Associated Press

September 23, 2021
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced plans Thursday to spend more than $900 million over the next five years to curb global malnutrition, a move to stem the rise in world hunger during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s one of several pledges private donors made this week as world leaders gather in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

On Wednesday, a coalition of nine foundations said they would collectively spend $5 billion by 2030 to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea, known as 30x30. The pledge from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Washington D.C.-based Wyss Foundation and others is believed to be the largest private pledge to protect biodiversity.

One of the donors, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, had already announced on Monday his Bezos Earth Fund would earmark $1 billion to aid with conservation efforts. That commitment is part of the $10 billion Bezos pledged last year to fight climate change following years of criticism about Amazon’s carbon footprint. He stepped down from the company in July.

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Asia News International

September 23, 2021
Nine organisations have pledged 5 billion US dollars over the next ten years to support the creation, expansion, management and monitoring of protected and conserved areas of land, inland water and sea, working with indigenous peoples, local communities, civil society and governments, the United Nations said.

Heads of State, philanthropic leaders and indigenous representatives came together on Wednesday to announce unprecedented commitments to protect and restore nature at the opening session of the Nature for Life Hub, a high-level event Transformative Action for Nature and People, coinciding with the 76th United Nations General Assembly, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

“This is not a moment where we should not have hope. At the centre of all this, people will have to be the ones who shape what happens next,” Achim Steiner UNDP Administrator said here in a statement.

“Societies have found within themselves the ability to address things that often were long overdue whether it was the issues of inequality or exclusion, but also investments in systematic transformations. We are investing in one another’s ability to, together, change the trajectory of the world,” he added.

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African Arguments

September 23, 2021
Earlier this week, nine philanthropic organisations launched the “Protecting Our Planet Challenge” and pledged $5 billion to protect and conserve 30% of the planet by 2030 (30×30). This can be achieved by supporting protected areas and indigenous stewardship of their territories. This marks the largest-ever philanthropic commitment to nature conservation.

Whilst this may not naturally lead you to consider the implications for peace and security, this type of financial commitment could play an important role in the global effort to bring peace, prosperity and sustainability to the continent of Africa.

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E&E News

September 22, 2021
A coalition of nine charitable groups announced today that they will jointly commit $5 billion toward an aggressive pledge that aims to conserve 30% of the world’s lands and waters by 2030.

The pledge includes Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’ commitment on Monday to direct $1 billion — 10 percent of his $10 billion effort to address climate change — to the global conservation goal commonly known as 30×30 (Greenwire, Sept. 21).

Both the Rainforest Trust and the Wyss Foundation will likewise provide $500 million to the "Protecting Our Planet Challenge."

Additional funds come from the charitable fund Arcadia; Bloomberg Philanthropies; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation; the indigenous rights nonprofit Nia Tero; and Re:wild, a group founded by conservation scientists and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

“We can solve the crisis facing nature,” philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss said in a statement announcing the pledge. “But it’s going to take the wealthiest nations and the wealthiest individuals committing to reinvest our enormous bounties here on Earth, safeguarding nature and protecting our lands, waters, and wildlife.”

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Reuters

September 22, 2021
Philanthropists and investors committed $5 billion to nature restoration and conservation on Wednesday, a move environmental activists welcomed as the highest sum of private funding ever pledged.

The funding, pledged at an event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, will focus on the "30by30" target, which aims to protect 30% of the planet's land and water over the next decade.

Scientists and conservationists say this is key to protecting biodiversity, which encompasses millions of species and natural processes in ecosystems such as rainforests and oceans, and is under threat from human-driven activities such as industrial agriculture, fishing, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Some $150 billion a year is currently pledged on conservation and so-called nature-positive initiatives that prevent degradation of nature but up to $1 trillion a year is needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, according to the Convention for Biodiversity, an intergovernmental U.N. agency that leads global biodiversity negotiations.

