Mongabay

January 6, 2022
Ten countries in the western Indian Ocean are banding together to create a network of marine conservation areas under the banner of the Great Blue Wall.

The idea is to push through conservation areas, including those that straddle national boundaries, to bridge the gap between how much of the ocean is protected and how much needs to be secured. A recent assessment revealed the cost of failing to do so: coral reefs in the region are at high risk of collapsing in the next 50 years.

“Most of what needs to be done is already happening, governments are creating Marine Protected Areas [MPAs], local communities are setting up locally managed marine areas,” said Thomas Sberna, a regional head for Eastern and Southern Africa at global conservation authority the IUCN. “But is it happening fast enough, is it big enough? No.”

Only around 5-8% of the marine area in the Indian Ocean is under some form of legal protection, a far cry from the goal of protecting 30% of Earth’s land and oceans by 2030. Known as “30 by 30,” this goal has gained traction globally ahead of a landmark biodiversity summit this year.

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The Guardian

December 31, 2021
It is no secret that the diversity of life around us is plummeting. Scientists declared more than 100 species to be extinct in 2020 alone. That’s bad news not only for the creatures themselves but for those of us (that would be all of us) who rely on them for food, to produce oxygen, to hold soil in place, to cleanse water, to beautify our world and so much more. According to the World Economic Forum, nature plays a key role in generating more than half of global GDP.

So what can we do to reduce future harm? One big thing is to identify emerging threats and opportunities to protect biodiversity and proactively shape policies and actions to prevent harm early on. To this end, a group of scientists and conservation practitioners led by William Sutherland, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Cambridge, create and publish a “horizon scan” of global trends with impacts for biodiversity each year. Read on for this year’s top picks.

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The Guardian

December 30, 2021
It was supposed to be a “super year for nature”: 2020 was going to be “a major opportunity to bring nature back from the brink”. But then the coronavirus pandemic set in and long-held plans to tackle the environmental crisis, kickstarted at Davos in January, where the financial elite underscored the risks of global heating and biodiversity loss to human civilisation, never happened. The biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, Cop15 in Kunming, China, where world leaders were expected to strike a deal to halt and reverse the destruction of ecosystems by reaching a Paris-style agreement for nature was postponed until 2021. The Cop26 climate summit was also postponed for a year.

As we enter 2022, there has still not been a super year for nature. Substantive negotiations for the biodiversity Cop15 meeting in China, the little sister to the climate convention, are likely to be delayed a fourth time as a result of the Omicron variant. Preparatory talks planned for January 2022 in Geneva have been pushed back – again – until March in a process that is feeling increasingly cursed, despite the best efforts of organisers.

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New Scientist

December 29, 2021
As the world examines the outcome of the COP26 climate summit, spare a thought for conservationists trying to protect the planet’s natural riches. A landmark UN biodiversity summit has been postponed three times because of the pandemic and now won’t be held in person in China until April, after a first session was held virtually last October.

The delay means that, incredibly, there are currently no global goals for stopping biodiversity loss. While countries missed most of the targets set for 2020, a new set of goals for 2030 – known as the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework – is still seen as essential for slowing and eventually reversing the decline of wildlife and habitats.

“I’m really hopeful that what’s adopted in Kunming will help move the needle on biodiversity,” says Susan Lieberman at the Wildlife Conservation Society, referring to the Chinese city where the COP15 biodiversity summit will be hosted.

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Campaign For Nature

December 17, 2021
Seeking to protect one of the most biodiverse waterways in the world from industrial fishing, the Costa Rican government announced today it is expanding Cocos Island National Park by 27 times. The waters surrounding the tropical Pacific island teems with wildlife, including sharks, rays, dolphins, turtles and whales. 

The government also unveiled the Bicentennial Marine Managed Area, twice the size of the expanded Cocos Island National Park, which will include some no-take areas and strengthen fisheries management. The expansion of the Cocos Island National Park from an area of 2,034 km 2 to 54,844 km 2 and the Bicentennial Marine Management Area from an area of 9,649 km 2 to 106,285.56 km 2 expands the country’s protection of its ocean from 2.7% of its waters to approximately 30%. With these marine protected area expansions, Costa Rica is leading in its global ambition and drive to achieve the global goal of protecting at least 30% of the planet - land and sea - by 2030. 

