National Geographic

March 1, 2021
When Grand Canyon National Park was established a century ago, the Colorado River running through it was treated as an afterthought. In the decades following, states scrambled to squeeze every drop of water out of the Colorado for farming and drinking, with a cascade of huge dams constructed along its course.

Native fish like suckers and chubs, found nowhere else in the world, were replaced with invasive catfish and bass that were more attractive for anglers. In time, the mighty river that had once carved out one of America’s most iconic landscapes was reduced to a trickle, no longer able to fulfill its destiny of reaching the sea.

What happened to the Colorado is a powerful example of a river’s decline, but it’s hardly an exception. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and wetlands have increasingly come under similar assault from poorly planned dams, pollution, habitat loss, sand mining, climate change, and the introduction of invasive species.

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National Parks Traveler

February 28, 2021
Tucked inside President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad are three paragraphs calling for recommendations to conserve 30 percent of  U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Scientists have championed the 30x30 initiative globally for years to protect biodiversity and mitigate climate change impacts, but only now is the effort gaining administration attention.

“Over the coming months, Interior will evaluate how to best measure and assess the country’s progress toward the 30x30 goal, to properly account for the many innovative and effective ways that communities are conserving their lands and waters for current and future generations,” according to a Department of the Interior fact sheet issued on January 27.

Calling the goals “the most ambitious conservation agenda in at least the past century,” outdoor industry companies, including Burton, Columbia, L.L. Bean, New Balance, Orvis, Patagonia, The North Face, Keen and Smartwool, co-signed a letter applauding the Biden administration’s 30x30 goal.

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CBS News

February 27, 2021
A new report from the United Nations warns that global governments are "nowhere" near ambitious enough to adequately tackle climate change and meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. To fix this, the report shows that countries have to redouble their efforts and adjust their goals by the end of this year to limit global temperature rise by the end of the century.

The NDC Synthesis Report analyzes governments' climate action plans that have already been submitted to the UN as part of the global effort to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change. So far, 75 parties — making up roughly 30% of the world's total emissions — have submitted their plans. A second report is expected to be released prior to the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November.

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Reuters

February 25, 2021
The rate of destruction of the world’s tropical forests is likely to have gathered pace last year, green groups warned, as the pandemic weakened environmental regulations, cut funding for protection work and forced city migrants back to rural areas.

In 2019, tropical rainforests disappeared at a rate of one football pitch every six seconds, according to monitoring service Global Forest Watch (GFW), despite more awareness of the key role of carbon-storing forests in slowing climate change.

The tracking platform, which uses satellite imagery and is run by the U.S.-based think-tank World Resources Institute (WRI), is due to release its deforestation numbers for 2020 - when the COVID-19 pandemic struck - in the next three months.

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The Hill

February 25, 2021
One of the most critical ocean circulation patterns that helps the Earth regulate its temperature has recently reached its weakest state in a millennium, making it more difficult to effectively distribute heat on the planet. 

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a series of currents that flow across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Nordic and Labrador Seas, helps transport heat from the South Atlantic and North Atlantic to more polar Atlantic waters.

Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, a new study examines evidence pointing to the AMOC’s slowdown due to anthropogenic climate change, or climate change caused by humans. 

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The Wilderness Society

February 24, 2021
On Jan. 27, President Biden launched an effort to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by the year 2030. It’s a big, bold goal, fitting our uniquely perilous moment. Experts say protecting an interconnected network of lands and waters will give us the best chance at curbing the worst effects of climate change; adapting to the shifts already happening; preserving wild nature amid an ongoing extinction crisis; and ensuring communities have access to clean air, water and outdoor spaces.

Below are some key facts and figures to help us wrap our minds around the challenges ahead—and also the rare opportunities now facing us.

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Anthropocene

February 24, 2021
In response to climate-driven declines in global biodiversity, many nations have increased the amount of land and water they designate protected, mostly based on where affected species live. But as the climate warms, species may move out of those designated areas to search out more suitable habitats. And the species-focused designation doesn’t take into account yet-to-be-discovered species. New research suggests when designating protected zones, governments should make decisions based on land qualities instead of current species’ locations.

In a recent article in Global Change Biology, researchers outlined a more strategic way to designate protected areas. Instead of focusing solely on species distributions, the authors recommend prioritizing three area types: climate refuge areas that have been slower to experience the effects of climate change, areas with diverse landscapes that are likely to accommodate a mix of species and areas that increase connectivity between protected zones. 

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Mongabay

February 23, 2021
[…] A year has gone by since I first reported on an urgent plea from renowned Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre and U.S. conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy, warning that the Amazon biome was teetering on its tipping point.

