Phys.org

March 11, 2022
Global efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution, protect a third of wild spaces, and ultimately live "in harmony with nature" will dominate UN biodiversity negotiations starting Monday, held in person after a two-year pandemic delay.

Almost 200 countries are due to adopt a global framework this year to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30 percent protected by 2030.

The aim is also to safeguard the "services" nature supplies: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that yields the food we eat. 

The meeting in Geneva will set the stage for a crucial UN biodiversity summit, initially due to be held in China in 2020 and postponed several times. It is now expected to take place at the end of August.

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Euronews

March 10, 2022
The CDP event celebrates the companies and cities which are working to achieve greater sustainability, and the highlights are being broadcast on Euronews, in a special programme hosted by Méabh McMahon.

NGOs worldwide have called for the Earth to become 'nature positive' by 2030, a goal leaders of the G7 group of industrialised countries have endorsed. Nature positivity entails halting and reversing today’s catastrophic loss of nature and biodiversity.

2030 is a crucial deadline, Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary at the Convention on Biological Diversity told Euronews, because “what is at stake is the loss of biodiversity reaching unprecedented rates in the history of mankind.”

“We need to see a better integration of nature and climate change in decision-making on an equal footing at the national level,” she argued, adding: “No time to waste. Scientists have told us we either take action now or perish.”

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Campaign for Nature

March 10, 2022
Led by former US Senator Russ Feingold and comprised of eight former Heads of State, two former Prime Ministers, six former Ministers, and four environmental and Indigenous and local experts, the Campaign for Nature’s Global Steering Committee (GSC) has released a joint statement asserting that the success of an upcoming global biodiversity agreement hinges on the adoption of the global, science-backed 30x30 target.

The statement urged governments that have not yet endorsed the global 30x30 goal to join the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC), a group of countries championing the target on a global scale. Many GSC members hail from countries that have not yet signed on in support of the HAC including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand, and Iceland. Currently, HAC members include over 85 countries in Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, and beyond.

In the statement, the GSC welcomed the endorsement of the 30x30 goal in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The UN study asserted that the protection of 30-50% of the world’s land and ocean is required for maintaining the resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem services at a global scale.

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LA Times

March 7, 2022
In the latest United Nations report on climate change, scientists document the stark toll inflicted by global warming through more intense heat waves, droughts, floods and other disasters, and present a dire warning that humanity should act quickly to move away from fossil fuels and cut planet-heating emissions.

The report goes beyond past assessments not only by detailing the latest science but also by focusing on how the world, while reducing emissions, can better adapt to the accelerating effects of climate change to reduce risks and protect especially vulnerable people.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stresses that the threats to people’s health, livelihoods and lives disproportionately affect those who lack resources to weather the blows. In pursuing climate solutions, the report’s authors say, there should be a focus on equity and justice, because the effects are exacerbating inequality and hitting especially hard for low-income people, marginalized communities and developing countries.

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Campaign for Nature

March 1, 2022

Leading environment groups have agreed that the US, the countries of the European Union, the UK, Japan, Canada and other wealthy countries should support a target of at least $60 billion annually of international finance for biodiversity in developing countries. To stop biodiversity loss and achieve a nature-positive economy, this financing effort must be part of a broader and holistic package to close the biodiversity finance gap, including increased domestic and private finance for biodiversity and the elimination of  public and private investments that are harmful to biodiversity.

The recommended $60 billion figure was released in advance of a major round of United Nations biodiversity negotiations set to take place in Geneva, Switzerland this month—an important moment on the road to the final biodiversity summit in Kunming, China later this year.

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National Geographic

February 25, 2022
In post-war Britain, natural places were in high demand, as expanding cities and industrialisation drove many, including returning heroes, to seek the solace of the countryside and clean air. In 1945, the Government produced a White Paper on National Parks and a National Parks Committee was established, with MP Sir Arthur Hobhouse as Chair. In 1949 the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act finally made the creation of legally protected areas in the UK possible, and the UK’s first National Park, the Peak District, was designated in 1951, followed by another nine throughout the 1950s.