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Thomson Reuters

September 22, 2021
A group of private donors pledged a record $5 billion to help safeguard the planet's plants, animals and ecosystems at an event during the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

The nine charitable funders, which include the Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Rainforest Trust, launched the decade-long "Protecting Our Planet Challenge" to help finance larger and better-managed natural areas worldwide.

"Halting and reversing biodiversity loss and climate change requires expanded protected and conserved areas, especially in tropical forests," said James Deutsch, CEO of the Rainforest Trust, which contributed $500 million to the pot.

"Developing nations and indigenous peoples need financing to achieve this, which is why we are pledging to more than double our level of funding between now and 2030, and (are) urging other private and public funders to do the same," he added in a statement.

The Finance for Biodiversity Pledge also said on Wednesday that 75 financial institutions - worth a combined 12 trillion euros ($14 trillion) in assets - have committed to protecting and restoring biodiversity through their investments.

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Washington Post

September 22, 2021
The Wyss Foundation and eight other philanthropic organizations pledged Wednesday to give $5 billion by 2030 to protect biodiversity around the planet, the largest-ever private gift for conservation.

Wyss said it would donate $500 million, which comes on top of a $1 billion commitment it made three years ago. Wyss has already invested nearly $676 million of that amount to help local communities, Indigenous peoples and governments safeguard their lands, water and wildlife.

The philanthropic group’s goal is to maintain 30 percent of the planet in its natural state. In May, a United Nations report concluded that a million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction, a rate of decline that is unparalleled in human history.

“The actions we take from today through 2030 will determine the fate of our natural world,” Hansjörg Wyss, founder and chairman of the Wyss Foundation, said in a statement. “For our grandchildren and their grandchildren to have the same opportunities we’ve had, for them to inherit a functioning planet, we have to rapidly slow the rate at which our economies are destroying nature.”

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Campaign for Nature

September 22, 2021
Over 20 heads of state, as well as business, philanthropy and Indigenous leaders, made major funding announcements and conservation commitments today at the Transformative Action for Nature and People, a UN General Assembly side event, which aimed to build momentum ahead of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will begin on October 11, 2021. 

One effort, the global push to protect and conserve at least 30% of the world’s lands, freshwater and oceans by 2030, gained major traction today as leaders of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) committed to new conservation action and announced that 72 countries now support the global goal. Together, the HAC country members harbor 42% of land biodiversity and 30% of terrestrial carbon stocks, 44% of ocean biodiversity conservation priority areas and 46% of sediment carbon (and 30% of carbon at risk from bottom trawling) in exclusive economic zones. Additionally, between the HAC, the Global Ocean Alliance (a coalition of countries championing the ocean 30by30 target) and other initiatives, over 100 countries now support the ocean “30by30” target.

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New Straits Times

September 21, 2021
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is one of the foremost global organisations advocating the protection of nature.

Governments and civil society organisations convened in 1948 to create the IUCN to protect nature, encourage international cooperation, and provide scientific knowledge and tools to guide conservation.

IUCN played a fundamental role in creating the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971), the World Heritage Convention (1972), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, (1974) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992).

Today, with more than 1,300 members, including states, government agencies, non-governmental organisations and indigenous peoples' organisations, and thousands of supportive experts, IUCN continues to champion nature-based solutions, such as he United Nations' Paris climate change agreement and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

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The New York Times

September 20, 2021
Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest men, announced plans on Monday for $1 billion in conservation spending in places like the Congo Basin, the Andes and tropical parts of the Pacific Ocean.

The announcement was the latest step in his largest philanthropic effort, the Bezos Earth Fund, to which he pledged $10 billion last year. “By coming together with the right focus and ingenuity, we can have both the benefits of our modern lives and a thriving natural world,” Mr. Bezos said on Monday at an event in New York.

The money will be used “to create, expand, manage and monitor protected and conserved areas,” according to a news release from the fund, which also introduced a website on Monday.

