CNN

January 20, 2020
Refugees fleeing the effects of the climate crisis cannot be forced to return home by their adoptive countries, a United Nations panel has ruled, in a landmark decision that could open the door to a flood of legal claims by displaced people around the world.

The UN's Human Rights Committee was making a judgment on the case of Ioane Teitiota, who applied for protection from New Zealand after claiming his life was at risk in his home country of Kiribati. The Pacific island is at risk of becoming the first country to disappear under rising sea levels.

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Yahoo Finance

January 20, 2020
Business leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week are supporting a new science-based approach to tackling their companies' impacts on both climate change and all the Earth's natural systems.

The fight against climate change cannot be won without both decarbonizing our economies and restoring balance to the "global commons": land, oceans, freshwater and biodiversity, alongside climate.

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EcoWatch

January 20, 2020
Talk is cheap, says the acting executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, who begged governments around the world to make sure that 2020 is not another year of conferences and empty promises, but instead is the year to take decisive action to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and the destruction of habitat-sustaining ecosystems, as The Guardian reported.

Acting Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema warned that the absence of concrete action to stop deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis will mean that humanity has given up on the planet.

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World Economic Forum

January 19, 2020
Businesses are more dependent on nature and biodiversity than expected, according to The New Nature Economy Report, released today.

Analysis of 163 industry sectors and their supply chains found that over half of the world’s GDP –$44 trillion of economic value generation – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and, as a result, exposed to risks from nature loss.

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Yahoo Finance

January 19, 2020
L'OCCITANE Group today announced the creation of a fund to support ecosystems that are severely affected by natural disasters, such as the devastating fires in the Amazon and Australia. Determined to protect biodiversity for future generations, the L'OCCITANE Ecosystem Restoration Fund aims to respond to climate emergencies on an ad hoc basis. The fund will be financed by a voluntary internal donation campaign among L'OCCITANE's shareholders.

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Live Science

January 17, 2020
Five years ago, tens of thousands of emaciated seabirds washed ashore on the Pacific Coast. Now, scientists know why: a long-lived marine heat wave known as "the blob."

The common murre (Uria aalge) is a black and white seabird that reaches about 1 foot (0.3 meters) long and can dive hundreds of meters deep into water in search of prey. These seabirds feast on tiny "forage fish" such as sardines, herring and anchovies, and need to consume about half of their body weight every day in order to survive.

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European Parliament News

January 16, 2020
MEPs want the upcoming global biodiversity conference COP 15 to agree on legally binding targets, as was the case for the Paris agreement on climate change. Parliament adopted its position in view of the 2020 UN biodiversity conference (COP 15), in Kunming (China) in October by show of hands. To stop the current trajectory of biodiversity loss, the conference needs to agree on legally binding targets with timelines, performance indicators and reporting mechanisms based on common standards, says the resolution.

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Project Syndicate

January 15, 2020
In less than one year, delegates from around the world will gather in Kunming, China, to complete a new global agreement for protecting and conserving the world's natural systems. To succeed, they must bring together not just environmentalists, but also officials with the clout to effect change across entire economies.

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Campaign For Nature

January 15, 2020
Today, the World Economic Forum released a new report outlining the findings of its annual Global Risks Perception Survey. Environmental concerns dominate the top long-term risks identified by survey participants, with “major biodiversity loss” named the second-most-impactful and third-most-likely risk for the next decade. The report notes its potential “irreversible consequences for the environment, resulting in severely depleted resources for humankind as well as industries.”

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Market Watch

January 14, 2020
Sustainable investments that take into account climate change will deliver better returns, says BlackRock founder Larry Fink in his annual letter to chief executives.

The boss of the world’s largest fund manager warned: “In the near future—and sooner than most anticipate—there will be a significant reallocation of capital.”

“I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

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The Hill

January 14, 2020
In Portugal’s Greater Côa Valley, a transformation is underway. Once degraded and overgrown, thousands of hectares of this remote ecosystem are being restored and rewilded. Plans are afoot to reintroduce wild horses, roe deer and Iberian ibex. This restoration will improve the connection between the Malcata mountain range and the Douro Valley. It is an all-round win for Portuguese wildlife.

But if this grand vision is to be sustainable, it needs to be profitable. The valley has suffered one of the highest rates of land abandonment in Europe, which has contributed to the decline of the landscape — the area became overgrown in the absence of grazing farm animals, and that in turn has harmed biodiversity and increased the risk of wildfire.

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The Hill

January 14, 2020
The European Union announced Tuesday that it will invest 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) into combating climate change, The Associated Press reports. 

The EU will invest a fourth of its budget to battle climate change, with other funds coming from the private sector. The plan will fund European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s European Green Deal, which strives to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent in the world by 2050.

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InsideClimate News

January 14, 2020
In 25 years, the oceans have absorbed heat equivalent to the energy of 3.6 billion Hiroshima-size atom bomb explosions, the study's lead author said.

The world's oceans are warming at a rapidly increasing pace, new research shows, and the heat is having devastating effects on marine life and intensifying extreme weather. Last year, the oceans were warmer than any time since measurements began over 60 years ago, according to a study published Monday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

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InsideClimate News

January 14, 2020
A new United Nations proposal calls for national parks, marine sanctuaries and other protected areas to cover nearly one-third or more of the planet by 2030 as part of an effort to stop a sixth mass extinction and slow global warming. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity released the proposed targets on Monday in a first draft of what is expected to become an update to the global treaty on biodiversity later this year.

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Mongabay

January 13, 2020
A proposed update to the global treaty governing plant and animal life on Earth calls for nearly a third of the planet to be designated as protected by 2030. That proposal will go before the summit of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in China this October, where governments will hash out a framework for biodiversity protection over the coming decade and determine the fates of myriad endangered species.

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