Marine life, fisheries increasingly threatened as the ocean loses oxygen – IUCN report

IUCN

December 7, 2019
The loss of oxygen from the world’s ocean is increasingly threatening fish species and disrupting ecosystems, a new IUCN report warns. Ocean oxygen loss, driven by climate change and nutrient pollution, is a growing menace to fisheries and species such as tuna, marlin and sharks, according to the report released today at the UN Climate Change conference in Madrid.

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Declare climate emergency, say scientists

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.

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Time for world to embrace natural climate solutions

Arab News (Editorial)

December 4, 2019
As world leaders gather at the 25th UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid this month, they will discuss concrete steps for meeting and increasing national emissions reduction targets. But, equally important, COP25 offers an opportunity to elevate one of the most powerful tools we have to address climate change: Nature.

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On the road to zero emissions: Nature, climate and a carbon price

Phys.org

December 3, 2019
Every year the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP) is a hugely significant moment—two weeks in history upon which future generations will reflect, and judge, whether we succeeded in ensuring a climate-safe planet.

And the stakes in 2019 are higher than ever. We exist in a changed world compared to just one year ago, as the impacts of climate change continue to bite ever-more intensively.

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COP25: ‘Signals of hope’ multiplying in face of global climate crisis, insists UN's Guterres

UN News

December 1, 2019
The UN Secretary-General has outlined the “increased ambition and commitment” that the world needs from governments during the coming days of the COP25 UN climate change conference which opens in Madrid on Monday, calling for “accountability, responsibility and leadership” to end the global climate crisis.

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Navigating transformation of biodiversity and climate

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.

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Indigenous protectors of these sacred peaks have kept others out—until now

National Geographic

November 27, 2019
The Arhuaco invite National Geographic to the upper reaches of their Colombian homeland to reveal threats we all face—and remind us of our roots in nature.

[…] Breaking with their rigidly isolationist past, they invited photographer Stephen Ferry and me to join them on a spiritual journey from the base of the massif all the way up to a sacred lake called Naboba, fed by glacial melt at nearly 16,000 feet. They want us to be their megaphone to the wider world about the threats to the Sierra Nevada, to their way of life—and to humanity.

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$10M in prize money for mapping rainforest biodiversity

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.

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7,000 African plant species at risk of extinction due to climate change

International Business Times

November 22, 2019
About one in every three plant species in Africa is at the risk of extinction due to climate change, a study has revealed. Researchers classified about 7,000 out of more than 22,000 vascular plant species in Africa as "likely or potentially" threatened, the report said, pointing towards the losses of biodiversity, rapid human population growth, changes in land use, and the effects of changing the climate as reasons behind the disappearance.

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