Thomson Reuters Foundation

October 27, 2021
Any new pledges made at the upcoming COP26 climate summit must include protection and restoration of natural areas, said the U.N. biodiversity chief - a move that could give a boost to ongoing efforts to broker a separate global nature pact.

About 195 countries are set to finalise a new accord to safeguard plants, animals and ecosystems - similar to the Paris climate agreement - at a two-part U.N. summit, known as COP15, which began this month and is due to finish next May in China.

Ahead of that, many world leaders are headed to two-week U.N. climate talks that start in Scotland on Sunday, in a bid to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"The fact that the two COPs are taking place pretty much back-to-back gives us that excellent opportunity to show how issues of biodiversity and climate change are inseparable," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

"Climate change is becoming an increasingly serious driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation - and that loss threatens to worsen climate change," Mrema told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation - OpEd

October 26, 2021
Last week, leaders from around the world came together at a global summit to negotiate a comprehensive plan to safeguard nature around the world. 

Whether the resulting global strategy, expected to be finalized in 2022, is sufficiently ambitious and successful will be influenced by one item: the degree to which countries put advancing human rights, in general, and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, in particular, at the heart of their plans and real actions.

Science has recently shown what many of us have always known, that indigenous peoples and local communities have historically been and still are the best stewards of nature. Biodiversity is declining less on indigenous lands and traditional territories than elsewhere in the world, and an outsized proportion of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in these areas. 

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Project Syndicate - OpEd

October 20, 2021
To lead our region toward recovery, resilience, and long-term sustainable development, ASEAN member states should commit to the 30x30 plan to protect nature. This initiative, which aims to conserve 30% of Earth’s lands and oceans by 2030, is a key element of the proposed global biodiversity framework, due to be finalized by 196 countries later this year, and is being championed by the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) of Nature and People. More than 70 countries have signed on to the HAC, but Cambodia is the only ASEAN member state among them.

Southeast Asia comprises just 3% of Earth’s land mass, but it contains almost 20% of the world’s biodiversity. More than 2,000 species have been discovered in the ASEAN region over the past 20 years, and three member states – Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines – are considered “mega-diverse” countries, with a variety of species akin to that of the Amazon rainforest and the Congo Basin. The region contains around 60% of the world’s tropical peatlands and has the world’s most extensive and diverse coral reefs, accounting for 28% of the global total. The Coral Triangle is a global hub of marine biodiversity.

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China Dialogue

October 19, 2021
The first session of the most important global biodiversity meeting in a decade was held in Kunming between 11 and 15 October, in an in-person and online hybrid format. 

The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) launched a new stage in talks towards a global deal for nature – known as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. China, as host nation, is ushering the CBD towards a roadmap for biodiversity conservation for the coming decade and beyond. Delegates to the talks were in agreement: the Aichi targets set in 2010 have been missed, but Kunming cannot be allowed to fail.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hampered progress towards the post-2020 framework, with proceedings delayed or forced online. At meetings of two subsidiary bodies to the CBD in May and June, network issues excluded most African nations from online discussions, leading them to request some matters be renegotiated in January next year. 

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Canada’s National Observer

October 15, 2021

In the run-up to the UN’s crucial climate conference at month’s end, global leaders have laid the foundation for an international framework to protect nature and halt the collapse of biodiversity worldwide while also curbing global warming and protecting human health.

More than 100 nations committed to the Kunming Declaration on Wednesday, a promise to put the natural world on a path to recovery by 2030.

The world is in a dire situation, facing an era of unprecedented species extinction, said COP15 president and China’s Environment Minister Huang Runqui.

As many as a million species of animals and plants are at peril in coming decades, according to a UN report.

The fate of the natural world and humanity are intertwined, Huang said.

“Biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation pose major risks to human survival and sustainable development.”

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BusinessGreen

October 15, 2021
The first phase of the COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Kunming, China closed today with the UN expressing confidence the week long talks had helped set the stage for the adoption of a new international treaty next year to ramp up global biodiversity protection.

The latest round of virtual talks delivered a wave of new funding pledges for nature protection and broad political support for a new set of global targets that would serve to curb rates of biodiversity loss over the next decade.

The COP15 Summit had been scheduled to take place this week with diplomats hoping it would finalise a new set of global targets for nature protection and restoration that would provide a boost to the parallel climate negotiations set to get underway at the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow next month.

However, the coronavirus crisis forced a second postponement of the global talks, with the UN and Chinese hosts staging a virtual round of talks this week ahead of the conclusion of the summit in person next spring.

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New Strait Times

October 14, 2021
At a meeting of Parties to the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, world governments are looking ahead to the adoption of new goals and targets for nature to be met this decade: CBD's "Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework" (GBF).

The draft framework lays out broad actions to help transform society's relationship with biodiversity and fulfil a previously agreed shared vision of "living in harmony with nature" by 2050.

This week's online summit Part One sets the stage for a decisive face-to-face meeting in April. Among the new targets is one advanced by the Campaign for Nature (CFN): protect 30 per cent of the world's land and marine areas by 2030.

These should consist of protected areas and "other effective area-based conservation measures" (OECMs), such as territories inhabited by indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs).

