The Washington Post

September 29, 2022
As temperatures rise and habitats shrink, hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species around the world are at risk of vanishing.

For the first time, the United States is designating a special diplomat to advocate for global biodiversity amid what policymakers here and overseas increasingly recognize as an extinction crisis.

Monica Medina is taking on a new role as special envoy for biodiversity and water resources, the State Department announced Wednesday. She currently serves as the department’s assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs.

The appointment underscores the Biden administration’s desire to protect land and waters not just at home but to also conserve habitats abroad.

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Bloomberg

September 28, 2022
Almost $1.9 trillion. That’s the amount Moody’s Investors Service says is at stake as biodiversity loss intensifies nature-related risks.

With financial markets currently under siege, concerns about biodiversity probably aren’t the first thing that comes to mind for panicked investors. But the long-term ramifications of a depleted natural world are potentially devastating.

High-risk sectors such as coal and metals mining, as well as oil and gas exploration and production, will likely face greater regulatory and investor scrutiny as every day passes. Companies that lack credible management strategies in this arena face the prospect of not only reputational damage, but also serious financial repercussions, Moody’s wrote in a 14-page report.

“Risks such as ecosystem health, biodiversity loss and natural resource management are rising up the policy and investor agenda,” said Rahul Ghosh, managing director of environmental, social and governance issues at Moody’s.

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World Economic Forum

September 27, 2022
The race to protect the natural world and its biodiversity reaches a critical milestone this December as countries gather for the United Nations’ COP15 meeting.

The stakes for the summit - in Montreal, Canada - could hardly be higher. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says: “We are losing our suicidal war against nature”.

COP15 aims to give biodiversity the same levels of international protection as the climate.

The race to protect the natural world and its biodiversity reaches a critical milestone this December as countries gather for the United Nations’ COP15 meeting.

The stakes for the summit - in Montreal, Canada - could hardly be higher. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says: “We are losing our suicidal war against nature”.

COP15 aims to give biodiversity the same levels of international protection as the climate.

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Reuters

September 21, 2022
World leaders on Tuesday stepped up financial support and conservation commitments to combat the global biodiversity crisis that threatens more than one million plant and animal species with extinction.

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Germany pledged 1.5 billion euros per year in international biodiversity funding — more than doubling its current commitments.

Nations will soon gather in Montreal, Canada, for a critical U.N. biodiversity summit (COP15) to finalise and adopt a framework to protect and conserve nature.

Over half of the world's GDP depends heavily on the natural world, according to a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum.

The December conference "needs to be a turning point for our conservation efforts", said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he announced the new funding. "With this contribution, we want to send a strong signal for an ambitious outcome of the biodiversity COP15."

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Business Green

September 21, 2022
World leaders have stressed the importance of increased funding for conservation efforts, after this week highlighting how the upcoming COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Montreal in December represents an essential opportunity for tackling global biodiversity loss.

Speaking at the Countdown to COP15: Landmark Leaders' Event for a Nature-Positive World event in New York yesterday, a series of world leaders declared the success of COP15 represented a priority for their governments, as they called on countries to work together to secure "an ambitious global biodiversity agreement" in Montreal.

Leaders said an ambitious new global accord was urgently required "in the face of an escalating nature crisis that is threatening health, food security, and livelihoods, while undermining climate action and sustainable development".

Leaders from 93 regions and the European Union reaffirmed their commitment to reverse biodiversity loss and secure a 'nature-positive' world by 2030, throwing their weight behind the global campaign to protect and conserve at least 30 per cent of all land and oceans by 2030.

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Politico — Op Ed

September 21, 2022
Hansjörg Wyss is a Swiss businessman and philanthropist, and the co-owner of Chelsea FC.

Solving the crisis facing nature is daunting. Over the next few months, we will see whether governments are truly up to the task.

I, for one, am optimistic that we will meet the challenge, but leaders must actually commit to accelerating the pace of conservation this year and invest significant and meaningful public resources. Promises alone can’t save nature — it’s time for governments to take action.

Inspired by the wonders of nature — and motivated by the fear of losing the wild places I love — I’ve pledged a significant portion of my fortune to protect at least 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

This commitment is a promise to future generations that I’m going to do everything I can to leave them a world that’s as alive and glorious as the one I was born into.

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UN

September 21, 2022
Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s video message to the seventh Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Business Forum, held virtually, today:

Excellencies, business leaders, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining the seventh SDG Business Forum.  This year’s event has provided a much-needed space for business leaders to share their experiences and insights to overcome our common challenges — from the COVID‑19 pandemic, to the war in Ukraine and its impacts on food, energy and finance, to the escalating climate emergency.

The private sector is an indispensable partner in promoting investment in sustainable development and mobilizing financing to achieve the 2030 Agenda.

Let me highlight two key messages from today’s discussions.  First, the business community should be a driving force to protect our global environmental commons, from climate action to ending pollution and restoring biodiversity.

Investing in biodiversity makes both environmental and economic sense.  Estimates by the World Economic Forum suggest that protecting nature and increasing biodiversity could generate business opportunities worth $10 trillion a year and create nearly 400 million new jobs.

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The Globe and Mail

September 20, 2022
Indigenous-managed conservation areas are key to Canada’s pledge to designate nearly one third of its land and ocean waters for biodiversity protection by the end of this decade, according to a new report.

