Phys.org

April 9, 2021
Unless nations dramatically improve on carbon cutting pledges made under the 2015 Paris climate treaty, the planet's richest concentrations of animal and plant life will be irreversibly ravaged by global warming, scientists warned Friday.

An analysis of 8,000 published risk assessments for species showed a high danger for extinction in nearly 300 biodiversity "hot spots", on land and in the sea, if temperatures rise three degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, they reported in the journal Biological Conservation.

Read More

Bloomberg Green

April 8, 2021
The lemurs of Madagascar and Himalayan snow leopards are among the hundreds of endemic species that will all but disappear if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked. 

The plants and animals that are unique to a single location such as one island or one country, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, according to research by a global team of scientists published in the Biological Conservation journal on Friday. They’re almost three times more likely to go extinct, according to an analysis of almost 300 biodiversity hotspots on land and sea. 

“Unfortunately, our study shows that those biodiversity rich-spots will not be able to act as a safe haven from climate change,” said Mariana Vale, a researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a co-author of the study. “This could greatly increase extinction rates worldwide.”

Read More

BBC

April, 8, 2021
Speaking at an IMF and World Bank meeting, Prince William said protecting nature continued to play only a small part in combating global warming.

He said investing in reforestation and sustainable agriculture were "cost effective" ways of tackling the issue.

Banks have come under increasing pressure to step up efforts to help fight climate change.

Just this week, Barclays' London headquarters was the target of a protest staged by climate activist group Extinction Rebellion. Members held placards and broke several windows as they called on the bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies.

Addressing central bankers and finance ministers at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, the duke said the world's natural habitats continue to decline at an "alarming rate".

Read More

Reuters

April 8, 2021
Green debt swaps have the potential to spur accelerated action on climate change in developing countries, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday, pledging to present an option for such instruments by November.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said it made sense to address the dual climate and debt crises at the same time, and IMF members on Thursday had strongly backed the Fund taking a bigger role on the issue of climate risk.

“When we are faced with this dual crisis - the debt pressures on countries and the climate crisis, to which many low-income countries are highly, highly vulnerable - it makes sense to seek this unity of purpose,” Georgieva said.

“In other words, green debt swaps have the potential to contribute to climate finance. They have the potential to facilitate accelerated action in developing countries,” she told reporters after a meeting of the IMF’s steering committee.

Read More

The New York Times

April 7, 2021
How does a country deal with climate disasters when it’s drowning in debt? Not very well, it turns out. Especially not when a pandemic clobbers its economy.

Take Belize, Fiji and Mozambique. Vastly different countries, they are among dozens of nations at the crossroads of two mounting global crises that are drawing the attention of international financial institutions: climate change and debt.

They owe staggering amounts of money to various foreign lenders. They face staggering climate risks, too. And now, with the coronavirus pandemic pummeling their economies, there is a growing recognition that their debt obligations stand in the way of meeting the immediate needs of their people — not to mention the investments required to protect them from climate disasters.

The combination of debt, climate change and environmental degradation “represents a systemic risk to the global economy that may trigger a cycle that depresses revenues, increases spending and exacerbates climate and nature vulnerabilities,” according to a new assessment by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others, which was seen by The Times. It comes after months of pressure from academics and advocates for lenders to address this problem.

Read More

NBC News

April 7, 2021
In 1948, after Nazi Germany exterminated millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II, the United Nations adopted a convention establishing a new crime so heinous it demanded collective action. Genocide, the nations declared, was “condemned by the civilized world” and justified intervention in the affairs of sovereign states.

Now, a small but growing number of world leaders including Pope Francis and French President Emmanuel Macron have begun citing an offense they say poses a similar threat to humanity and remains beyond the reach of international criminal law: ecocide, or widespread destruction of the environment.

The pope describes ecocide as “the massive contamination of air, land and water,” or “any action capable of producing an ecological disaster,” and has proposed making it a sin for Roman Catholics.

Read More

Mongabay

April 2, 2021
Indigenous communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have consistently asserted that they are the best guardians of their forests. Now, a recent U.N. report has mainstreamed this argument, adding that these communities are also under increasing threat and supporting and empowering them will be the most cost-effective response, not only to tackling carbon emissions, but also to protecting biodiversity and our weather systems.

“We are in a very complex situation, not only with the pandemic but with many pandemics. Extractive industries, illegal mining, deforestation, palm oil monocultures, cattle ranching,” said José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal in an interview with Mongabay. Mirabal is from Venezuela’s Guarinuma Indigenous community and is the general coordinator of COICA, a regional organization representing more than 3,000 Indigenous organizations and roughly 20,000 communities in nine Amazonian countries.

Read More

The Washington Post - OpEd

March 31, 2021
The covid-19 pandemic has pummeled the globe, harming the health of the planet and its peoples. In Latin America, the economic blows have fallen with particular force.

