Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
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.
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.
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.
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.
October 2, 2019
Last week, UN chief António Guterres gathered the world’s political, business and civil society leaders in New York in an effort to jump start action on climate change.
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CHN is publishing this (non-exhaustive) list of initiatives, promises and goals with a view toward accountability.
October 2, 2019
A diverse group of 19 multinational companies — including food giant Danone, cosmetics queen L’Oreal and data powerhouse Google — are digging deep to plant the seeds for a global push to protect and promote biodiversity.
October 1, 2019
Anyone paying attention to world events could hardly help but feel despair about increasing climate chaos and social inequality, plummeting wildlife populations and political strife.
But in my role as the UN Patron of Protected Areas and as president of Tompkins Conservation, I’ve seen firsthand a reason for hope: Committed people working together can help nature heal — can help “rewild” degraded places, restore the conditions that support abundant wildlife, and foster beauty.
New York, September 28, 2019 — Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda of the Republic of Uganda, addressed the 74th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations today. In his remarks, he spoke of Uganda’s commitment to addressing global climate change and the crisis of biodiversity loss.
"That's why Uganda is supporting a proposal at next year's Convention on Biological Diversity that takes bold steps to create a sustainable planet, including protecting at least 30 percent of our lands and generating significantly more funding from governments and the private sector to protect the nature on which our lives and our economies depend."
Watch the Prime Minister’s remarks climate change and biodiversity:
September 27, 2019
Protecting diverse ecosystems and the natural benefits that they provide is essential to the future of life on our planet and the well-being of humanity.
Those services, which are often called ecosystem services, include providing resources such as food and water, maintaining habitats that support biodiversity, offering opportunities for recreation, and helping to regulate human-caused impacts like climate change.
September 26, 2019
Indigenous peoples and local communities around the world should be recognized and supported as leaders in global conservation efforts.
A recent study of spatial data in the journal Nature, reveals that indigenous peoples manage or have tenure rights over 38 million square kilometers of land in 87 countries. This land accounts for over a quarter of the terrestrial area of the globe, and interfaces with over 40 percent of the world’s existing conservation areas.
September 25, 2019
On Wednesday, the IPCC released a major report on the state of the planet's oceans and ice. The 900-page report, which compiles the findings from thousands of scientific studies, outlines the damage climate change has already done to the planet’s vast oceans and fragile ice sheets and forecasts the future for these crucial parts of the climate system.
September 25, 2019
In 2014, scientists called for 30 percent of the world’s oceans to be protected by a network of MPAs by 2030, yet it already seems likely the world will fall short of the UN’s goal to protect 10 percent of oceans by 2020. Though the UN says we’re 8 percent of the way there, experts caution that only 2.2 percent of the world’s oceans are fully off limits to commercial activity, and only 4.8 percent is actively managed.
September 25, 2019
Habitat destruction is one of the biggest threats facing plants and animal species throughout the world. The loss of habitat has far-reaching impacts on the planet’s ability to sustain life, but even with the challenges, there is hope for the future.
September 24, 2019
The UK has announced the launch of a new global alliance to help drive urgent action to protect the world’s oceans and their wildlife. The Global Ocean Alliance will push for the trebling of existing targets to ensure at least a third of the oceans is safeguarded in Marine Protected Areas by 2030.
September 23, 2019
The Earth is facing a dual crisis of rapid climate change and unprecedented biodiversity loss. A recent UN report on biodiversity estimates the global rate of species extinction is currently tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.
