The Nature Conservancy

March 5, 2020
The Earth is vast—but it is also finite. As human development has expanded to meet the needs of a growing population, far too much of nature has been lost or degraded. This degradation is a major driver of climate change as well as species loss—and both crises pose serious threats to people.

Scientists are talking of deadly tipping points, and recent images of blazing fires, wounded wildlife and urgent evacuations in Australia hammer home that the delicate balance of nature can be tipped out of control within a relatively short time frame. We urgently need to reset and reverse these trends—but doing so will require broad collaboration and investment. This job is too big for environmentalists alone.

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Ethical Corporation

March 3, 2020
Angeli Mehta reports on how companies like Danone, Unilever, and China's Cofco International are addressing biodiversity loss through platforms like the Business for Nature coalition and One Planet Business for Biodiversity

This decade has been billed as the decade of climate action – but it’s not enough to cut carbon emissions, we also have to reverse the precipitous loss of our planet’s biodiversity.

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The Nature Conservancy

March 1, 2020
In 2019, The Nature Conservancy successfully closed on innovative new projects and deals that cumulatively protect nearly 6.6 million acres of land—an area larger than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut combined. Each of these successes relied on distinct strategies, partnerships or financing models to succeed, but they were all connected by one common thread: major support from the billion-dollar Wyss Campaign for Nature, which is helping to spearhead an ambitious drive to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030.

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Lavanguardia

February 27, 2020
The Vice Minister of Environment of Costa Rica, Pamela Castillo, present in Rome on the occasion of the UN biodiversity summit, said there is a "general consensus" between the participating countries to advance their proposal to protect 30% of terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

In an interview with Efe, Castillo valued as "very positive" the atmosphere of consensus and "fluid conversation" in the first meetings of the signatory countries of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which this week in Rome prepare the framework document on biodiversity that will be ratified at the next October summit.

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 Agence France Presse

February 27, 2020
Protect biodiversity and manage natural resources sustainably at a time when people are devastating the planet: the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (CBD) began Monday to examine an action plan by 2050.

Originally scheduled in China, which will host the 15th meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in October, the February negotiations were moved to Rome due to the coronavirus epidemic.

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Reuters

February 27, 2020
Governments are under pressure this year to agree on protecting at least 30% of the planet’s land and seas by 2030, not only to conserve endangered species and ensure food and water supplies, but also to help regulate an increasingly erratic climate.

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Campaign for Nature

February 28, 2020
This week, delegates from more than 100 countries and territories gathered in Rome for the first round of negotiations on a Paris Agreement-style global treaty to address the extinction crisis threatening one million species worldwide and the ecosystems on which humanity relies to survive.

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Phys.org

February 26, 2020
Extinction risk could decrease by more than 50% if at least 30% of land were to be conserved across the tropics, a new study reveals.

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National Geographic

February 18, 2020
Today, 23 former foreign ministers from North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific released a statement calling for stronger conservation protections of land and oceans for the sake of –as well as national security.

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HuffPost

February 14, 2020
An irradiated nuclear zone is hardly the most obvious animal sanctuary. But in January, almost a decade after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, scientists using remote cameras in the area around the abandoned power station discovered an abundance of wildlife.

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Yale Environment 360

February 13, 2020
Leading scientists and conservationists are proposing that up to 50 percent of the earth’s land and oceans be protected in the coming decades. While some view the goal as unrealistic, proponents say it is essential for preserving the natural systems on which life itself depends.

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EOS

February 7, 2020

An initiative to conserve at least 30% of land and ocean in the United States by 2030 can help to confront the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss, and it should not be thwarted by White House inaction, said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) at a 7 February briefing in Washington, D.C., about the initiative.

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High Country News - OpED

January 31, 2020
In his 1963 book The Quiet Crisis, my father, former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, sounded the alarm about the creeping destruction of nature. “Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet,” he wrote. “By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.”

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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B - Opinion

January 27, 2020
Nations of the world have, to date, pursued nature protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies separately. Both efforts have failed to achieve the scale of action needed to halt biodiversity loss or mitigate climate change. […] A new target of 30% of the sea given high levels of protection from exploitation and harm by 2030 is under consideration and similar targets are being discussed for terrestrial habitats. We make the case here that these higher targets, if achieved, would make the transition to a warmer world slower and less damaging for nature and people.

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The Times of India - Editorial

January 25, 2020
Our planet has suffered five mass extinctions, the last of which occurred about 66 million years ago, when a giant asteroid believed to have landed near the Yucatan Peninsula set off a chain reaction that wiped out the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the other species on earth. A few years ago, in a book called The Sixth Extinction, the writer Elizabeth Kolbert warned of a devastating sequel, with plant and animal species on land and sea already disappearing at a ferocious clip, their habitats destroyed by human activities.

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