New Straits Times

July 30, 2021
In mid-July, the Secretariat of the United Nations-administered Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) provided the first detailed look at a new Global Biodiversity Framework, on which nations will vote at a summit scheduled for Kunming, China, in October.

Once this is formally in place, it will establish goals and 21 specific targets that will guide global efforts this decade to preserve and protect nature and its essential services to people.

The target drawing most attention is one championed by the international Campaign for Nature — conserving at least 30 per cent of land and sea areas worldwide within equitably managed, ecologically-representative and well-connected protected area systems.

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The Guardian

July 12, 2021
Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss.

The goals set out by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)to help halt and reverse the ecological destruction of Earth by the end of the decade also include protecting at least 30% of the world’s oceans and land and providing a third of climate crisis mitigation through nature by 2030.

The latest draft of the agreement, which follows gruelling virtual scientific and financial negotiations in May and June, will be scrutinised by governments before a key summit in the Chinese city of Kunming, where the final text will be negotiated.

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Campaign For Nature

July 12, 2021
Officials released today “Draft 1” of a global biodiversity framework--known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)--that includes three elements critical to addressing catastrophic biodiversity loss and the extinction crisis: a target to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, a target to retain intact natural areas, and a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ rights over their lands, territories and resources.

Nature is in a state of crisis, which poses a threat as serious as climate change to the future of humanity. Evidence shows that the ongoing and rapid loss of natural areas across the world poses a grave threat to the health and security of all living things.   

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Reuters

June 28, 2021
A growing global push to safeguard nature by pledging to protect about a third of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 will fall short unless biodiversity-rich Southeast Asian nations get behind the ambitious proposal, environmentalists have warned.

Leaders of the G7 wealthy nations this month backed a coalition of about 60 countries that have already promised to conserve at least 30% of their land and oceans by 2030 (30x30) to curb climate change and the loss of plant and animal species.

Cambodia is the only Southeast Asian nation to have signed up to the goal so far, although it has been endorsed by countries in other parts of Asia-Pacific, including Japan, Pakistan and the Maldives.

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Reuters

June 28, 2021
A growing global push to safeguard nature by pledging to protect about a third of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 will fall short unless biodiversity-rich Southeast Asian nations get behind the ambitious proposal, environmentalists have warned.

Leaders of the G7 wealthy nations this month backed a coalition of about 60 countries that have already promised to conserve at least 30% of their land and oceans by 2030 (30x30) to curb climate change and the loss of plant and animal species.

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New York Times

June 13, 2021
President Biden joined with leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations on Sunday to take action aimed at holding down global temperatures, but failed to set a firm end date on the burning of coal, which is a primary contributor to global warming.

Mr. Biden and six other leaders of the Group of 7 nations promised to cut collective emissions in half by 2030 and to try to stem the rapid extinction of animals and plants, calling it an “equally important existential threat.” They agreed that by next year they would stop international funding for any coal project that lacked technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions and vowed to achieve an “overwhelmingly decarbonized” electricity sector by the end of the decade.

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Campaign for Nature

June 13, 2021
Today G7 Heads of State announced a joint commitment to a historic “Nature Compact” during their meeting in Cornwall, UK.  The Nature Compact is the most wide-ranging and ambitious set of coordinated actions to address the crisis facing nature ever agreed to by G7 countries. 

 Three of the Campaign for Nature’s key priorities feature prominently in the G7 Nature Compact, including:

• An agreement to support new global targets to protect and conserve at least 30% of global land and at least 30% of global ocean by 2030.  The agreement states that the nations will lead by example by effectively protecting and conserving the same percentage of their national land, inland waters and coastal and marine areas by 2030.   

• A commitment to prioritize the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in co-design, decision-making and implementation of the systems change needed for the Nature Compact’s success.

• A pledge to dramatically increase investment in nature from all sources including the percentage of public climate finance directed towards nature.  

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Vox

June 11, 2021
In a lush swath of tropical forest on the eastern coast of Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines, you can glimpse the brilliant plumage of the rare rufous-lored kingfisher or — if you’re lucky — hear the shrill cry of the large Philippine eagle, a critically endangered species.

Wildlife is abundant here, but not because the region was left untouched in a protected area, or conserved by an international environmental organization. It’s because the territory known as Pangasananan has been occupied for centuries by the Manobo people, who have long relied on the land to cultivate crops, hunt and fish, and gather herbs. They use a number of techniques to conserve the land, from restricting access to sacred areas to designating wildlife sanctuaries and an offseason for hunting, owing in part to a traditional belief that nature and its resources are guarded by spirits.

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The Manila Times

June 11, 2021
As unprecedented changes and pressing issues continue to impact both nature and the biodiversity of the planet, a growing global effort is under way to protect 30 percent of the Earth's land and oceans - the 30x30 Wyss Campaign for Nature championed by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC), an intergovernmental coalition of more than 60 countries around the world co-chaired by Costa Rica, France and the UK. It calls on other nations, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), to commit to this definite target for the benefit of the environment, climate, economy and society.

