Campaign for Nature

January 27, 2021
Today's announcement by President Biden is a win for the people of the United States and the rest of the world, the environment, and the economy. Only by protecting the earth's climate and biodiversity can we truly be on a path to an inclusive and prosperous future for humanity.

 By promising to set the United States on a path to conserve 30% of the U.S by 2030 (30x30) – on land and at sea – President Biden has proposed the most ambitious conservation agenda of any president in American history. Such vision addresses the scale of the challenges facing our climate and the natural world. Only by rapidly accelerating the pace of conservation will we stand a chance to slow the warming of our planet and prevent a climate catastrophe, and to reverse the loss of biodiversity, which many experts have warned is the beginning of a Sixth Mass Extinction and the collapse of humanity’s life support system. 

Read More

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research

January 26, 2021
Since the founding of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, member states have regularly agreed on global strategies to bring the increasingly rapid loss of biodiversity to a halt. In 2002, the heads of state adopted the so-called 2010 biodiversity targets. Eight years later, little progress had been made and 20 new, even more ambitious goals were set for the next ten years. Last year, it became clear that this target had been missed, too. The loss of biodiversity continues unabated.

This year, new targets are being negotiated again - this time for 2030. The decisions are to be made at the Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Kunming, China. To ensure that the mistakes from previous years will not be repeated, Chinese researchers led by Prof Haigen Xu from the Nanjing Institute for Environmental Research in cooperation with Prof Henrique Pereira (iDiv, MLU) have presented an analysis of the causes of this failure, focusing primarily on implementation in the individual member states.

Read More

Mongabay - OpEd

January 25, 2021
The year of 2020 was envisioned as a potential turning point for global conservation efforts. Major events such as the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the IUCN World Conservation Congress were expected to raise biodiversity conservation to the top of the global agenda. These and other major events aimed to foster greater links between biodiversity, climate, and development goals. New conservation initiatives and ambitions such as a ‘global deal for nature’ were being advanced to try and increase conservation impact and investment.

Now, the world is a very different place as we head into the new year. Over the past nine months COVID-19 has created an unprecedented social, economic, and public health crisis on a global scale. The pandemic’s impacts have been augmented by additional political and social crises encompassing fundamental issues such as race, democracy, and inequality. The events of the past year take place within the wider context of the biodiversity and climate crises, of which conservationists are all too aware. We are living and working in a period of crises layered within crises.

But such extraordinary circumstances also create new, unique opportunities, often in unexpected ways, for systemic change. As societies respond and adapt, opportunities emerge for changing how conservation is conceptualized, practiced, and funded. The conservation field now has a unique opportunity to accelerate efforts to build a stronger, more dynamic, more resilient field – one that can truly face up to the challenges of the present global ecological crisis.

Read More

Brookings

January 25, 2021
The global public health and economic devastation caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak dramatically reinforces the urgent imperative to minimize the chances of another zoonotic pandemic. Reducing the likelihood of another viral spillover sweeping the world requires a fundamental change in how we interact with nature. It requires minimizing human interface with wild animals and wild spaces; eliminating transmission points where the likelihood of viral spillover to humans is high, such as unhygienic commercial markets in wild animal meat and live animals; better monitoring of the legal trade in wildlife; diligently suppressing illegal and unsustainable trade in wildlife; and conserving natural habitats. Conserving natural habitats in turn requires profound changes in human food production and human encroachment on remaining natural habitats. Decisionmaking about pandemic prevention and nature conservation must be elevated to the highest levels of governments on a permanent basis. Such changes will not be easy or cheap, but they are necessary.

Read More

The Hill

January 25, 2021
The leader of the United Nations warned Monday of “existential threats” to the global climate and biodiversity. 

Speaking to the World Economic Forum, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said that today’s world suffers from “fragility,” invoking issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and resulting job losses. 

“We also see fragility in the climate and biodiversity crisis. Both are existential threats, and both are getting worse,” Guterres said. 

“We are waging war on nature and destroying our life support system, and nature is striking back,” he added. 

Later in his speech, he said 2021 is the “make-it-or-break-it year” and called on countries to commit to reaching carbon neutrality. 

“We need to make sure that countries present their nationally determined contributions in 2021 with a dramatic reduction in emissions up to 2030,” he added, referring to national goals to reduce emissions. 

Read More

EcoWatch

January 25, 2021
In 2010, world leaders agreed to 20 targets to protect Earth's biodiversity over the next decade. By 2020, none of them had been met. Now, the question is whether the world can do any better once new targets are set during the meeting of the UN Convention on Biodiversity in Kunming, China later this year.

To help turn the tide, a group of 22 research institutions have come together to develop four steps to protect life on Earth, the Environment Journal reported.

"The upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting, and adoption of the new Global Biodiversity Framework, represent an opportunity to transform humanity's relationship with nature," the researchers wrote in One Earth Friday. "Restoring nature while meeting human needs requires a bold vision, including mainstreaming biodiversity conservation in society."

Read More

Science Alert

January 22, 2021
A new study suggests a potential change in tropical rain belt patterns could threaten the livelihoods and food security of billions of people.

Today, the tropical rain belt brings with it heavy precipitation along the equator, but as different parts of Earth's atmosphere heat up at different rates, this belt looks likely to become disrupted as it gets attracted to warmer regions of air – threatening biodiversity and taking away the water that people rely on, including growing crops.

Researchers analysed 27 of the most up-to-date climate models to reach their conclusions, but the full impact of the climate crisis on the tropical rain belt only became clear when they isolated the effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, and studied them separately.