The report from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada stresses that protected areas should be “co-developed and implemented with Indigenous consent” as part of Canada’s reconciliation process.

Its release on Tuesday coincides with efforts by a group of world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to press their counterparts on biodiversity preservation ahead of international negotiations in Montreal later this year.

Mr. Trudeau is set to speak at an event on Tuesday evening occurring on the margins of the UN General Assembly, now under way in New York. The event was co-organized by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, a group of more than 100 countries that have all formally endorsed the target of protecting at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

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UN Environmental Programme

September 7, 2022
The extent to which our global economy and financial system can flourish is fundamentally underpinned by the state of nature. However, our natural world continues to be rapidly and dangerously eroded. WWF and 90 civil society partners have urged central banks and financial supervisors to manage climate and biodiversity related financial risks as part of their primary mandates. Their call for action emphasizes how losses to nature and biodiversity pose material risks to the financial systemand includes demands for consistent, market-wide risk identification and disclosure and also for promoting the enabling environment for new financial opportunities. Jessica Smith from UNEP FI and Thomas Viegas from the Bank of England (Manager, Market Intelligence and Analysis) explain why they welcome this development and why nature has reached a tipping point where it’s no longer about ‘if’ we act to mitigate nature-risk but ‘how’ and ‘where’.

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The Guardian

September 1, 2022
It is now less than 100 days until Cop15, the UN convention on biological diversity. At these talks, which are taking place in Montreal, Canada in December, governments from around the world will come together to agree targets aimed at halting the destruction of the natural world and protecting biodiversity. With the Earth experiencing the largest loss of life since the extinction of the dinosaurs, what is decided at this meeting could shape the future of the planet and humanity.

Madeleine Finlay speaks to biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston about how negotiations have been going so far, and what’s next on the road to Cop15.

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The Guardian

August 30, 2022
With only a few short months until Cop15 in Montreal, governments are gearing up to create targets on biodiversity for the next decade. The world has so far failed to meet any UN targets on halting the loss of nature, yet awareness of the challenge is greater than ever. Here we examine why this UN meeting matters and how it could herald meaningful action on nature loss.

Nature is in crisis and for the past three decades governments have been meeting to ensure the survival of the species and ecosystems that underpin human civilisation. The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 saw the creation of three conventions: on climate change, desertification and biodiversity. The aim of the convention on biological diversity (CBD) is for countries to conserve the natural world, its sustainable use, and to share the benefits of its genetic resources.

Every 10 years, governments agree new targets on protecting biodiversity, which they aim to meet by the end of the decade. The last round of targets was agreed at Cop10 in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, when governments pledged to halve the loss of natural habitats and expand nature reserves to 17% of the world’s land area by 2020, among other targets.

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The Guardian - Opinion

August 30, 2022
They are known as “the twins”, born in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro but diplomatically separated and left to develop at different speeds. One is the UN’s climate change convention, or UNFCCC, now a fully fledged global agreement with huge annual summits attended by heads of state and rock stars pledging to reduce emissions.

The other, the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), aims to protect the world’s 10 million species of animals and plants, but it meets less often, is modest by comparison, and has yet to make its mark with the public in the same way as climate.

This year, for the first time the “big brother” climate meeting, Cop27, and the “little brother” nature meeting, Cop15, will converge within days of each other before Christmas, albeit 5,600 miles apart, in Egypt and Canada. Both will attract thousands of delegates, lobbyists and non-government groups and there is much optimism that a good result in one will improve the chances of success in the other.

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The Guardian

August 27, 2022
The latest round of talks at the United Nations aimed at securing protections for marine life in international waters that cover half the planet ended without agreement Saturday.

The fifth round of discussions, which began two weeks ago, were designed to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would set rules for protecting biodiversity in two-thirds of the world’s oceanic areas that lie outside territorial waters.

But UN members failed to agree on how to share benefits from marine life, establish protected areas, or to prevent human activity with life on the high seas.

“Although we did make excellent progress, we still do need a little bit more time to progress towards the finish line,” UN oceans ambassador Rena Lee said, according to Agence France-Presse.

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Al Jazeera

August 27, 2022
Two weeks of negotiations to finally agree a treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas, have ended in failure.

The latest talks among United Nations member states came to an end on Friday with negotiators unable to thrash out a legally binding text to address the multitude of issues facing international waters – a zone that encompasses almost half the planet.

Formal and informal discussions have been continuing for some 15 years.

“Although we did make excellent progress, we still do need a little bit more time to progress towards the finish line,” AFP reported conference chair and UN oceans ambassador Rena Lee as saying.

It will now be up to the UN General Assembly to resume a fifth session of formal talks at a date still to be determined.

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Eco-Business

August 12, 2022
Biodiversity encompasses the full variety of life – all genes, species and ecosystems – and it is in danger. That means we are too. As this article explains, a major conference in December 2022 could have a big impact on our collective fate by helping to end biodiversity loss and restore nature.

COP15 is shorthand for the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In fact, COP15 includes meetings of parties to three international agreements: the CBD and its two subsidiary protocols, namely the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing.

The CBD was agreed at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992. It has three objectives: the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. Some 195 countries and the European Union are now parties to the CBD. The United States is the only member state of the United Nations that has not ratified the agreement. The CBD’s Cartagena Protocol has 173 parties and its Nagoya Protocol has 137.

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