The Nature Conservancy

April 22, 2021
From above, the emerald shades of the Selva Maya hint at the diversity of life teeming under mahogany and gum species, barely betraying that much of it is post-colonial regrowth, rivaled in tenure by the ancient stone ruins that rise above the treetops. In withstanding hundreds of years of threats, this Mesoamerican ecosystem is now the largest contiguous block of rainforest north of the Amazon, safeguarding treasures of incalculable value.

But aerial images from recent decades also show this forest receding at the edges, where it is increasingly logged for timber or slashed and burned for agriculture. Yet the true, underrecognized value of places like these, so globally rare they are known as “last-chance ecosystems,” is in the collective power of the intact system.

Wildlife habitat. Water security. Clean air. Climate mitigation and adaptation. In other words, $125 trillion in ecosystem services every year without which, we simply cannot survive.

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Washington Post

April 22, 2021
Spring has returned to the California coast, bringing with it abundant sunshine and calmer seas. Storm-tossed sands settle. Nourishing cold water floods in from offshore. It is time for a climate superhero to emerge.

Giant kelp is among the best organisms on the planet for taking planet-warming gases out of the atmosphere. Buoyed by small, gas-filled bulbs called “bladders,” these huge algae grow toward the ocean surface at a pace of up to two feet per day. Their flexible stems and leafy blades form a dense underwater canopy that can store 20 times as much carbon as an equivalent expanse of terrestrial trees.

And when the fierce waves of winter come and kelp is ripped from its rocky anchors and washed out to the deep sea, that carbon gets buried on the ocean floor. It may stay there for centuries, even millennia, locking away more greenhouse gases than 20 million American homes use in a year.

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The Wilderness Society

April 22, 2021
The Biden administration’s Climate Summit started today with a bang: The president pledged to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions almost in half by 2030. The plan is ambitious but critical as the climate crisis gets progressively worse, with 2020 ranking as one of the hottest years on record. As we aim to reach this goal, a vital part of the strategy should be to implement nature-based solutions on public lands.

For centuries, humans have been burning fossil fuels to power our lives. This process has released an excessive amount of gases into the atmosphere that are heating up the planet. We’re now living with the consequences, including more severe and frequent wildfires, floods, hurricanes and droughts.

There’s no easy way out of this crisis. We need to dramatically reduce climate change emissions coming from cars, trucks, power plants, and other sources. But that’s not enough. To be successful, we must eliminate carbon emissions that are already lingering in the air, not to mention ensure humans and wildlife can adapt to the climate change impacts knocking on our doors. Nature-based solutions, such as protecting and expanding wildlands can help.

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Marine Conservation Institute

April 22, 2021
Today, a little after 8:00 am eastern and before dozens of world leaders participating in the Leader’s Summit on Climate, President Biden set bold greenhouse gas emission reductions for the United States—cutting 2005 emission levels in half by 2030— as US policy. He said in part, “…the US sets out on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half by the end of this decade”.

In less than 100 days, the President has reentered the Paris Climate Accords and proposed groundbreaking legislation (American Jobs Plan) that would make very large investments in clean energy, energy conservation and coastal resilience and restoration*. Contributing to the steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, ocean-based climate solutions like offshore wind, restoring carbon removal ecosystems like marshes and seagrass beds, eliminating bottom trawling from marine sanctuaries and establishing new marine protected areas could play a significant role.

Dr. Lance Morgan, President of Marine Conservation Institute, praised President Biden for his high climate change ambition, and said, “It is so exciting to see the President taking urgently needed action and leading on climate change. The administration recognizes that US commitments to the Paris Climate Accords must include ocean-based solutions and supports the conservation of 30% of our lands and waters which will also address climate change and future resiliency.”

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UN News

April 21, 2021
The second World Ocean Assessment (WOA II) is the work of hundreds of scientists from across the globe and follows an initial report published in 2015.  

It warns that many benefits the ocean provides are increasingly being undermined by human actions, the UN chief said, describing the findings as alarming. 

“Pressures from many human activities continue to degrade the ocean and destroy essential habitats – such as mangrove forests and coral reefs – hindering their capacity to help address climate change impacts”, Mr. Guterres said in a video message. 

“These pressures also come from human activities on land and coastal areas, which bring dangerous pollutants into the ocean, including plastic waste. Meanwhile, overfishing is estimated to have led to an annual loss of $88.9 billion in net benefits”. 

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Campaign for Nature

April 21, 2021

Today, the United Nations launched its Second World Ocean Assessment on the global state of the world’s oceans. 

“The Second World Ocean Assessment warns that many benefits that the ocean provides to humankind are increasingly being undermined by our actions. [...] The findings of this assessment underscore the urgency of ambitious outcomes in this year’s biodiversity, climate and other high-level summits and events. Together we can foster not only a green, but also a blue recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and help ensure the long-term resilience and sustainable relationship with the ocean,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres in his remarks at the assessment’s launch. 

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EcoWatch

April 21, 2021
A new study has affirmed the growing and long overdue awareness among scientists and conservationists that Indigenous societies are the best caretakers of biodiversity.

The new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month, looked at maps of human habitation over the last 12,000 years and found that almost three-quarters of Earth's land had been sustainably shaped and managed by Indigenous or traditional societies during that time. This means that it isn't simply human presence in a landscape that drives environmental destruction.