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Times News Express

December 17, 2021
October 2021 was an important month for crisis meetings. There was the big one, COP26, where decisionmakers descended on Glasgow to spend two frenetic weeks figuring out how to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement and keep global heating under 1.5 degrees Celsius. But earlier that month, a different crisis meeting took place that almost completely slipped below the radar—a meeting that will have huge implications for the future of every living thing on our planet.

The world is in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. Birds, mammals, and amphibians are going extinct at least 100 to 1,000 times faster than they did in the millions of years before humans began to dominate the planet. In the last 500 years alone, human activity has forced 869 species into extinction, according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). If things continue at their current rate, we’re on track for a sixth mass extinction—the first since that infamous dino-ending catastrophe 65 million years ago, which sparked an extinction event that eventually knocked off 76 percent of all species. 

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Brookings

December 15, 2021
In this fifth interview of the “17 Rooms” podcast, Rosina Bierbaum and Richard Florizone discuss near-term opportunities and challenges for scaling nature-based solutions. Bierbaum, professor at University of Maryland and University of Michigan, and Florizone, president at International Institute for Sustainable Development, moderated Room 15 focused on Sustainable Development Goal number 15—on life on land—during the 2021 17 Rooms flagship process.

17 Rooms” is a podcast about actions, insights, and community for the Sustainable Development Goals and the people driving them. The podcast is co-hosted by John McArthur—senior fellow and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at The Brookings Institution, and Zia Khan—senior vice president for innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation.

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Nature

December 9, 2021
Advances in spatial biodiversity science and nationally available data have enabled the development of indicators that report on biodiversity outcomes, account for uneven global biodiversity between countries, and provide direct planning support. We urge their inclusion in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

In 2022, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will assemble in Kunming, China to agree on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). Addressing threats that contribute to species extinctions and affect their role in ensuring ecosystem integrity underpins the GBF’s overarching Goal A, which stipulates “healthy and resilient populations of all species” and “reduced extinction rates”. Although multiple actions are needed to safeguard biodiversity, establishing targets for protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) is recognized as a primary mechanism to achieve Goal A.

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PR Newswire

December 6, 2021
The Bezos Earth Fund announced it awarded 44 grants totaling $443 million to organizations focused on climate justice, nature conservation and restoration, and tracking critical climate goals. The grants include $130 million to advance the Justice40 initiative in the U.S.; $261 million to further the 30x30 initiative to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, with a focus on the Congo Basin and Tropical Andes; and $51 million to support land restoration in the U.S. and Africa. These grants are part of the Bezos Earth Fund's $10 billion commitment to fight climate change, protect and restore nature, and advance environmental justice and economic opportunity.

"The goal of the Bezos Earth Fund is to support change agents who are seizing the challenges that this decisive decade presents," said Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund. "Through these grants, we are advancing climate justice and the protection of nature, two areas that demand stronger action."

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The Straits Times

December 3, 2021
The second part of UN biodiversity summit COP15, set to take place in Switzerland in January, has been postponed over the new coronavirus variant Omicron, organisers said on Thursday (Dec 2).

"Uncertainties posed by the Omicron variant and resulting travel measures and restrictions" have forced physical meetings to be postponed, they said in a statement.

The Geneva meeting originally supposed to take place from Jan 18 to 22 could instead be moved to March.

In a sign of Omicron's threat, about 2,000 people, including 1,600 children, have been placed in quarantine after two cases of the variant were found on one of the campuses of the renowned International School of Geneva, Swiss health authorities said on Thursday.

The first round of the COP15 gathering was held in October in south-west China's Kunming, though many attended the meeting virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It saw the adoption of a declaration to recognise the importance of biodiversity in human health, strengthen species protection laws and improve the sharing of genetic resources.

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Responsible Investor

December 3, 2021
The dust may have settled on COP26, but a different – and potentially less disappointing - Conference of the Parties in on the horizon, and it’s one that investors should be watching closely.

COP15 is aspiring to do for biodiversity what COP21 did for climate change. Where COP21 was the birthplace of the Paris Agreement, the second leg of COP15 in May 2022 hopes to sign off on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework - an international agreement on how we can “live in harmony with nature” by 2050.  

