The New York Times

September 20, 2021
Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest men, announced plans on Monday for $1 billion in conservation spending in places like the Congo Basin, the Andes and tropical parts of the Pacific Ocean.

The announcement was the latest step in his largest philanthropic effort, the Bezos Earth Fund, to which he pledged $10 billion last year. “By coming together with the right focus and ingenuity, we can have both the benefits of our modern lives and a thriving natural world,” Mr. Bezos said on Monday at an event in New York.

The money will be used “to create, expand, manage and monitor protected and conserved areas,” according to a news release from the fund, which also introduced a website on Monday.

The initiative is intended to support an international push to safeguard at least 30 percent of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030, known as 30x30. The plan, led by Britain, Costa Rica and France, is intended to help tackle a global biodiversity crisis that puts a million species of plants and animals at risk of extinction. While climate change is part of the problem, activities like farming and fishing have been even bigger drivers of biodiversity loss. The 30x30 plan would try to slow that by protecting intact natural areas like old-growth forests and wetlands, which not only nurture biodiversity but also store carbon and filter water.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation

September 17, 2021
Ahead of a global summit to agree a new pact to protect nature that kicks off next month, environmentalists said developing nations will need more funding to implement its goals, branding the $10 billion a year now being sought "woefully inadequate".

Governments are tasked with finalising an agreement to safeguard the planet's plants, animals and ecosystems - similar to the Paris climate accord - at the two-part U.N. biodiversity summit due to conclude next May in the Chinese city of Kunming.

A draft of the biodiversity pact published in July includes a pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet's land and oceans by 2030 - but finding the funds needed to help nature-rich developing countries with conservation is a challenge.

The text calls for "redirecting, repurposing, reforming or eliminating incentives harmful for biodiversity", meaning things like subsidies for fossil fuel production or intensive farming.

It also urges an increase in investment to protect and restore nature from all sources to $200 billion annually, including an additional $10 billion in "international financial flows" for developing nations.

"It is woefully inadequate," said Brian O'Donnell, director of the U.S.-based Campaign for Nature, adding that existing funding from rich to poorer countries was about $10 billion.

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Path To Scale

September 16, 2021
Launch Announcement: Today an informal network of donors and financial institutions launched Path to Scale which aims to scale-up funding and other enabling factors to secure the land and resource rights, conservation, and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples to the levels necessary to meet 2030 global climate and biodiversity targets.

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Outrage + Optimism [Podcast]

September 15, 2021
Today, only 15 percent of land and 7 percent of our ocean are protected. Nature needs more.

The science is very clear – to prevent a mass extinction crisis, support a growing global population, and address climate change, we must conserve at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

...So why now? The science is very, very clear - If we act now we can limit the disaster, and we could even reverse the trends of climate change in an equitable, just fashion. But how?

This week we’re joined by Rita El Zaghloul, Coordinator of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature & People on behalf of Costa Rica. She is the driving force behind ambition at The HAC’s 30x30 campaign, slamming the pedal to the metal on their aim to agree to this plan at the COP15 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in October. The best part about it? It centers indigenous leadership and indigenous rights, while mobilizing financial resources both publicly and privately to ensure protected areas are properly managed, all the while protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

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NBC News

September 13, 2021
Without immediate action to combat climate change, rising sea levels, water scarcity and declining crop productivity could force 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050, the World Bank said in a new report on Monday.

The report, Groundswell 2.0, modeled the impacts of climate change on six regions, concluding that climate migration “hotspots” will emerge as soon as 2030 and intensify by 2050, hitting the poorest parts of the world hardest.

Sub-Saharan Africa alone would account for 86 million of the internal migrants, with 19 million more in North Africa, the report showed, while 40 million migrants were expected in South Asia and 49 million in East Asia and the Pacific.

Such movements will put significant stress on both sending and receiving areas, straining cities and urban centers and jeopardizing development gains, the report said.

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Financial Times - OpEd

September 13, 2021
It is often believed that the financial sector can survive any crisis and that investors always find a way to bounce back and make more money. It took about four years for the markets to recover from the 2008 financial crisis, and only a few months to return to pre-pandemic levels.

The biodiversity crisis will be different. The markets took a quarter of a century to recover from the Great Depression in 1929. They will probably take a similar time to rebound once the mass extinction of species is fully underway by 2030. Biodiversity loss, set to be one of the largest environmental crises of all times, will collapse economies and societies. If the financial sector wants to survive it must move now, fast and at scale.

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France 24

September 10, 2021
The world's most influential conservation congress passed resolutions Friday calling for 80 percent of the Amazon and 30 percent of Earth's surface -- land and sea -- to be designated "protected areas" to halt and reverse the loss of wildlife.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is meeting in Marseille, does not set global policy, but its recommendations have in the past served as the backbone for UN treaties and conventions.

They will help set the agenda for upcoming UN summits on food systems, biodiversity and climate change.

- Saving the Amazon -

An emergency motion calling for four-fifths of the Amazon basin to be declared a protected area by 2025 -- submitted by COICA, an umbrella group representing more than two million indigenous peoples across nine South American nations -- passed with overwhelming support.

"Indigenous Peoples have come to defend our home and, in doing so, defend the planet. This motion is a first step," said Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, general coordinator of COICA and a leader of the Curripaco people in Venezuela.

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Campaign for Nature

September 10, 2021
Members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature meeting in France for the World Conservation Congress approved today a much-anticipated motion to protect at least 30% of land and ocean by 2030, known as 30x30. Motion 101 calls on IUCN members to support:

• recognition of “the evolving science, the majority of which supports protecting, conserving and restoring at least half or more of  the planet is likely necessary to reverse biodiversity loss, address climate change and as a foundation for sustainably managing the whole planet.”