"With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies," the study authors wrote.

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Mongabay

April 20, 2021
2020 was supposed to be the year for evaluating the past decade’s progress in meeting biodiversity conservation targets and setting the agenda for the next decade. But then the pandemic hit, plunging the world into hardship and uncertainty, prompting postponements of global meetings, and pushing biodiversity to the back of most people’s minds. But the nature of a pandemic brought on by a zoonotic virus had an unexpected effect: It catalyzed much greater awareness that human health is underpinned by a healthy planet. This realization sparked a surge in interest in concepts like the “One Health” approach to manage ecosystems, wildlife and livestock, and economies to promote resilience and reduce the risk of disease transmission from animals to people. Today, actors ranging from CEOs to politicians to celebrities are talking up the importance of biodiversity.

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CNN

April 15, 2021
Google Earth users can now see the striking effect of climate change over the past four decades.

Google's latest feature, Timelapse, is an eye opening, technical feat that provides visual evidence of how the Earth has changed due to climate change and human behavior. The tool takes the platform's static imagery and turns it into a dynamic 4D experience, allowing users to click through timelapses that highlight melting ice caps, receding glaciers, massive urban growth and wildfires' impact on agriculture.

Timelapse compiles 24 million satellite photos taken from 1984 to 2020, an effort Google (GOOG) said took two million processing hours across thousands of machines in Google Cloud. For the project, the company worked with NASA, the United States Geological Survey's Landsat program — the world's longest-running Earth observation program — the European Union's Copernicus program and its Sentinel satellites, and Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab, which helped develop the technology behind Timelapse.

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The Guardian

April 15, 2021
Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat, a study suggests.

These fragments of wilderness undamaged by human activities are mainly in parts of the Amazon and Congo tropical forests, east Siberian and northern Canadian forests and tundra, and the Sahara. Invasive alien species including cats, foxes, rabbits, goats and camels have had a major impact on native species in Australia, with the study finding no intact areas left.

The researchers suggest reintroducing a small number of important species to some damaged areas, such as elephants or wolves – a move that could restore up to 20% of the world’s land to ecological intactness.

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European Environment Agency

April 15, 2021
Climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystems are linked and all have devastating consequences for our economic and social stability, health and well-being. Working with nature is increasingly recognised as an efficient way to tackle these growing challenges, according the new EEA report ‘Nature-based solutions in Europe: Policy, knowledge and practice for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.’

The EEA report provides up-to-date information for policymakers on the how to apply nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and at the same time making use of multiple societal benefits that these solutions can bring. Drawing on selected examples across Europe, the report shows how impacts of extreme weather and climate-related events are already tackled in this way. It also assesses global and European policies and how nature-based solutions are increasingly being integrated in the efforts to shift towards sustainable development.

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Phys.org

April 14, 2021
New Zealand will force banks to reveal the impact their investments have on climate change under world-first legislation intended to make the financial sector's environmental record transparent, officials said.

Commerce Minister David Clark said the law would make climate reporting mandatory for banks, insurance companies and investment firms.

"Becoming the first country in the world to introduce a law like this means we have an opportunity to show real leadership and pave the way for other countries to make climate-related disclosures mandatory," he said.

Clark said it would force financial institutions to consider the real-world impact their investments have on the climate and allow the public to gauge their performance.

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The Hill - OpEd

April 12, 2021
The Biden administration will soon release its strategy for the recent executive order to conserve at least 30 percent of the nation’s lands and oceans by 2030.  

Like the previously introduced Senate Resolution 372 and House Resolution 835, the 30x30 initiative aligns with recommendations from the scientific and environmental communities to protect 30 to 50 percent of the planet. The initiative can meaningfully increase the quality and quantity of natural areas in the U.S., considering only 12 percent of the roughly 28 percent of federal lands are permanently protected from development and other intensive use.  

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World Politics Review

April 12, 2021
Over the past two years, an extraordinary global campaign has emerged to protect 30 percent of Earth’s total surface from human exploitation by 2030. The members of this so-called 30x30 coalition, which now includes scores of governments, understand that climate change is only one half of the planet’s environmental crisis. The Paris Agreement, while imperative to curb greenhouse gas emissions, will do little by itself to save the planet’s collapsing biodiversity or preserve the massive ecosystems upon which humanity depends—and which we are fast degrading.

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Los Angeles Times - OpEd

April 11, 2021
The frequency of natural disasters has soared in recent decades. Total damage topped $210 billion worldwide in 2020. With climate change, the costs attributed to coastal storms will increase dramatically.

At the same time, coastal habitats such as wetlands and reefs are being lost rapidly. Some 20% of the world’s mangroves were lost over the last four decades. More than half of the Great Barrier Reef was degraded by bleaching in 2020 alone. In California, we have lost more than 90% of our coastal marshes.

Coastal habitats serve as a critical first line of defense, and their loss puts communities at even greater risk from coastal flooding. Coral reefs work as natural breakwaters and reduce flooding by breaking waves offshore. Wetlands such as marshes and mangroves protect coastlines by dampening storm surge and waves; they also prevent erosion and can build new land.

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