Business Standard

March 14, 2022
After a two-year delay, negotiators from more than 190 countries are gathering in Geneva on Monday for a fortnight-long critical discussions around a global strategy to help stem the tide of biodiversity loss.

This is the last time countries will discuss the agreement, known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), before the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15).

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework has been called the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris Climate agreement.

"The world is clearly eager for urgent action to protect nature," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. "And we have no time to spare. Together we must ultimately deliver a truly historic agreement that puts us firmly on the path to living in harmony with nature."

Scientists have issued repeated warnings about the dangerous decline in biodiversity. A landmark 2019 global biodiversity assessment found that "nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history -- and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely".

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Nation of Change

February 22, 2022
The reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 triggered a cascade of knock-on effects. The wolves kept herbivores like elk in check and on the move, reducing their browsing pressure on young trees. As a result, groves of willow and aspen sprouted along watercourses, creating ideal conditions for a thriving beaver population. The busy beavers in turn engineered wetlands where a diversity of fish, songbirds and invertebrates flourished. In short, the return of the top predators transformed the U.S. national park into a biodiverse, fully functioning, carbon-sequestering ecosystem.

Now, a new study suggests that restoring just 20 large mammal species to their historic habitats could similarly revitalize ecosystems and boost biodiversity across almost one-quarter of the Earth’s land area.

The international team of researchers behind the study assessed global opportunities for the restoration, reintroduction and rewilding of intact large mammal assemblages across the world’s terrestrial ecoregions, geographic areas characterized by similar plant and animal communities. They published their results in the journal Ecography.

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European Commission

February 4, 2022

During an official visit to the United States this week, Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius deepened EU-US environmental cooperation ahead of upcoming multilateral processes and increased US awareness of key Green Deal priorities. These include climate action, deforestation, biodiversity protection and restoration, circular economy, critical materials and batteries, sustainable blue economy, international ocean governance, plastic pollution and green transition.

He held discussions in Washington DC and New York with a range of US counterparts from the US Administration and Congress, as well as multilateral organisations, reaching out to stakeholders including NGOs, representatives of business and financial sector, philanthropists and university students. In discussion with UN interlocutors, Commissioner focused on combined efforts in pressing areas under the environment and oceans agendas in the run up to the major global events, negotiations and processes taking place in 2022-2023.

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Nature

January 19, 2022

Biodiversity is being lost at a rate not seen since the last mass extinction. But the United Nations decade-old plan to slow down and eventually stop the decline of species and ecosystems by 2020 has failed. Most of the plan’s 20 targets — known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets — have not been met.

The Aichi targets are part of an international agreement called the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and member states are now finalizing replacements for them. Currently referred to as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF), the new targets are expected to be agreed this summer at the second part of the convention’s Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Kunming, China. The meeting was due to be held in May, but is likely to be delayed by a few months. Finalizing the framework will be down to government representatives working with the world’s leading biodiversity specialists. But input from social-science researchers, especially those who study how organizations and governments work, would improve its chances of success.

A draft of the GBF was published last July. It aims to slow down the rate of biodiversity loss by 2030. And by 2050, biodiversity will be “valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. The plan comprises 4 broad goals and 21 associated targets. The headline targets include conserving 30% of land and sea areas by 2030, and reducing government subsidies that harm biodiversity by US$500 billion per year. Overall, the goals and targets are designed to tackle each of the main contributors to biodiversity loss, which include agriculture and food systems, climate change, invasive species, pollution and unsustainable production and consumption.

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Nature

December 9, 2021
Advances in spatial biodiversity science and nationally available data have enabled the development of indicators that report on biodiversity outcomes, account for uneven global biodiversity between countries, and provide direct planning support. We urge their inclusion in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

In 2022, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will assemble in Kunming, China to agree on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). Addressing threats that contribute to species extinctions and affect their role in ensuring ecosystem integrity underpins the GBF’s overarching Goal A, which stipulates “healthy and resilient populations of all species” and “reduced extinction rates”. Although multiple actions are needed to safeguard biodiversity, establishing targets for protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) is recognized as a primary mechanism to achieve Goal A.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation

October 27, 2021
Any new pledges made at the upcoming COP26 climate summit must include protection and restoration of natural areas, said the U.N. biodiversity chief - a move that could give a boost to ongoing efforts to broker a separate global nature pact.

