The Wilderness Society

April 22, 2021
The Biden administration’s Climate Summit started today with a bang: The president pledged to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions almost in half by 2030. The plan is ambitious but critical as the climate crisis gets progressively worse, with 2020 ranking as one of the hottest years on record. As we aim to reach this goal, a vital part of the strategy should be to implement nature-based solutions on public lands.

For centuries, humans have been burning fossil fuels to power our lives. This process has released an excessive amount of gases into the atmosphere that are heating up the planet. We’re now living with the consequences, including more severe and frequent wildfires, floods, hurricanes and droughts.

There’s no easy way out of this crisis. We need to dramatically reduce climate change emissions coming from cars, trucks, power plants, and other sources. But that’s not enough. To be successful, we must eliminate carbon emissions that are already lingering in the air, not to mention ensure humans and wildlife can adapt to the climate change impacts knocking on our doors. Nature-based solutions, such as protecting and expanding wildlands can help.

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Marine Conservation Institute

April 22, 2021
Today, a little after 8:00 am eastern and before dozens of world leaders participating in the Leader’s Summit on Climate, President Biden set bold greenhouse gas emission reductions for the United States—cutting 2005 emission levels in half by 2030— as US policy. He said in part, “…the US sets out on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half by the end of this decade”.

In less than 100 days, the President has reentered the Paris Climate Accords and proposed groundbreaking legislation (American Jobs Plan) that would make very large investments in clean energy, energy conservation and coastal resilience and restoration*. Contributing to the steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, ocean-based climate solutions like offshore wind, restoring carbon removal ecosystems like marshes and seagrass beds, eliminating bottom trawling from marine sanctuaries and establishing new marine protected areas could play a significant role.

Dr. Lance Morgan, President of Marine Conservation Institute, praised President Biden for his high climate change ambition, and said, “It is so exciting to see the President taking urgently needed action and leading on climate change. The administration recognizes that US commitments to the Paris Climate Accords must include ocean-based solutions and supports the conservation of 30% of our lands and waters which will also address climate change and future resiliency.”

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The Guardian

April 15, 2021
Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat, a study suggests.

These fragments of wilderness undamaged by human activities are mainly in parts of the Amazon and Congo tropical forests, east Siberian and northern Canadian forests and tundra, and the Sahara. Invasive alien species including cats, foxes, rabbits, goats and camels have had a major impact on native species in Australia, with the study finding no intact areas left.

The researchers suggest reintroducing a small number of important species to some damaged areas, such as elephants or wolves – a move that could restore up to 20% of the world’s land to ecological intactness.

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The Hill - OpEd

April 12, 2021
The Biden administration will soon release its strategy for the recent executive order to conserve at least 30 percent of the nation’s lands and oceans by 2030.  

Like the previously introduced Senate Resolution 372 and House Resolution 835, the 30x30 initiative aligns with recommendations from the scientific and environmental communities to protect 30 to 50 percent of the planet. The initiative can meaningfully increase the quality and quantity of natural areas in the U.S., considering only 12 percent of the roughly 28 percent of federal lands are permanently protected from development and other intensive use.  

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World Politics Review

April 12, 2021
Over the past two years, an extraordinary global campaign has emerged to protect 30 percent of Earth’s total surface from human exploitation by 2030. The members of this so-called 30x30 coalition, which now includes scores of governments, understand that climate change is only one half of the planet’s environmental crisis. The Paris Agreement, while imperative to curb greenhouse gas emissions, will do little by itself to save the planet’s collapsing biodiversity or preserve the massive ecosystems upon which humanity depends—and which we are fast degrading.

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Los Angeles Times - OpEd

April 11, 2021
The frequency of natural disasters has soared in recent decades. Total damage topped $210 billion worldwide in 2020. With climate change, the costs attributed to coastal storms will increase dramatically.

At the same time, coastal habitats such as wetlands and reefs are being lost rapidly. Some 20% of the world’s mangroves were lost over the last four decades. More than half of the Great Barrier Reef was degraded by bleaching in 2020 alone. In California, we have lost more than 90% of our coastal marshes.

Coastal habitats serve as a critical first line of defense, and their loss puts communities at even greater risk from coastal flooding. Coral reefs work as natural breakwaters and reduce flooding by breaking waves offshore. Wetlands such as marshes and mangroves protect coastlines by dampening storm surge and waves; they also prevent erosion and can build new land.

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Mongabay

March 26, 2021
From the eye of a satellite, the ocean is streaked with smoky white lines that flow and twist like scribbled handwriting across the surface. But these lines aren’t naturally occurring features — they’re sediment plumes from large trawling vessels that scrape the seafloor with nets and heavy equipment, trying to catch bottom-dwelling species like shrimp and whiting.

The environmental consequences of trawling are still being investigated since the plumes were first noticed in satellite imagery in 2008. But a new study in Nature suggests that it churns up and releases carbon that’s been locked up inside sediment at the bottom of the ocean — between about 600 million and 1,500 million tons, according to the study’s initial estimates, which is about the same amount as the global aviation industry.

