Covering Climate Now

March 13, 2020
The same forest destruction that accelerates climate change can also encourage the emergence of diseases such as the coronavirus, Indigenous Peoples’ leaders said March 13 in New York, as they criticized Cargill and other multinational companies for replacing forests with soy, palm and cattle plantations.

“The coronavirus is now telling the world what we have been saying for thousands of years—that if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, then we will face this and worse future threats,” said Levi Sucre Romero, a BriBri indigenous person from Costa Rica who is the Coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests.

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Mongabay

March 13, 2020
The World Health Organization has categorized the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic in light of its spread around the world. Ever since the first cases emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December, there’s been much speculation — and misinformation — about the origins of the virus. And while scientists suspect it may have come from a market in Wuhan when a diseased animal was consumed or butchered, spilling over into the human population from there, the issue is far from settled.

To give a better understanding of the origin of the coronavirus and what can be done to stop the future spread of disease from animals to humans, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Global Wildlife Conservation have partnered on a series of new infographics.

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Business Green

March 12, 2020
Corporate investment in carbon offsets is helping to fund a project in West Africa that is delivering on multiple Sustainable Development Goals through its protection of precious forest habitats and its services for local communities.

The Upper Guinean Forest of West Africa is one of only three forested biodiversity hotspots in Africa. Until the end of the 19th century it covered most of Sierra Leone, Liberia, South-East Guinea, Southern Ivory Coast and South-West Ghana, but less than a fifth of this rainforest remains today.

The Greater Gola Landscape, straddling the Sierra Leone-Liberia border comprises the largest remnant of this critical ecosystem - over 350,000 hectares in a mosaic of protected areas, community forests, and smallholders' agricultural lands.

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Oceanographic

March 11, 2020
Sir David Attenborough has urged countries to halt plans to mine the deep sea. This comes in light of a recently published report from scientists at Fauna & Flora International (FFI) warning that deep sea mining is likely to cause significant disruption to the ocean’s life-support systems, its carbon capture and a loss of biodiversity.

The report is the first to comprehensively assess the risks and potential impacts of mining the deep seabed for minerals. Its publication comes ahead of a July meeting of key countries hoping to finalise the rules that will govern deep sea mining.

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Climate Home News

March 11, 2020
Observers say additional time could help countries agree on rules to create marine protected areas in parts of the ocean that lie beyond national jurisdiction.

The UN has postponed deadlocked talks on a global treaty to protect marine biodiversity in the high seas because of the coronavirus, giving countries extra time to seek compromise.

Governments had been due to agree a global treaty in April to safeguard life in seas beyond the national jurisdiction of coastal states, a poorly regulated region accounting for two-thirds of the global ocean.

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The Africa Report

March 11, 2020
One year ago, when Cyclone Idai slammed into Mozambique, pummeling Beira with a 20-foot storm surge, very few people were prepared for the force and fury of that superstorm.

Thousands dead or missing nationwide. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops were damaged or destroyed. Millions impacted by flooding and ruined infrastructure. Billions of dollars in economic losses.

Gorongosa National Park was an island amidst this storm.

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Oceanographic

March 10, 2020
According to a new study, without mangroves, flood damages would increase by more than $65 billion annually. The natural coastal defenses mangrove forests provide globally reduce annual flooding significantly in critical hotspots.

Mangrove forests occur in more than 100 countries around the world, but many have been lost due to an increase in aquaculture, as well as coastal industry and development. The rising sea levels and intensifying impacts of hurricanes caused by climate change is increasing the risk of coastal flooding, and conservation and restoration of natural defenses such as mangroves offers cost-effective ways to mitigate and adapt to these changes. According to the authors, mangrove forests can be easily restored to make people and property safer.

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Project Syndicate - OpEd

March 9, 2020
Natural systems are not just critical to the survival of the nine million plant and animal species with which we share this planet. They are also key to humanity's own future, which is increasingly being threatened by our failure to reduce carbon emissions and to protect the ecological foundations of life itself.

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World Economic Forum News

March 9, 2020
The frequency of disease outbreaks has been increasing steadily. Between 1980 and 2013 there were 12,012 recorded outbreaks, comprising 44 million individual cases and affecting every country in the world. A number of trends have contributed to this rise, including high levels of global travel, trade and connectivity, and high-density living - but the links to climate change and biodiversity are the most striking.

Deforestation has increased steadily over the past two decades and is linked to 31% of outbreaks such as Ebola, and the Zika and Nipah viruses. Deforestation drives wild animals out of their natural habitats and closer to human populations, creating a greater opportunity for zoonotic diseases - that is, diseases that spread from animals to humans. More broadly, climate change has altered and accelerated the transmission patterns of infectious diseases such as Zika, malaria and dengue fever, and has caused human displacement. Movements of large groups to new locations, often under poor conditions, increases displaced populations’ vulnerability to biological threats such as measles, malaria, diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections.

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The Hill - OpEd

March 7, 2020
The COVID-19 coronavirus has killed thousands of people around the world, including 14 in the U.S., and its origin in animals and global spread should remind us how inextricably linked we are with other life on Earth. We share the same planet and breathe the same air, and we also exchange microbes including germs. Now, with our burgeoning human population and global economy, we face new threats from a wider distribution of diseases like this new strain of coronavirus.

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Thomas Reuters Foundation News

March 6, 2020
In Europe, almost a quarter of wild species are at risk of dying out and many ecosystems are too degraded to sustain their social and economic benefits

Like a pandemic, the loss of plant and animal species is almost impossible to contain. But we already have all the information and evidence we need to stop it.

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The Nature Conservancy

March 5, 2020
The Earth is vast—but it is also finite. As human development has expanded to meet the needs of a growing population, far too much of nature has been lost or degraded. This degradation is a major driver of climate change as well as species loss—and both crises pose serious threats to people.

Scientists are talking of deadly tipping points, and recent images of blazing fires, wounded wildlife and urgent evacuations in Australia hammer home that the delicate balance of nature can be tipped out of control within a relatively short time frame. We urgently need to reset and reverse these trends—but doing so will require broad collaboration and investment. This job is too big for environmentalists alone.

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The Guardian

March 4, 2020
Tropical forests are taking up less carbon dioxide from the air, reducing their ability to act as “carbon sinks” and bringing closer the prospect of accelerating climate breakdown.

The Amazon could turn into a source of carbon in the atmosphere, instead of one of the biggest absorbers of the gas, as soon as the next decade, owing to the damage caused by loggers and farming interests and the impacts of the climate crisis, new research has found.

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Ethical Corporation

March 3, 2020
Angeli Mehta reports on how companies like Danone, Unilever, and China's Cofco International are addressing biodiversity loss through platforms like the Business for Nature coalition and One Planet Business for Biodiversity

This decade has been billed as the decade of climate action – but it’s not enough to cut carbon emissions, we also have to reverse the precipitous loss of our planet’s biodiversity.

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China Dialogue

March 3, 2020
A new global deal for nature will need strong implementation and finance, but discussions on these issues at the latest negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity were lacking.

The clock is ticking. With just eight months to draw up a new deal for nature to prevent dire predictions of the extinction of one million species becoming reality, scientists and conservation groups are closely following progress of talks under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

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