It could be argued that regulation is steering the agenda for climate finance, but when it comes to biodiversity investors are moving fast to make sure they stay ahead of the rulemakers. Over the past two weeks alone, there have been developments on all three of the core components needed to build a sustainability market: committed assets, disclosure guidelines and new financial products.  

On Tuesday, nine more investors - including pension funds KLP, PensionDanmark and ERAFP - signed up to the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge. The pledge, which now has 84 backers, commits institutions to collaborating, engaging, setting targets and reporting on biodiversity by 2025.

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Global Citizen

December 2, 2021
Conservation is about protecting that which sustains life on Earth — the rivers that flow with fresh water, the soil rooting crops in place, the forests and marinescapes that release oxygen.

Framed in this way, conservation seems like an undertaking that would be universally supported. 

But conservationists face countless challenges, from the industrial forces invested in exploiting natural resources and polluting ecosystems to a general lack of funding and government support. Efforts to conserve an environment have long been framed by opponents as a threat to jobs and community well-being — as if any jobs or well-being would exist without a functioning environment.

This opposition appears to be fading as the climate and biodiversity crisis brings increasing devastation. Organizations are receiving waves of funding, and the voices of Indigenous people, who have long advocated for reciprocity with nature, are being elevated. The United Nations has deemed now until 2030 to be part of the Decade on Restoration, a globally coordinated effort to heal the planet. An increasing number of countries have pledged to protect 30% of land and marine spaces by 2030, and some corporations are beginning to transform their supply chains and operations.

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World Economic Forum

December 2, 2021
The conservation movement, since its origins in the 19th century, has primarily relied on public funding and philanthropic contributions to achieve its ends. The Global Canopy Programme estimates that the total annual expenditure on conservation to date has been $50 billion, of which more than 80% was from governmental and philanthropic sources. Ecosystem Marketplace similarly estimates the annual flows of private investment dollars into conservation in the low billions of dollars, with the bulk of these funds going to sustainable food and fibre rather than habitat conservation.

In November 2021 at COP26, a collective $12 billion for forest-related climate finance between 2021-2025 was announced with the support of 11 nations. Yet, all these expenditures lag significantly behind the annual expenditures needed to preserve the planet’s biodiversity, estimated by Credit Suisse, McKinsey & Co and the World Wildlife Fund to be between $300 and $400 billion. Without private investment dollars, this shortfall is likely to persist indefinitely.

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Scientific American - OpEd

November 30, 2021
November 30 is the Remembrance Day for Lost Species, an informal holiday established in 2011 by a U.K.-based coalition of artists, scientists and activists. The point of the day is political: to draw public attention to human-caused extinctions, in hopes of preventing more. But for many participants the day is also personal, an attempt to grasp the enormity of extinction.

Every year brings more species to memorialize, and this year is no exception. Among this year’s newcomers are 23 species of plants and animals that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared extinct at the end of September. Had you heard of the turgid-blossom pearly mussel, the flat pigtoe mussel or the stirrupshell mussel? What about the Scioto madtom or the San Marcos gambusia, two freshwater fish? Me neither. These species, like so many others, went extinct before most of us even knew their names. 

We need a Remembrance Day for Lost Species. But if we want to protect life on a meaningful scale, we also need to remember the species we still have.

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World Economic Forum

November 25, 2021
Throughout this past summer, wildfires ravaged forests from California to Siberia, devastating wildlife, and turning entire communities to dust. But as affected countries deal with the visible damage, the whole world will have to reckon with an unseen consequence for decades to come: a massive release of greenhouse gas.

It’s easy to forget that the ground beneath us contains far more than just dirt, even in some of Earth’s most rugged environments. All kinds of ecosystems — lush rainforest, muddy peatland, shady mangroves — contain eons of stored carbon, captured by photosynthesis. Worldwide, there are about 730 gigatons of manageable carbon locked away in nature; and if disturbed by fire, agriculture, or development, these stores can vanish, sending long-stored emissions right back into the air. As humanity works to prevent runaway climate change, this kind of unplanned expense could quietly bust our carbon budget.

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