Science News
December 16, 2019S
Some big numbers from nature made news in 2019. They were enough of a shock to get people talking about the dwindling diversity of plants, animals and other life on Earth, and what to do about it.
The Guardian
December 12, 2019
The Guam rail, a flightless bird typically about 30cm long, usually dull brown in colour and adorned with black and white stripes, has become a rare success story in the recent history of conservation.
The Guardian
December 11, 2019
Nearly every major aspect of the European economy is to be re-evaluated in light of the imperatives of the climate and ecological emergency, according to sweeping new plans set out by the European Commission on Wednesday.
The Guardian
December 6, 2019
If humanity wants to reverse the widespread destruction of the natural world, biodiversity needs legal protection like the Paris agreement on climate change, members of the European parliament have said.
India Climate Dialogue
December 6, 2019
On the day young climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived at the UN summit in Madrid and cornered much of the attention, the world’s scientists put together a “super summary” of the many climate reports that have been published recently, and concluded, “2019 is a bad year for the climate system, a bad year for humanity,” in the words of Johan Rockstrom of Future Earth.
Science Advances (Editorial)
November 27, 2019
[…] Ours is a bioclimatic world in which every organism, from bacterium to blue whale, inseparably contributes to the climate and surface conditions of Earth. This tapestry, of which we are a part, is unraveling, with its delicate patterns and motifs denigrated to near invisibility, disappearing at a rate and magnitude that rivals that of the great mass extinction events of the past. This fading to nonexistence is making us unfortunate witnesses to the accumulated consequences of human actions over the past 10,000 years. Happily, though, we are now increasingly empowered by science and can act to abate ongoing trends and protect planetary resources before the essential threads of life’s coherence become completely eroded.
Mongabay
November 27, 2019
Efforts to catalog the fast-declining biodiversity of tropical rainforests just got a $10 million boost via a new competition from XPRIZE, an organization that has more than a dozen competitions on topics ranging from spaceflight to oil cleanup over the past 25 years.
Last week, XPRIZE formally unveiled the $10 million Rainforest XPRIZE to catalyze development of “technology capable of identifying and cataloging rainforest biodiversity” that can underpin the emergence of new bioeconomy based on the value of standing forests as heathy and productive ecosystems.
Project Syndicate —Op-Ed
November 7, 2019
The 2015 Paris climate agreement was made possible when countries realized it was in their own interest to commit to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. But a similar understanding of the need for stronger conservation policies has yet to take hold, putting the world's ecosystems increasingly at risk.
Phys.org
November 5, 2019
Scientists are trying to better predict how biodiversity loss will affect ecosystems—how well they function and perform services we all need—especially in the face of climate change stress. Pioneering research at the Natural Resources Research Institute found a better way to understand biodiversity impacts.
World Economic Forum
November 5, 2019
Nature is essential to both global economic prosperity and individual business success. We cannot have a sustainable future for people and economies if we do not address nature, climate and people in an integrated way.
UPI
October 28, 2019
For marine biodiversity, some regions of the ocean are more important than others. In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists compiled the findings of multiple studies to identify all of the most important marine areas.
The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, showed several important marine areas remain unprotected.
Mongabay
October 17, 2019
A recent U.N. report found that more than 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction. In a conversation with Mongabay, Robert Watson, who chaired the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that produced the report, discusses the economic value of biodiversity.
Scientific American - OpEd
October 12, 2019
For indigenous peoples, sustainability is a necessity, for without it their own livelihoods are at risk. Traditional ecological knowledge and practices have been so successful that, although indigenous lands account for less than 22 percent of the world’s land area, their traditional territories are home to approximately 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity.
National Geographic
October 10, 2019
As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model examining how nature and humans can survive together.
Science
October 4, 2019
This report documents losses of North American avifauna over the 48 years between 1970 and 2018. Based on their use of range-wide population trajectories and size estimates, they found wide-spread population declines of birds indicating a net loss approaching 3 billion birds, or 29 percent of 1970 abundance.