The initiative is intended to support an international push to safeguard at least 30 percent of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030, known as 30x30. The plan, led by Britain, Costa Rica and France, is intended to help tackle a global biodiversity crisis that puts a million species of plants and animals at risk of extinction. While climate change is part of the problem, activities like farming and fishing have been even bigger drivers of biodiversity loss. The 30x30 plan would try to slow that by protecting intact natural areas like old-growth forests and wetlands, which not only nurture biodiversity but also store carbon and filter water.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation

September 17, 2021
Ahead of a global summit to agree a new pact to protect nature that kicks off next month, environmentalists said developing nations will need more funding to implement its goals, branding the $10 billion a year now being sought "woefully inadequate".

Governments are tasked with finalising an agreement to safeguard the planet's plants, animals and ecosystems - similar to the Paris climate accord - at the two-part U.N. biodiversity summit due to conclude next May in the Chinese city of Kunming.

A draft of the biodiversity pact published in July includes a pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet's land and oceans by 2030 - but finding the funds needed to help nature-rich developing countries with conservation is a challenge.

The text calls for "redirecting, repurposing, reforming or eliminating incentives harmful for biodiversity", meaning things like subsidies for fossil fuel production or intensive farming.

It also urges an increase in investment to protect and restore nature from all sources to $200 billion annually, including an additional $10 billion in "international financial flows" for developing nations.

"It is woefully inadequate," said Brian O'Donnell, director of the U.S.-based Campaign for Nature, adding that existing funding from rich to poorer countries was about $10 billion.

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Path To Scale

September 16, 2021
Launch Announcement: Today an informal network of donors and financial institutions launched Path to Scale which aims to scale-up funding and other enabling factors to secure the land and resource rights, conservation, and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples to the levels necessary to meet 2030 global climate and biodiversity targets.

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Outrage + Optimism [Podcast]

September 15, 2021
Today, only 15 percent of land and 7 percent of our ocean are protected. Nature needs more.

The science is very clear – to prevent a mass extinction crisis, support a growing global population, and address climate change, we must conserve at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

...So why now? The science is very, very clear - If we act now we can limit the disaster, and we could even reverse the trends of climate change in an equitable, just fashion. But how?

This week we’re joined by Rita El Zaghloul, Coordinator of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature & People on behalf of Costa Rica. She is the driving force behind ambition at The HAC’s 30x30 campaign, slamming the pedal to the metal on their aim to agree to this plan at the COP15 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in October. The best part about it? It centers indigenous leadership and indigenous rights, while mobilizing financial resources both publicly and privately to ensure protected areas are properly managed, all the while protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

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NBC News

September 13, 2021
Without immediate action to combat climate change, rising sea levels, water scarcity and declining crop productivity could force 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050, the World Bank said in a new report on Monday.

The report, Groundswell 2.0, modeled the impacts of climate change on six regions, concluding that climate migration “hotspots” will emerge as soon as 2030 and intensify by 2050, hitting the poorest parts of the world hardest.

Sub-Saharan Africa alone would account for 86 million of the internal migrants, with 19 million more in North Africa, the report showed, while 40 million migrants were expected in South Asia and 49 million in East Asia and the Pacific.

Such movements will put significant stress on both sending and receiving areas, straining cities and urban centers and jeopardizing development gains, the report said.

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Financial Times - OpEd

September 13, 2021
It is often believed that the financial sector can survive any crisis and that investors always find a way to bounce back and make more money. It took about four years for the markets to recover from the 2008 financial crisis, and only a few months to return to pre-pandemic levels.

The biodiversity crisis will be different. The markets took a quarter of a century to recover from the Great Depression in 1929. They will probably take a similar time to rebound once the mass extinction of species is fully underway by 2030. Biodiversity loss, set to be one of the largest environmental crises of all times, will collapse economies and societies. If the financial sector wants to survive it must move now, fast and at scale.

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