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The Guardian

October 14, 2021
The calls for biodiversity and the climate crisis to be tackled in tandem are growing. “It is clear that we cannot solve [the global biodiversity and climate crises] in isolation – we either solve both or we solve neither,” says Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s climate and environment minister, with the launch in June of a report produced by the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts. Zoological Society of London senior research fellow Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, who led a study on the subject published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in September, says: “The level of interconnectedness between the climate change and biodiversity crises is high and should not be underestimated. This is not just about climate change impacting biodiversity; it is also about the loss of biodiversity deepening the climate crisis.”

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EuroNews

October 14, 2021
Around 195 countries signed a pledge on Wednesday to come up with an “ambitious and transformative” plan to prevent our planet from losing its biodiversity.

Meeting as part of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, also known as COP15, they took on what has been called the defining challenge of this decade.

Named after the city in China where this conference is taking place, the Kunming Declaration signals a change in momentum. It is hoped that this first part of the summit will allow countries to come up with an agreement similar to the Paris Accords - but for the protection of biodiversity rather than climate change.

That agreement is expected to be finalised at the second half of the conference next year.

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The New York Times

October 14, 2021

As 20,000 government leaders, journalists, activists and celebrities from around the world prepare to descend on Glasgow for a crucial climate summit starting late this month, another high-level international environmental meeting got started this week. The problem it seeks to tackle: A rapid collapse of species and systems that collectively sustain life on earth.

The stakes at the two meetings are equally high, many leading scientists say, but the biodiversity crisis has received far less attention.

“If the global community continues to see it as a side event, and they continue thinking that climate change is now the thing to really listen to, by the time they wake up on biodiversity it might be too late,” said Francis Ogwal, one of the leaders of the working group charged with shaping an agreement among nations.

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Campaign For Nature

October 13, 2021
At the much-anticipated virtual opening of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Chinese President Xi, heads of state and ministers from around the world came together to stress the critical importance of conservation and the protection of Indigenous Peoples and local communities who safeguard nature.  

The meeting, which will be followed by meetings in Geneva and Kunming, China next year, underlined growing ambition to change our relationship with nature. It indicated an urgency to agree upon a transformative global vision and commit the financial commitments necessary to champion the critical infrastructure, which are lagging behind. 

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Thomson Reuters Foundation News

October 13, 2021
China's launch of a biodiversity fund is a "good start" but falls short of what is needed to help developing countries meet the goals in a global nature pact, environmentalists warned, urging all rich nations to step up ambition and funding.

About 195 countries are set to finalise a new accord to safeguard the planet's plants, animals and ecosystems at a two-part U.N. summit that began this week and is due to be finish in May next year in the Chinese city of Kunming.

Addressing the COP15 biodiversity virtual summit on Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the highly anticipated launch of a 1.5 billion yuan ($232.47 million) fund to support biodiversity protection in developing countries.

But China's funding pledge was a "drop in the bucket" and disappointing "for such a major world power", said Charles Barber, a senior biodiversity advisor at the World Resources Institute, a U.S.-based think-tank.

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South China Morning Post

October 12, 2021
China will donate 1.5 billion yuan (US$232.5 million) to set up a new fund to help developing countries protect the variety of plant and animal life, President Xi Jinping has pledged at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15).

“China will take the lead and contribute 1.5 billion yuan to set up the Kunming Biodiversity Fund to support biodiversity development of developing countries,” Xi told the conference via video link on Tuesday. “China calls for and welcomes all parties to contribute and support strengthening protection of biodiversity.”

Xi also pledged to accelerate the development of wind and solar power in China.

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The Guardian

October 11, 2021
All eyes are on Cop26 in Glasgow since the climate crisis aroused worldwide attention and compelled more than 120 countries to join the unprecedented global Race to Zero carbon-emissions campaign. But the UN biodiversity conference in Kunming, or Cop15, should not be overshadowed, as biodiversity loss is an equally grave threat to humanity.

Cop15, delayed repeatedly by the Covid-19 pandemic, will take place in two parts, online from 11 October, with more detailed discussions left for April’s meeting in Kunming, China. The conference will convene governments from around the world to agree new goals for nature for the next decade, as global biodiversity losses pose a threat to human wellbeing, affecting food, health and security, and increasing the likelihood of pandemics.

Humanity has achieved unprecedented development and prosperity over the past 50 years, with the world population more than doubling and global GDP growing from barely $3tn in 1970 to nearly $85tn in 2020. But in this time nature has suffered enormous losses, with the global populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish declining by two-thirds on average, according to last year’s Living Planet report.

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Reuters

October 8, 2021
Global leaders will gather virtually next week to discuss protecting nature across the planet and experts say there's no time to lose. Animal and plant species are going extinct at a rate not seen in 10 million years.

The losses are accelerating, scientists say, thanks largely to climate change, deforestation, pollution, overfishing and urban development. To limit the loss, the United Nations has urged countries to commit to conserving 30% of their land – almost double the area now under some form of protection.

About 70 countries have committed to the target, which would include about a third of the world's land animals and plants, according to the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People.

China begins hosting the U.N. Conference on Biodiversity, known as COP15, in the city of Kunming on Monday, with most discussions taking place online because of COVID restrictions. A second round will be held next year.

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