Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
19 March, 2024
In January this year, Campaign for Nature, a U.S.-based advocacy group, came out with a report critiquing this new scheme. “We wrote this paper because we didn’t see enough concerns being raised in civil society,” says Mark Opel, finance lead at Campaign for Nature.
Read the full article here.
28 August, 2023
A new global fund supporting the protection of nature in developing countries has been launched, but questions remain over how it will be financed.The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) aims to help countries reach the nature protection targets set by the breakthrough Kunming-Montreal biodiversity deal signed last year.
The fund, which will contribute to the goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land and water ecosystems by 2030, has been set up by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a multilateral financial partnership.
Read the full article here.
August 16, 2023
The CfN Global Steering Committee constitutes the highest-profile political group working to safeguard nature. This esteemed group of former heads of state, ministers, diplomats, and scientists has tirelessly championed the 30x30 goal since its inception and is now issuing a clarion call to world leaders to urgently and ambitiously confront the continuing loss of nature and to prioritize commitments made to increase biodiversity financing immediately.
The letter can be read here.
22 May, 2023
If the US wants 30 by 30 to succeed globally we urgently need all leaders, President Biden included, to publicly affirm their commitment to numeric financial targets, including the financial commitment of $20B in international biodiversity finance from developed to developing countries by 2025. The climate section of the leader’s statement noted the numerical target of $100 billion for international climate finance, and biodiversity requires the same level of specificity for transparency and accountability.
May 20, 2023
On the eve of World Biodiversity Day, we, the undersigned, are calling on the wealthiest nations to prioritise urgent action to protect and restore biodiversity and just transition their economies to be nature positive. We are encouraged that the G7 leader’s statement reaffirmed a commitment to the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and pledged to meet its goals and targets.
18 May, 2023
We are facing two parallel crises: climate change and global biodiversity loss. Climate change has captured most of the headlines, but scientists say the nature crisis is equally or even more important. We can't solve one without solving the other. A landmark assessment of global biodiversity in 2019 warned that nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history.
April 21, 2023
Up to 1 million species currently face extinction, many within decades.
If we want a future with sea turtles, monarch butterflies, joshua trees, whale sharks, orangutans, and lemurs, we must address the largest causes of biodiversity decline – loss of habitat on land and overexploitation of the oceans. This will help mitigate the impacts of climate change; directly benefit people by providing essential ecosystem services such as clean air, food, water, and medicine; and reduce the increasing risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides.
November 15, 2022
With just one month to go until COP15 begins in Montreal, Canada, the press reported on Thursday, November 10 that there will not be heads of state at COP15.
This is a very concerning situation considering this critical conference seeks to agree on a pathway to curb the collapse of our entire planetary life support system - one million species are at risk of extinction and unless critical ecosystems are urgently protected we could face serious threats not just to the natural world, but to our climate, health, food and clean water supply.
October 20, 2022
According to the latest report from the World Wildlife Fund, global wildlife populations have declined by a whopping 69 percent over the past 50 years. It's an urgent reminder of what's at stake as world leaders prepare to meet in early December for their biggest biodiversity conference in a decade, with the goal of agreeing to a new framework to protect the world's plants and animals. According to scientist Paul Leadley, the new framework contains all the measures needed to reverse the damage – but world leaders must be convinced to adopt it. Leadley is one of the main contributors to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
October 13, 2022
Nature NGO WWF has today (13 October) published the latest edition of its Living Planet Report. The last edition, published two years ago, revealed that the population sizes of animals (excluding insects) had decreased by an average of 68% between 1970 and 2020.
The last two years has seen an acceleration of nature degradation and destruction in many regions, the new report states. It puts the average population size decline for wildlife globally at 69% since 1970.
The speed and intensity of population decline has not been uniform in all regions and among all species, the report emphasizes. WWF has stated that it is “particularly concerned” that the average wildlife population size in Latin America and the Caribbean has dropped by 94% since 1970.
