Campaign for Nature

May 21, 2021
Today, G7 Ministers responsible for Climate and Environment issued a sweeping communiqué laying out an urgent action plan for how to tackle the twin biodiversity and climate crises. 

In the communiqué, they assert their commitment to “conserving or protecting at least 30% of global land and at least 30% of the global ocean by 2030  to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and address climate change.” They further urge that Indigenous Peoples, and local communities be included as “full partners in the implementation of this target.”

This historic call for greater and more coordinated climate and biodiversity action comes in the leadup to a meeting in Kunming, China this year, when delegates from 190 countries will agree on an action plan for ending the biodiversity crisis that can address the accelerating loss of species and protect the vital ecosystems that safeguard human health and economic security. 

Read More

Climate Home News

May 20, 2021
Germany has launched a $1 billion fund which aims to halt global biodiversity loss and provide long-term financial support for protected areas across three continents. 

The launch comes after countries failed to meet internationally agreed 2020 targets to prevent the destruction of plants and wildlife. 

The Legacy Landscapes Fund aims to mobilise enough funding from private and public donors to provide 15 years of financial support for 30 conservation areas. 

At a launch event on Wednesday, Germany’s finance minister Gerd Muller said the fund would “provide lasting, reliable core funding for at least 30 biodiversity hotspots in Africa, Asia and Latin America”. 

The German government and several private donors have invested the first $100 million in the fund which will be used for seven pilot projects in four African countries, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Bolivia. Funding will be used to pay park rangers, support local communities, fund surveillance and monitoring and maintain infrastructure. 

Read More

Vox

May 20, 2021
As President Joe Biden moves quickly to reinstate the full slate of environmental policies weakened by former President Donald Trump, including the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act, he’s signaling that climate change and biodiversity loss are now major priorities for the US.

Earlier this month, the Interior Department also launched a campaign to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030, joining more than 50 other countries that have committed to that goal. Biden is pursuing the target, known as 30 by 30, alongside a new and more ambitious commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Yet there’s one big problem with this post-Trump environmental renaissance: The US still hasn’t joined the most important international agreement to conserve biodiversity, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). And it isn’t just a small, inconsequential treaty. Designed to protect species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity, the treaty has been ratified by every other country or territory aside from the Holy See. Among other achievements, CBD has pushed countries to create national biodiversity strategies and to expand their networks of protected areas.

Read More

Campaign for Nature

May 20, 2021
Today, the ICCA Consortium released its Territories of Life: 2021 Report. The report includes the most up-to-date analysis of how much of the planet is likely conserved by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, estimating that they are conserving more than 22% of the extent of the world’s Key Biodiversity Areas on land and at least 21% of the world’s lands. The report also found that Indigenous Peoples and local communities are the de facto custodians of many existing state and private protected and conserved areas, without being recognized as such, underscoring the critical need for equitable governance and the importance of ensuring that all existing and new protected and conserved areas fully respect Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights.

In addition to providing updated spatial analyses and related findings, the report details 17 case studies of territories of life from five continents, highlighting concrete examples of how Indigenous Peoples and local communities sustain our planet and describing what types of actions are needed to better support them, their rights, and their contributions to biodiversity.

Read More

The Guardian

May 19, 2021
An area greater than the land mass of Russia has been added to the world’s network of national parks and conservation areas since 2010, amid growing pressure to protect nature.

As of today, about 17% of land and inland water ecosystems and 8% of marine areas are within formal protected areas, with the total coverage increasing by 42% since the beginning of the last decade, according to the Protected Planet report by the UN Environment Programme (Unep) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Read More

Reuters

May 19, 2021
Germany helped launch a new billion-dollar fund on Wednesday to tackle rapidly depleting global biodiversity, as countries missed key land and marine conservation targets but prepare to ramp up efforts in the decade ahead.

Protecting biodiversity has risen up the global agenda, not least because scientists say the destruction of remote natural habitats facilitates the spread of diseases such as the new coronavirus to humans as they come into closer contact with other species.

The United Nations hopes to secure an agreement at the next Biodiversity Convention meeting in China in October to protect and conserve 30% of the Earth's land and water by 2030.

"The concept of '30 by 30' is quite a big political ask, but we need these kinds of targets because they are a perfect way to harness political will," said James Hardcastle, a conservationist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), referring to the campaign by its tagline.

Read More

Campaign For Nature

May 19, 2021
Today, the United Nations and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) launched a final report card on progress towards Aichi Target 11 – the global 10-year target on protected and conserved areas that expired in 2020. 

The report finds that the size of protected areas has grown significantly, with the 17% target for land-based conservation and the 10% goal for ocean conservation nearly met. This progress demonstrates the ability of protected area targets to help drive action from countries around the world, and the report authors make it clear that more protections are needed moving forward in order to help address the crisis of global biodiversity loss. They note that there are still many areas important for biodiversity and ecosystem services that lack protection, and they highlight that the entire network of protected and conserved areas must be more effectively managed.  