“We stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.” they said. If the Amazon loses just 3% to 8% more of its tree cover, they wrote, it could trigger a rapidly unfolding domino effect turning more than half the towering rainforest into degraded grasslands. “We believe that negative synergies between deforestation, climate change, and widespread use of fire indicate a tipping point for the Amazon system to flip to non-forest ecosystems in eastern, southern and central Amazonia at 20-25% deforestation,” the pair wrote in a letter to Science Advances in 2018.

As a Brazilian journalist, observing the Amazon — one of Earth’s most biodiverse places, and the life source for millions of families in my nation — I’ve been hit close to home as nature’s bounty is exchanged for short-term profits from beef and soy exports.

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The Guardian

February 22, 2021
When it comes to the environment, few countries rival Costa Rica in terms of action and ambition.

The tiny Central American nation is aiming for total decarbonisation by 2050, not just a “net zero” target. It has regrown large areas of tropical rainforest after suffering some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Costa Ricans play a major role in international environmental politics, most notably Christiana Figueres, who helped to corral world leaders into agreeing the Paris accord.

Now Costa Rica has turned its attention to securing an ambitious international agreement on halting biodiversity loss. In January, more than 50 countries committed to the protection of 30% of the planet’s land and oceans as part of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, spearheaded by Costa Rica, which is a co-chair alongside France and the UK.

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Center for American Progress

February 22, 2021
John Podesta addresses the fifth session of the U.N. Environment Assembly to address the interconnected planetary threats to our climate, biodiversity, economy, and human security. He discussed the need to act comprehensively, globally, and immediately to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and coastal seas by 2030 and build partnerships with developing countries to increase bilateral assistance, financing, and debt relief, including debt forgiveness.

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Campaign For Nature

February 19, 2021
Today marks the U.S.’s official reinstatement into the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden rejoined hours after his inauguration on January 20, 2021. As the U.S rejoins the world in this historic climate accord, the Campaign for Nature has issued the following statement:

Enric Sala, Explorer in Residence, National Geographic and the author of the award winning book The Nature of Nature, Why We Need the Wild. @enric_sala

“Today marks a new beginning for the U.S. It is an opportunity to reset its ambitions and to reestablish its leadership on the global stage in combating climate change. This move, along with the Biden administration’s signal to set the United States on a path to conserve 30% of the U.S – land and at sea – by 2030 (30x30), demonstrates that the country is prepared to lead on the two largest crises facing our planet.”

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Thomson Reuters Foundation - Op-Ed

February 18, 2021
The crisis facing nature has never been more apparent. The costs to mankind of our degradation of the natural world have never been more evident. Fortunately, the beginnings of a meaningful response – in the form of a post-2020 global biodiversity framework – is close at hand. 

But, for that framework to succeed, governments must ensure broad participation in its formal processes. Non-state actors – sub-national governments, business and the financial sector, academia, civil society, youth and indigenous peoples and local communities – have a critical role to play in delivering biodiversity outcomes. 

There is no denying the urgency of the challenge. As the IPBES Global Assessment warned, an estimated one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. WWF’s Living Planet Report found that global wildlife is in freefall. 

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Forest Peoples Programme

February 18, 2021
In their quest to bolster economies battered by the pandemic, governments in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, and Peru have set aside social and environmental safeguards in favor of destructive development projects that are harming Indigenous communities and the forests they care for, according to a report released today by Forest Peoples Programme.

Open-pit mines, industrial agriculture plantations, infrastructure mega-schemes and hydropower complexes are among the projects fueling a rise in human rights abuses and deforestation in five countries that contain the majority of the world’s tropical forests.

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NewScientist

February 17, 2021
We have repeatedly been pressing the snooze button on the issue, but covid-19 has provided perhaps the final wake-up call. “2021 must be the year to reconcile humanity with nature,” said António Guterres, the UN secretary general, in an address to the One Planet Summit of global leaders in Paris last month. “Until now, we have been destroying our planet. We have been abusing it as if we have a spare one.”

The numbers are stark, whichever ones you choose. More than 70 per cent of ice-free land is now under human control and increasingly degraded. The mass of human-made infrastructure exceeds all biomass. Humans and domesticated animals make up more than 90 per cent of the mammalian mass on the planet. Our actions threaten about a million species – 1 in 8 – with extinction (see “Biodiversity: A status report“).

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The Guardian

February 17, 2021
It was an executive order that made waves in environmental circles: after only a week in office, President Joe Biden pledged to preserve 30% of US lands and waters by 2030.

The so-called 30 by 30 conservation goal has already met with bipartisan support in Congress, and it aligns with science-based global preservation targets to reach an eventual target of 50% by 2050.

So which US areas might be at the top of the list? Environmentalists have a few ideas.

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