Across the region, resources that might once have been used to protect forests — which are among Latin America’s biggest contributions to fighting climate change — have been channeled into shoring up the economy and battling the disease.

This means that Indigenous communities in these forests often are confronting not only the deadly covid-19 virus, but an unprecedented invasion of their ancestral territories, as illegal loggers, drug lords, ranchers, miners and many other groups take advantage of the cover of the pandemic.

Read More

The Globe and Mail

March 31, 2021
The organizations that represent academic research within the Group of Seven nations have a message for world leaders: The same kind of scientific expertise that proved crucial to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic is also required to address a broader set of environmental and health challenges facing humanity.

In a joint communique released on Wednesday, science academies from each of the countries, including the Royal Society of Canada, call for urgent and co-ordinated action by their respective countries on three priority areas – climate change, biodiversity loss, and the need for better access to data during international health emergencies. 

Expert panels, convened over the past several months, have produced recommendations in all three of the priority areas, aimed at driving discussions in June at the next meeting of leaders from the G7 club of economically developed countries.

Read More

Mongabay - OpEd

March 30, 2021
This past December marked the 5th anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement. Soon after, the Biden Administration rejoined the Paris Agreement as one of their first actions in office. And in January, the Climate Adaptation Summit once again convened global leaders and local stakeholders to accelerate adaptation action.

As these milestones reinvigorate a call to action for our politicians and business leaders to act on climate and “ramp up climate ambition,” all eyes inevitably turn to the usual avenues for addressing and adapting to climate change: forests, clean energy and waving goodbye to our toxic relationship with fossil fuels. And while mitigation efforts continue to dominate the conversation, adaptation is ever-increasing in importance in global discussions as extreme weather and its impacts worsen around the world and countries work to build stronger national commitments.

Read More

EuroNews

March 30, 2021
Most people are aware that this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, is being held in November in the city of Glasgow, after it was postponed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The two-week summit is a crucial space for the 197 signatory parties involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to discuss the climate crisis on a global level. Representatives from every country in the world attend as well as environmental activists and climate scientists.

But COP26 isn’t the only climate convention occurring this year.

Read More

Mongabay

March 26, 2021
From the eye of a satellite, the ocean is streaked with smoky white lines that flow and twist like scribbled handwriting across the surface. But these lines aren’t naturally occurring features — they’re sediment plumes from large trawling vessels that scrape the seafloor with nets and heavy equipment, trying to catch bottom-dwelling species like shrimp and whiting.

The environmental consequences of trawling are still being investigated since the plumes were first noticed in satellite imagery in 2008. But a new study in Nature suggests that it churns up and releases carbon that’s been locked up inside sediment at the bottom of the ocean — between about 600 million and 1,500 million tons, according to the study’s initial estimates, which is about the same amount as the global aviation industry.

Read More

World Economic Forum

March 26, 2021
Nature-based solutions are key to advancing climate adaptation. These are approaches that work with nature, not against it — from restoring wetlands, which can protect against storms, to conserving forests that stabilize soil and slow water runoff. Mangrove forests, for example, save an estimated $80 billion per year in avoided losses from coastal flooding globally, and could help to protect up to 18 million people. Additionally, nature-based solutions can provide many co-benefits — for nature, economies, communities, culture and health.

But despite these extensive benefits, new research finds that as little as 1.5% of all public international climate finance has gone to support nature-based solutions for adaptation in developing countries. Just a handful of major bilateral donors and multilateral institutions have driven public funding for these approaches.

Read More

CNN

March 24, 2021
"It is a sad thing to think that nature speaks and that mankind does not listen." This remark, made in 1870 by the poet and novelist Victor Hugo, is even more relevant today. At a time when biodiversity -- the fragile web of life of which we are all a part -- threatens to disintegrate, we must not forget that we are, in many respects, the authors of our own misfortune.

Intersecting and escalating crises -- climate disruption, the collapse of biodiversity, the declining health of the ocean and the depletion of natural resources -- clearly demonstrate that we cannot continue on our current path. Our relationship with nature, traditionally based on domination and exploitation, has already altered some 75% of the land's surface and 40% of the marine environment. The global rate of species extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years, and around 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). This cannot continue.

Read More

Bloomberg Green

March 21, 2021
Global businesses sourcing commodities such as cattle, soybeans or rubber stand to lose some $53 billion due to deforestation unless they take action.

In a survey of more than 500 global businesses, climate-disclosure platform CDP identified risks such as extreme weather, changes in consumer preferences, as well as market and reputational impacts from commodity-related forest loss. It would cost $6.6 billion in the coming years to address those risks, the London-based nonprofit said in a report Monday.

“The destruction of the world’s vital forests poses huge risks to the climate, nature, the economy, and also increases the risk of future pandemics,” Sareh Forouzesh, CDP’s associate director of forests, said in a statement. “There is a solid business case for companies sourcing commodities sustainably and taking steps to protect forests.”

Read More