• “at a minimum, a target of effectively and equitably protecting and conserving at least 30% of terrestrial areas and of inland waters … and of coastal and marine areas, respectively, with a focus on sites of particular importance for biodiversity, in well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) by 2030 in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.”

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South China Morning Post

September 6, 2021

The plan was launched three years ago with the goal of protecting a quarter of China’s land and sea areas and reversing some of the air and water pollution brought about by breakneck growth.

Using a series of “red lines”, various zones were demarcated across the country to safeguard endangered species and their habitats, as well as restore ecologically fragile areas.

Environmental red lines have been drawn in 15 provinces and municipalities, including Beijing and areas along the Yangtze River, and covering more than 2.4 million sq km.

The Ecological Conservation Red Line initiative remains an ambitious strategy but breaches of the zones persist and strict implementation is needed to ensure compliance, according to an environmental group in southern China.

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New Straits Times

September 5, 2021
Borneo, the world's third largest island, boasts one of Earth's oldest rainforests.

It accounts for just one per cent of the planet's landmass yet holds approximately six per cent of the Earth's variety of plant and animal species, including such charismatic creatures as Bornean orangutans, clouded leopards, pygmy elephants and rhinoceros, as well as giant pitcher plants and Rafflesia flowers.

Forest conversion and degradation over the years have threatened the integrity of rainforests. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) listed Borneo among the deforestation hotspots and planetary warming has made it vulnerable to forest fires.

It was to the great credit of the governments of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia when they established the "Heart of Borneo" (HoB) conservation area in 2007, one of the largest transboundary rainforests in the world — 22 million ha (the size of England and Scotland combined). It was a triumph of environmental diplomacy and a demonstration of political will at the highest level.

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EuroNews

September 3, 2021
A major conference on biodiversity opens in the French city of Marseille on Friday.

Over 1,000 governmental and civil society organisations will discuss how to protect some of the one million species threatened by human actions.

"The answer is very simple. We have natural capital. We have nature. We were taking, and taking, and taking for decades to build up our society. Now we should stop," Bruno Oberle, director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told Euronews.

"We should take less and we should reinvest in this natural capital more. So taking less and giving more back to nature. This means, for example, bigger conservation area, well managed, well-protected at the right places, 30% of the surface of the planet until 2030."

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Mongabay

August 31, 2021
Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans and surrounding areas in the U.S. state of Louisiana this past Sunday, serving as a grim reminder of the power of coastal storms — which are predicted to increase as the climate crisis rolls onward.

Scientists and engineers have known for some time that wetlands (such as dense mangroves, tree-studded swamps, and grass-covered marshes) protect exposed coastlines and coastal cities from storms. But for places like London, Tokyo, New York and 19 of the world’s largest cities built around estuaries — the wave-sheltered places where freshwater meets the sea — wetlands may be their silent superman.

Wetlands can reduce flood levels from storms by up to 2 meters (6 feet) and avoid $38 million in flooding damages per estuary, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

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Global Citizen

August 31, 2021
By now you've probably heard of COP26 — the shorthand name for the next major UN climate summit, rescheduled for November in Glasgow after being delayed a year by the coronavirus pandemic.

But another big "Convention of the Parties" (COP) starts a month earlier — one that is far less talked about but also critically important. That is COP15: the two-part UN biodiversity summit that will kick off in October online and finish next May in the southern Chinese city of Kunming.

Efforts to protect the natural world have yet to achieve the same high profile as those to limit climate change, despite advocacy by British naturalist David Attenborough and many others.

Losses of crucial ecosystems like rainforests and wetlands, as well as animal species, have accelerated even as governments, businesses, financiers, and conservation groups seek effective ways to protect and restore more of the Earth's land and seas.

So what is COP15, and what does it hope to achieve?

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Mongabay

August 31, 2021
In 2018, philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss put $1 billion toward initiatives to help a range of stakeholders conserve 30% of the planet in its natural state by 2030 via protected areas, other effective conservation measures (OECMs), and Indigenous- and community-led conservation. One of the products of that commitment is the Campaign for Nature, an advocacy, communications, and alliance-building effort to turn that 30×30 target into a reality.

The Director of Campaign for Nature is Brian O’Donnell, who previously headed the Conservation Lands Foundation and worked as the Public Lands Director of Trout Unlimited. O’Donnell told Mongabay that in the three years since its launch, more than 70 countries have endorsed the “30×30” goal, ranging from G7 nations to Costa Rica. Those endorsements have been supported by the development of sub-initiatives and alliances, including the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and Global Oceans Alliance.

And critically, says O’Donnell, one of the key tenets of the campaign — centering conservation efforts around the rights of Indigenous Peoples — has continued to gain traction and prominence in 30×30 discussions.

“Campaign for Nature seeks to ensure that Indigenous and local community rights are advanced in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, as Indigenous peoples and local communities have demonstrated that they are incredibly effective stewards of biodiversity and success for a Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will rely on this,” O’Donnell told Mongabay.

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Thomson Reuters

August 27, 2021
China and African nations are pushing for the establishment of a multi-billion-dollar "global biodiversity fund" to help developing countries meet goals agreed in a new pact being negotiated to protect nature, U.N. officials and observers said.

About 195 countries are expected to finalise a new accord to safeguard the planet's plants, animals and ecosystems at a two-part U.N. summit due to culminate in May next year in the southern Chinese city of Kunming.

The difficulty of meeting face to face because of the COVID-19 pandemic meant the summit was postponed three times and then split into two, with the first virtual session scheduled for October and preparatory discussions now underway.

Basile van Havre, co-chair of the talks under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, said China and a number of mainly African countries are proposing a new biodiversity fund to help finance the goals of the pact, once agreed.

"The idea of increasing funding is a good one and we all welcome this," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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