As of this moment, only Cambodia has committed to this target as the first HAC member from the Asean region. The Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei and Singapore should all follow suit and other neighboring Asian members such as Japan, Pakistan and the Maldives. Dr. Tony Laviña, a former environment undersecretary, explains that such hesitation to commit to the 30x30 target is based more on the fear of unknown, of what committing to this target might mean for economies and livelihoods as well as how it will impact specific sectors like logging, mining and palm oil industries.

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Wired

June 10, 2021
Humanity is struggling to contain two compounding crises: skyrocketing global temperatures and plummeting biodiversity. But people tend to tackle each problem on its own, for instance deploying green energies and carbon-eating machines, while roping off ecosystems to preserve them. But in a new report, 50 scientists from around the world argue that treating each crisis in isolation means missing out on two-fer solutions that resolve both. Humanity can't solve one without also solving the other.

The report is the product of a four-day virtual workshop attended by researchers of all stripes, and is a collaboration between the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In light of the Paris Agreement, it’s meant to provide guidance on how campaigns that address biodiversity might also address climate change, and vice versa.

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New York Times

Some environmental solutions are win-win, helping to rein in global warming and protecting biodiversity, too. But others address one crisis at the expense of the other. Growing trees on grasslands, for example, can destroy the plant and animal life of a rich ecosystem, even if the new trees ultimately suck up carbon.

What to do?

Unless the world stops treating climate change and biodiversity collapse as separate issues, neither problem can be addressed effectively, according to a report issued Thursday by researchers from two leading international scientific panels.

“These two topics are more deeply intertwined than originally thought,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chairman of the scientific steering committee that produced the report. They are also inextricably tied to human well being. But global policies usually target one or the other, leading to unintended consequences.”

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Triple Pundit

June 8, 2021
From fishermen to fish to reefs, the theme of this year’s United Nations World Oceans Day, “Life and Livelihoods,” connects to just about every aspect of ocean health and coastal economies. After all, ocean health affects industries and flood resilience our ability to sequester carbon. But how do we secure ocean health? A global community of scientists agree that the foolproof way to support ecosystems and their services is to conserve them.

Research backs them up. A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature outlines three main benefits to protecting ocean areas: preserving biodiversity, increasing the yield of fisheries and storing marine carbon. Global coordination, as opposed to independent national action, authors say, has the potential to double the effectiveness of conservation efforts. The body of research backing up the economic benefits of marine protected areas (MPAs) is broad. One meta-analysis found a 670 percent increase in the biomass of whole fish assemblages in no-take marine reserves compared to unprotected areas outside their boundaries.

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PR Newswire

June 8, 2021
The Wyss Foundation today announced a commitment of up to $108M to African Parks, a South African based conservation NGO that manages protected areas on behalf of governments across the continent. This transformational commitment is part of Mr. Hansjorg Wyss's visionary Wyss Campaign for Nature, a $1B investment in helping nations, NGO's and indigenous communities conserve 30% of the planet by 2030 and is one of the largest single gifts ever made to the conservation of Protected Areas in Africa.

The Foundation's commitment will be made over an initial five-year period to support up to half of the annual budgets of nine existing parks currently under African Parks' management in Angola, Benin, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe; as well as support the addition of five new parks (which are yet to be identified) and up to two-thirds of their annual budgets. The funding for these new parks will come with a matching requirement with the goal of enticing new and diversified funders to provide needed stability for these landscapes. The grant overall serves a critical need in long-term and sustainable, multi-year financing, providing critical support for a park's operating budget, which can vary between $1.5M to $4M per year.

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Eco-Business

June 8, 2021
From forest fires raging across five continents to glaciers melting faster than ever before, the world looks increasingly apocalyptic. The good news is there is a simple solution, and I witness it daily in my conservation work: invest in indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) living in and around our wild places to conserve 30 per cent of our planet’s land and water by 2030.

Protecting one-third of the Earth is the magic fraction global scientists have identified will avert what looks increasingly like the end of the world. By setting aside the planet’s last wild places for biodiversity, they can sustain the other two-thirds we as a global community require for drinking water, a stable climate, and our agricultural needs.

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E&E News

June 2, 2021
Some proponents of a concerted push to protect large swaths of natural spaces across the country are raising concerns that the Biden administration's new conservation proposal is too timid, failing to lay out a plan to truly preserve vulnerable lands and waters.

As the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Interior Department and other agencies begin figuring out the details of the effort — rolled out earlier this month as the "America the Beautiful" initiative — these environmentalists argue that in trying to build consensus around the idea of ramping up conservation, the administration is essentially trading away scientific integrity.

"It's a very big deal that we have a president that recognizes and is willing to take action to preserve nature and address the catastrophic extinction crisis. I don't want to gloss over that. That is huge," said Randi Spivak, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Public Lands Program.

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