Read More

Global Landscapes Forum

May 18, 2021
The past couple of years have seen a wave of reports on Earth’s biodiversity and its dire state, finding that 1 million species are under threat of extinction and that populations of monitored animals have declined 68 percent since 1970. But how much are these scientific findings making it through to the zeitgeist? Are their numbers changing how much people care?

A new report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), found that the number of people engaging in conversations and actions on biodiversity loss numbers hundreds of millions and is on the rise. This “eco-wakening,” as the report deems the trend, is most quickly climbing in Asia and emerging markets, with top growth and engagement rates in India, Pakistan and Indonesia, as measured between 2016 and 2020.

Read More

Nature

May 12, 2021
Projects that manage, protect and restore ecosystems are widely viewed as win–win strategies for addressing two of this century’s biggest global challenges: climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet the potential contribution of such nature-based solutions to mitigating climate change remains controversial.

Decision-makers urgently need to know: what role do nature-based solutions have in the race to net-zero emissions and stop further global temperature increases?

Analyses of nature-based solutions often focus on how much carbon they can remove from the atmosphere. Here, we provide a new perspective by modelling how these solutions will affect global temperatures — a crucial metric as humanity attempts to limit global warming.

Read More

The Conversation

May 11, 2021
President Joe Biden calls climate change “the existential crisis of our time” and has taken steps to curb it that match those words. They include returning the U.S. to the Paris Agreement; creating a new climate Cabinet position; introducing a plan to slash fossil fuel subsidies; and announcing ambitious goals to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

But climate change is not the only global environmental threat that demands attention. Scientists widely agree that loss of wildlife and the natural environment is an equally urgent crisis. Some argue that biodiversity loss threatens to become Earth’s sixth mass extinction. But unlike efforts to fight climate change – which center on clear, measurable goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – there is no globally accepted metric for saving biodiversity.

Read More

Native News Online

May 9, 2021
The Biden administration on Thursday released its vision for how the United States can work collaboratively to conserve and restore the lands, waters, and wildlife that support and sustain the nation. A number of tribal leaders were quick to endorse the principles of the 30x30 Policy in a statement also released on Thursday. 

The recommendations are contained in the 22-page “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful” report, outlining a locally led and voluntary nationwide conservation goal to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 that was submitted to the National Climate Task Force.

Dubbed the 30x30 Policy, the recommendations were developed by the U.S. Departments of the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Read More

SciTechDaily

May 8, 2021
A growing body of evidence suggests that biodiversity loss increases our exposure to both new and established zoonotic pathogens. Restoring and protecting nature is essential to preventing future pandemics. So reports a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper that synthesizes current understanding about how biodiversity affects human health and provides recommendations for future research to guide management.

Lead author Felicia Keesing is a professor at Bard College and a Visiting Scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She explains, “There’s a persistent myth that wild areas with high levels of biodiversity are hotspots for disease. More animal diversity must equal more dangerous pathogens. But this turns out to be wrong. Biodiversity isn’t a threat to us, it’s actually protecting us from the species most likely to make us sick.”

Read More

The Hill

May 8, 2021
How much do you know about the natural world around you? According to a recent survey by SWNS Digital, a majority of people know less than one might assume. 

The results of the survey revealed to researchers some of the common misconceptions that people have about the “shrinking natural world,” like the incorrect assumption that it is more concerning for the environment when an animal goes extinct rather than a plant or insect. According to the survey of 2,000 respondents, approximately 64 percent believed this to be true. 

The survey also revealed that the average person believes that the planet loses 101 species per year to extinction, when in reality the number is actually at least 100 times that amount. 

Read More

The Highland County Press

May 8, 2021
The Biden administration plans to broadly define conservation and encourage private landowners to adopt sustainable practices to meet a goal of protecting 30 percent of the land and water in the U.S. by 2030, according to a multi-agency report published Thursday.

The recommendations are short of the most aggressive federal directives congressional Republicans feared would be central to reaching the administration’s “30 by 30” goal, but may still spark objections in a Congress deeply split on how the government should manage its public lands and deal with private landowners, particularly in the West.

Read More

Mongabay

May 7, 2021
The world is brimming with bad news about people failing to take care of the Earth. But there is a way to change the narrative, says Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke. The key, according to him, is to strive for a “nature positive” world that is less about destruction and more about restoration.

“We know we’re on a rocket sled into the abyss, and we need to turn that around 100%, going the other direction on a rocket sled towards a positive solution,” Locke told Mongabay in an interview. “Tinkering is not possible. We can’t just [take] an old crystal radio set where you just kind of turn the dial a little bit [to] move from one station to another. It won’t work. We need to be on the internet, instead of listening to the radio — that kind of level of change.”

Locke is the lead author of a new paper published April 30, a few days before the start of a six-week virtual meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), an intergovernmental scientific advisory body to the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). At this meeting, the SBSTTA will provide advice on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, Guido Broekhoven, head of policy research and development at WWF, told Mongabay in an interview.

Read More