Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
October 29, 2019
Expanding the planet’s protected natural areas to safeguard vanishing forests and other ecosystems, and the species they protect, is unlikely to be effective on its own as human encroachment into reserves grows, scientists warned Tuesday.
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Both chronic underfunding of efforts to protect the land, and a lack of engagement with local communities that live there are hurting conservation efforts, they found.
October 29, 2019
Governors from eight Amazonian states in Brazil and Peru meeting at the Vatican agreed that the Amazon is threatened and called for a "green economy" that would allow people to generate income without destroying the forest.
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.
October 27, 2019
According to results published in Nature Climate Change, researchers said new approaches in agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy could feasibly contribute about a third of the Paris Accord mitigation target by 2050– equivalent to 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year.
October 26, 2019
This is a big year for Costa Rica’s one and only Isla del Coco, Cocos Island National Park, as it received this week the “Blue Park” award for its condition as Global Ocean Refuge in the Gold category of the Marine Conservation Institute which promotes Marine Protected Areas that comply with certain standards of management and effectiveness.
October 21, 2019
Former members of the United States Congress enthusiastically endorse the global goal of protecting at least 30 percent of the planet by 2030.
[…] As a group of Democrats and Republicans, we hope to underscore the need for bipartisan action - both domestically and internationally - to confront this escalating challenge.
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.