Over seventy years later, the UK is home to several types of nationally protected landscape areas: National Parks (England, Scotland and Wales), Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty or AONBs (England, Northern Ireland and Wales), and National Scenic Areas in Scotland. The current tally of National Parks is 15 – 10 in England (including Wordsworth’s beloved Lake District), three in Wales and two in Scotland – with government agencies in each country holding the power to designate protected areas: Natural Resources Wales, Natural England and NatureScot.

As the UK slowly emerges from the grip of COVID-19, the UK Government is once more turning its attention to these protected places, which provided invaluable sanctuary for so many during some of the darkest hours of the past two years.

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Nation of Change

February 22, 2022
The reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 triggered a cascade of knock-on effects. The wolves kept herbivores like elk in check and on the move, reducing their browsing pressure on young trees. As a result, groves of willow and aspen sprouted along watercourses, creating ideal conditions for a thriving beaver population. The busy beavers in turn engineered wetlands where a diversity of fish, songbirds and invertebrates flourished. In short, the return of the top predators transformed the U.S. national park into a biodiverse, fully functioning, carbon-sequestering ecosystem.

Now, a new study suggests that restoring just 20 large mammal species to their historic habitats could similarly revitalize ecosystems and boost biodiversity across almost one-quarter of the Earth’s land area.

The international team of researchers behind the study assessed global opportunities for the restoration, reintroduction and rewilding of intact large mammal assemblages across the world’s terrestrial ecoregions, geographic areas characterized by similar plant and animal communities. They published their results in the journal Ecography.

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IFLR

February 21, 2022
While climate change concerns have so far dominated ESG thinking, awareness of nature risk is catching up fast and already being integrated into sustainability frameworks, according to sources. 

The biodiversity-related principal adverse indicators in the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, the planned update to the EU Taxonomy to incorporate biodiversity risk, the Network for Greening the Financial System's own biodiversity study group, along with the meteoric rise of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), represent well the momentum building behind regulatory attempts to transform nature risk awareness into concrete impact in financial markets. 

The World Economic Forum estimates that more than half of the world’s economic output ($44 trillion) is at least moderately or highly dependent on nature, meaning that if natural systems collapse, so will the world’s economic and financial systems. 

Due to the sheer scale of the risk – together with scientific studies that show the world has already entered the sixth mass extinction phase – sources say that considerations around nature or biodiversity risk, which have traditionally been excluded from financial decision making, can no longer be relegated to the margins. 

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Engineering News

February 17, 2022
South Africa has been urged to support the Global Deal for Nature proposal to conserve at least 30% of the world's land and oceans by 2030 at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to be held in China, in April and May.

Conserving and protecting these areas will provide up to 33% of climate change mitigation and curb biodiversity loss to sustain the $125-trillion-a-year services the world gets from nature, say conservation and environmental advocacy organisations.

Conserving 30% of land and sea areas will cost only 0.2% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and reduce the number of vulnerable species by 90%, while contributing to the renewal and regeneration of species and ecosystems, says science and exploration organisation National Geographic US explorer in residence and Pristine Seas executive director Dr Enric Sala.

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European Commission

February 4, 2022

During an official visit to the United States this week, Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius deepened EU-US environmental cooperation ahead of upcoming multilateral processes and increased US awareness of key Green Deal priorities. These include climate action, deforestation, biodiversity protection and restoration, circular economy, critical materials and batteries, sustainable blue economy, international ocean governance, plastic pollution and green transition.

He held discussions in Washington DC and New York with a range of US counterparts from the US Administration and Congress, as well as multilateral organisations, reaching out to stakeholders including NGOs, representatives of business and financial sector, philanthropists and university students. In discussion with UN interlocutors, Commissioner focused on combined efforts in pressing areas under the environment and oceans agendas in the run up to the major global events, negotiations and processes taking place in 2022-2023.