"Our work shows that climate change will cause the position of Earth's tropical rain belt to move in opposite directions in two longitudinal sectors that cover almost two thirds of the globe, a process that will have cascading effects on water availability and food production around the world," says atmospheric scientist Antonios Mamalakis, from Colorado State University.

Read More

PHYS.ORG

January 21, 2021
It is no secret that over the last few decades, humans have changed nature at an ever-increasing rate. A growing collection of research covers the many ways this is impacting our quality of life, from air quality to nutrition and income. To better understand how which areas are most at risk, scientists have combed through volumes of literature to present global trends in the relationship between human wellbeing and environmental degradation.

Their work, which included Fabrice DeClerck from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, was summarized in "Global trends in nature's contributions to people", which was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This systematic review builds on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment Report, which in 2019 provided the most comprehensive assessment yet of nature's decline and biodiversity loss, when it emphasized that 1 million plant and animal species face extinction.

Read More

Associated Press

January 21, 2021
President Joe Biden returned the United States to the worldwide fight to slow global warming in one of his first official acts Wednesday and immediately launched a series of climate-friendly efforts that would transform how Americans drive and get their power.

“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself,” Biden said in his inaugural address. “A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear now.”

Biden signed an executive order rejoining the Paris climate accord within hours of taking the oath of office, fulfilling a campaign pledge. The move undoes the U.S. withdrawal ordered by predecessor Donald Trump, who belittled the science behind climate efforts, loosened regulations on heat-trapping oil, gas and coal emissions, and spurred oil and gas leasing in pristine Arctic tundra and other wilderness.

Read More

Inquirer.net - OpEd

January 19, 2021
This year sets off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which scientists assert as humanity’s last chance to save the planet from the catastrophic impacts of climate change. This is our tipping point to halt and reverse the further degradation of ecosystems of land and sea while addressing pressing socioeconomic issues.

Home to 20 percent of the world’s known plant species, the Asean region, of which the Philippines is part, has a bigger stake in this critical decade. The region’s vulnerability to climate change as shown by the recent calamities that struck the Philippines and its neighboring countries makes the next 10 years of great consequences.

Read More

The Guardian

January 18, 2021
A coalition of NGOs is calling for an urgent ban on destructive bottom trawling in EU marine protected areas, after the failure of member states to defend seas.

The ban is part of a 10-point action plan to “raise the bar” to achieve biodiversity targets, which they say will not be met by current promises, such as last year’s high-profile pledge by world leaders at the UN summit on biodiversity in New York to reverse nature loss by 2030. 

A raft of EU laws to safeguard marine life – including a duty on EU member states to achieve “good environmental status” in seas by 2020, to achieve healthy ecosystems and to introduce sustainable fisheries management – have not been enforced, says the group, which includes Oceana in Europe, Greenpeace and ClientEarth.

They warn that this failure, combined with existing pressures on Europe’s seas, including climate change, risks triggering irreversible changes to the ecological conditions under which humanity has evolved and thrived.

Read More

China Daily

January 18, 2021
Analysts said the commitment by China and some 50 other countries to protect 30 percent of the earth's land and oceans by 2030 was a much-needed step to halt biodiversity loss and prevent species extinction.

Realizing the mission, though, will not be easy as the new goal would mean a huge scale-up in protected land and ocean area compared to current levels.

The new commitment by 50-odd countries is "very positive and very much needed to address the linked global crisis we are facing on climate change and biodiversity loss", said Bruce Dunn, director of environment and safeguards at the Manila based Asian Development Bank's sustainable development and climate change department.

"Realizing this ambition will be challenging, however, because it means doubling the existing land area protected, and more than tripling the area of protected oceans," Dunn said.

"Protection also implies sustainable management and sustainable financing, which has been a big challenge with the existing estate of protected areas."

China was among a group of more than 50 countries that pledged to protect the planet's land and sea area by 2030 as part of efforts to stop plants and animals from becoming extinct and address climate change issues.

Read More

The Hill

January 14, 2021
In a new report released Thursday, the United Nations warned that countries need to work faster and allocate more resources toward adapting to climate change across both public and private sectors.

Outlined in the agency’s Adaptation Gap Report 2020, U.N. researchers underscore that despite some progress made in countries around the world adopting national adaptation strategies, levels of engagement and commitment vary.

Citing 2020’s natural disasters as some of the most cataclysmic on record and the record-breaking heat, U.N. authors emphasize the need for increased action amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Read More

Frontiers in Conservation Science

January 13, 2021
We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future. The added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of ecosystem services on which society depends. The science underlying these issues is strong, but awareness is weak. Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals.

Read More

Republic of the Philippines

January 13, 2021
The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has expressed openness to the outcomes of the One Planet Summit, hosted by the French government, United Nations, and World Bank, on 11 January 2021.

“We welcome fresh commitments from world leaders, which the ACB views with much optimism and enthusiasm. These pledges pivot initiatives to conserve and restore ecosystems in the ASEAN region and across the globe, especially now that we are ushering in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration,” ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim said.

At the summit, governments, such as the United Kingdom (UK) and France, announced earmarking funds for nature-based solutions.  UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK will commit at least GBP 3 billion (USD 4 billion) to climate change solutions that protect and restore nature and biodiversity over five years. The summit also saw USD 10 billion earmarked for the Great Green Wall, a project to restore degraded lands in the Sahel along an 8,000-kilometre band from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, along with new financial commitments from Norway and Germany.

Some 50 nations expressed support for the plan to carve out 30 per cent of global lands and oceans for protection by 2030 (30x30 goals).

Read More