In the UK specifically, the report contains some shocking examples of decline. It states that 97% of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, as have 92% of the UK’s seagrass meadows. There has also been a sharp decline in many bird populations including starlings, skylarks and spotted flycatchers.
July 14, 2022
One in five people rely on wild species for income and food, while one in three rely on wood fuel for cooking, according to a major new report. Its authors aim to demonstrate how the use of wild species is far more prevalent than most people realise and that the decline of nature threatens human lives and livelihoods.
The report follows four years of work by 85 experts in the natural and social sciences and holders of indigenous and local knowledge around the world. They were working under the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a body set up to advise policymakers on biodiversity.
In 2019, IPBES warned that one million species were at risk of extinction. It found that over-exploitation of wild species was the second-largest driver of this trend for species living on land or freshwater, after land degradation and habitat destruction. For marine species, over-exploitation is the biggest driver.
June 1, 2022
Ramping up the protection of land within the next decade could make a significant dent in biodiversity and climate change efforts that would get countries closer to their conservation goals, according to new research.
If countries succeed in protecting 30% of global land area by 2030, it could benefit about 1,000 vertebrate species whose habitats currently lack any form of protection, according to a study published Wednesday in Science Advances.
About half of the species that would benefit from expanding protected areas worldwide are classified as critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable or near-threatened, the scientists said.
What is being dubbed by scientists as the "30 by 30" target could also spare about 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year in avoided carbon emissions or carbon sequestration, the paper states.
Researchers from Princeton University and the National University of Singapore compared models that maximize different aspects of conservation. They considered only natural areas and excluding croplands and urban areas, and found that additional benefits could result for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and nutrient-regulation if protected area coverage were increased to 30% of the terrestrial area within 238 countries worldwide.
April 4, 2022
Can humanity curb spending that harms the world’s biodiversity and instead focus funding on protecting it? That question is at the heart of negotiations in Geneva, which will set the stage for a crucial United Nations COP15 biodiversity summit in China later this year.
Almost 200 countries are to adopt a global framework to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30% protected by 2030.
These ambitions will only be met with a new approach to biodiversity funding and a rethink of the huge sums spent on subsidies harmful to nature such as fossil fuels, agriculture and fishing, according to observers. This can often result in environmental destruction and encourage unsustainable levels of production and consumption.
The exact figure that the world spends on these harmful subsidies is debated, although the group Business for Nature estimates that it could be as much as $1.8-trillion every year, or 2% of global GDP.
April 4, 2022
Negotiators and observers left the latest meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) with renewed momentum but with many issues still unresolved, including how to find the missing US$700 billion needed annually to protect and restore nature.
The two-and-a-half week session in Geneva saw the first purely face-to-face negotiations since before the Covid-19 pandemic began. With just a few months before COP15 – the major CBD meeting, to be held in China – it was also billed as the last chance to make significant changes to the draft text that came out of the last CBD meeting in October, which had been widely criticised.
The Geneva talks saw many additions to the text, but most are in square brackets, meaning they have yet to be agreed upon. An extra meeting has now been scheduled for June in Nairobi to try and find consensus.
March 29, 2022
As the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) talks close in Geneva, Director of IUCN’s International Policy Centre Sonia Peña Moreno reflects on two weeks of negotiations, some missed opportunities, and her hopes for future meetings. Going forward, Parties to the CBD must reconnect with reality and continue to craft a simple, action-oriented post-2020 global biodiversity framework that clearly spells out what must be done to safeguard nature and the services it provides to humanity.
The first in-person meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in over two years opened on Monday 14 March in Geneva, Switzerland. If the opening statements were an indication, the meetings began with high expectations. Parties to the Convention stated their hope to advance a global plan to protect and restore biodiversity for the next decade and beyond (a post-2020 global biodiversity framework).
However, as the days went by, progress became elusive and was replaced by a lack of agreement. The draft text, even on seemingly uncontroversial issues, became full of brackets – denoting text that has yet to be agreed. The overwhelming number of sessions and side-meetings translated into fatigue, and the positive tone became one of frustration.