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CNN

March 24, 2021
"It is a sad thing to think that nature speaks and that mankind does not listen." This remark, made in 1870 by the poet and novelist Victor Hugo, is even more relevant today. At a time when biodiversity -- the fragile web of life of which we are all a part -- threatens to disintegrate, we must not forget that we are, in many respects, the authors of our own misfortune.

Intersecting and escalating crises -- climate disruption, the collapse of biodiversity, the declining health of the ocean and the depletion of natural resources -- clearly demonstrate that we cannot continue on our current path. Our relationship with nature, traditionally based on domination and exploitation, has already altered some 75% of the land's surface and 40% of the marine environment. The global rate of species extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years, and around 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). This cannot continue.

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The Washington Post

March 18, 2021
Humanity has no better friend on this planet than the ocean. It provides more than half the oxygen we need to breathe. It supplies food that helps sustain more than 3 billion people. It absorbs many of the pollutants we keep pumping into the atmosphere: carbon dioxide, ozone-depleting chemicals.

The ocean is the kind of unwaveringly supportive friend who tolerates our toxicity and shields us from the worst consequences of our actions. It’s the friend that people have taken for granted for far too long. By overfishing and mining and drilling the sea floor, humanity is risking not just the ocean’s health but our own.

But new research suggests a strategic, globally coordinated effort to protect more of the world’s waters could not only bolster marine biodiversity but dramatically increase the number of fish available for harvest and boost the amount of carbon taken up by the ocean, aiding the fight against climate change.

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Project Syndicate

March 18, 2021
The world must protect at least 30% of the global ocean in order to restore marine life, increase seafood supply, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Meeting this goal would generate annual benefits – in terms of increased economic output and improved ecosystem services – that far exceed the investment required.

Last November, something happened in the middle of the South Atlantic that was unusual enough to make a local northern rockhopper penguin raise one of its long spiky yellow eyebrows. The tiny archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory, set aside more than 687,000 square kilometers (265,000 square miles, an area larger than France) of ocean to establish the world’s fourth-largest marine protected area (MPA).

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The Guardian

March 18, 2021
A key United Nations summit to negotiate an accord for nature similar to the Paris climate agreement has been postponed for a second time, it has been announced.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement that Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, had been moved to October due to delays related to the coronavirus pandemic. The negotiations in Kunming, China, had been scheduled for May after they were moved from October 2020.

Countries are expected to reach an agreement over targets to protect the natural world, including proposals to conserve 30% of the world’s oceans and land by 2030, introduce controls on invasive species and reduce plastics pollution.

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WEF

March 18, 2021
2021 ought to be the “super year” for nature, where we collectively agree on how to deal with the greatest risk to humanity: we have become totally out of balance with nature. But there is a solution that is scientifically proven and cost-effective, and new research has found a way forward.

We’ve already lost 60% of terrestrial wildlife and 90% of the big ocean fish. Approximately 96% of all mammals on earth are humans and our domesticated livestock. Only 4% is everything else, from bears to elephants to tigers. We now risk the extinction of 1 million species during this century. Losing these species and all the goods and services they give us would mean the collapse of our life support system and everything we care about and need to survive: our food, our health, our economy, our security – everything.

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The New York Times

March 17, 2021
For the first time, scientists have calculated how much planet-warming carbon dioxide is released into the ocean by bottom trawling, the practice of dragging enormous nets along the ocean floor to catch shrimp, whiting, cod and other fish. The answer: As much as global aviation releases into the air.

While preliminary, that was one of the most surprising findings of a groundbreaking new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study offers what is essentially a peer-reviewed, interactive road map for how nations can confront the interconnected crises of climate change and wildlife collapse at sea.

It follows similar recent research focused on protecting land, all with a goal of informing a global agreement on biodiversity to be negotiated this autumn in Kunming, China.

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Time Magazine

March 17, 2021
It’s been well established by now that the agricultural systems producing our food contribute at least one fifth of global anthropogenic carbon emissions—and up to a third if waste and transportation are factored in. A troubling new report points to a previously overlooked source: an industrial fishing process practiced by dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, China, and the E.U.

The study, published today in the scientific journal Nature, is the first to calculate the carbon cost of bottom trawling, in which fishing fleets drag immense weighted nets along the ocean floor, scraping up fish, shellfish and crustaceans along with significant portions of their habitats.

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National Geographic

March 17, 2021
The campaign to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030, supported by more than 70 nations, is known mostly for soaring ambition and scant achievement so far. Just 7 percent of the seas are protected and only 2.7 percent are highly protected.

“It is very optimistic to think we’ll reach ‘30 by 30,’” says Patricia Majluf, a Peruvian fisheries scientist who has worked to create a deep-sea protected area off Peru in the face of strong resistance from the fishing industry. Peru has protected less than half a percent of its offshore waters. The proposed Nazca Ridge Marine Protected Area, on an undersea mountain range that stretches out into the Pacific from the Peru coast, is expected to be finalized this spring. It would boost Peru’s protected waters to 8 percent.

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