, to properly account for the many innovative and effective ways that communities are conserving their lands and waters for current and future generations,” according to a Department of the Interior fact sheet issued on January 27.

Calling the goals “the most ambitious conservation agenda in at least the past century,” outdoor industry companies, including Burton, Columbia, L.L. Bean, New Balance, Orvis, Patagonia, The North Face, Keen and Smartwool, co-signed a letter applauding the Biden administration’s 30x30 goal.

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CBS News

February 27, 2021
A new report from the United Nations warns that global governments are "nowhere" near ambitious enough to adequately tackle climate change and meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. To fix this, the report shows that countries have to redouble their efforts and adjust their goals by the end of this year to limit global temperature rise by the end of the century.

The NDC Synthesis Report analyzes governments' climate action plans that have already been submitted to the UN as part of the global effort to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change. So far, 75 parties — making up roughly 30% of the world's total emissions — have submitted their plans. A second report is expected to be released prior to the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November.

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Reuters

February 25, 2021
The rate of destruction of the world’s tropical forests is likely to have gathered pace last year, green groups warned, as the pandemic weakened environmental regulations, cut funding for protection work and forced city migrants back to rural areas.

In 2019, tropical rainforests disappeared at a rate of one football pitch every six seconds, according to monitoring service Global Forest Watch (GFW), despite more awareness of the key role of carbon-storing forests in slowing climate change.

The tracking platform, which uses satellite imagery and is run by the U.S.-based think-tank World Resources Institute (WRI), is due to release its deforestation numbers for 2020 - when the COVID-19 pandemic struck - in the next three months.

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The Hill

February 25, 2021
One of the most critical ocean circulation patterns that helps the Earth regulate its temperature has recently reached its weakest state in a millennium, making it more difficult to effectively distribute heat on the planet. 

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a series of currents that flow across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Nordic and Labrador Seas, helps transport heat from the South Atlantic and North Atlantic to more polar Atlantic waters.

Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, a new study examines evidence pointing to the AMOC’s slowdown due to anthropogenic climate change, or climate change caused by humans. 

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