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The Washington Post

February 3, 2022
The European Union’s environment chief said Thursday that 2022 must be the year for an ambitious agreement on the oceans, for action that protects the world’s biodiversity, and for starting negotiations to tackle the global crisis of plastic pollution especially at sea.

Virginijus Sinkevicius, the EU commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, told a U.N. news conference that precious time to save nature and the oceans has been lost over the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 27-member bloc is determined to move ahead quickly to steer “a global green transition.”

“This year must be the year of the oceans. This year must be the year of biodiversity. … (and) it is essential to get plastics under control and the only way to do it is globally,” he said. “This year we must find a window of opportunity to reach agreements that will change the world for better.”

Sinkevicius said a top priority for the EU is to reach “a Paris moment for biodiversity” -- like that in Paris in 2015 when world leaders reached the landmark climate agreement which set a target of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since that time.

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RAZOR Science Show

The 30 by 30 framework is a global plan that seeks to stop the extinction of species and habitats in our oceans by protecting 30 per cent of the world's oceans within the next decade. Neil Cairns spoke to leading scientists who helped to formulate the plan.

Watch

Diálogo China

January 25, 2022
During the first part of the COP15 Biodiversity Conference, held virtually in October 2021, Chinese president Xi Jinping launched a 1.5 billion yuan (US$233 million) fund for the protection of fauna and flora in developing countries.

With the second part of the convention due to take place in April this year, there are high expectations that the Kunming Fund, named after COP15’s host city in Yunnan province, southern China, could be a new source of green finance for Latin America, a region that is home to 40% of the world’s biodiversity.

The China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) was the first organisation to announce a donation to the fund. Other NGOs have followed suit. Maggie Ma, a spokesperson for the foundation, told Diálogo Chino that they are still waiting for information from the Chinese government on how to conclude their transfer of 1 million yuan ($158,000) but that they believe funds can be leveraged for the more sustainable use of tropical forests.

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Nature

January 19, 2022

Biodiversity is being lost at a rate not seen since the last mass extinction. But the United Nations decade-old plan to slow down and eventually stop the decline of species and ecosystems by 2020 has failed. Most of the plan’s 20 targets — known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets — have not been met.

The Aichi targets are part of an international agreement called the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and member states are now finalizing replacements for them. Currently referred to as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF), the new targets are expected to be agreed this summer at the second part of the convention’s Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Kunming, China. The meeting was due to be held in May, but is likely to be delayed by a few months. Finalizing the framework will be down to government representatives working with the world’s leading biodiversity specialists. But input from social-science researchers, especially those who study how organizations and governments work, would improve its chances of success.

A draft of the GBF was published last July. It aims to slow down the rate of biodiversity loss by 2030. And by 2050, biodiversity will be “valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. The plan comprises 4 broad goals and 21 associated targets. The headline targets include conserving 30% of land and sea areas by 2030, and reducing government subsidies that harm biodiversity by US$500 billion per year. Overall, the goals and targets are designed to tackle each of the main contributors to biodiversity loss, which include agriculture and food systems, climate change, invasive species, pollution and unsustainable production and consumption.

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OMFIF

January 18, 2022

Looking ahead in 2022, we can be sure that the sustainability themes of last year will continue to gain prominence in the discussions surrounding the role of the finance sector. Yet after a year of pledges, 2022 must be a year of action.

In particular, there are growing expectations for financial institutions to assess and improve their impact on systemic issues such as climate change and social justice, with regulators watching closely to ensure they are walking the walk. The sector is expected to consider how capital allocation impacts the transition, whether providing funding to new climate solutions or withdrawing capital from harmful activities.

Furthermore, pressure is mounting on investors to responsibly steward the assets they invest in. This means not just factoring environmental, social and governance issues into investment decisions, but engaging with investees to support and drive them towards a more sustainable footing. Advocacy with policy-makers is also key in shaping a system that operates more effectively in the interests of end-investors, society and the environment.

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