About 195 countries are set to finalise a new accord to safeguard plants, animals and ecosystems - similar to the Paris climate agreement - at a two-part U.N. summit, known as COP15, which began this month and is due to finish next May in China.

Ahead of that, many world leaders are headed to two-week U.N. climate talks that start in Scotland on Sunday, in a bid to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"The fact that the two COPs are taking place pretty much back-to-back gives us that excellent opportunity to show how issues of biodiversity and climate change are inseparable," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

"Climate change is becoming an increasingly serious driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation - and that loss threatens to worsen climate change," Mrema told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation - OpEd

October 26, 2021
Last week, leaders from around the world came together at a global summit to negotiate a comprehensive plan to safeguard nature around the world. 

Whether the resulting global strategy, expected to be finalized in 2022, is sufficiently ambitious and successful will be influenced by one item: the degree to which countries put advancing human rights, in general, and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, in particular, at the heart of their plans and real actions.

Science has recently shown what many of us have always known, that indigenous peoples and local communities have historically been and still are the best stewards of nature. Biodiversity is declining less on indigenous lands and traditional territories than elsewhere in the world, and an outsized proportion of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in these areas. 

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China Dialogue

October 19, 2021
The first session of the most important global biodiversity meeting in a decade was held in Kunming between 11 and 15 October, in an in-person and online hybrid format. 

The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) launched a new stage in talks towards a global deal for nature – known as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. China, as host nation, is ushering the CBD towards a roadmap for biodiversity conservation for the coming decade and beyond. Delegates to the talks were in agreement: the Aichi targets set in 2010 have been missed, but Kunming cannot be allowed to fail.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hampered progress towards the post-2020 framework, with proceedings delayed or forced online. At meetings of two subsidiary bodies to the CBD in May and June, network issues excluded most African nations from online discussions, leading them to request some matters be renegotiated in January next year. 

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Canada’s National Observer

October 15, 2021

In the run-up to the UN’s crucial climate conference at month’s end, global leaders have laid the foundation for an international framework to protect nature and halt the collapse of biodiversity worldwide while also curbing global warming and protecting human health.

More than 100 nations committed to the Kunming Declaration on Wednesday, a promise to put the natural world on a path to recovery by 2030.

The world is in a dire situation, facing an era of unprecedented species extinction, said COP15 president and China’s Environment Minister Huang Runqui.

As many as a million species of animals and plants are at peril in coming decades, according to a UN report.

The fate of the natural world and humanity are intertwined, Huang said.

“Biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation pose major risks to human survival and sustainable development.”

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EuroNews

October 14, 2021
Around 195 countries signed a pledge on Wednesday to come up with an “ambitious and transformative” plan to prevent our planet from losing its biodiversity.

Meeting as part of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, also known as COP15, they took on what has been called the defining challenge of this decade.

Named after the city in China where this conference is taking place, the Kunming Declaration signals a change in momentum. It is hoped that this first part of the summit will allow countries to come up with an agreement similar to the Paris Accords - but for the protection of biodiversity rather than climate change.

That agreement is expected to be finalised at the second half of the conference next year.

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Xinhuanet

October 8, 2021
The upcoming United Nations (UN) biodiversity conference to be held in the Chinese city of Kunming will be essential in setting the blueprint for fixing the world's biodiversity crisis in the next "decisive decade," a U.S. expert has said.

James Roth, senior vice president for global policy and government affairs at Conservation International (CI), a non-profit international organization based in the United States with a mission to promote global biodiversity and the well-being of humanity, said this in an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday.

The first part of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, known as COP15, is set to kick off on Monday both online and in person. The meeting will review the "post-2020 global biodiversity framework" to draw a blueprint for biodiversity conservation in the future.

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Conservation International

August 9, 2021
Nature is in crisis: Nearly 1 million species face extinction due to human activities and climate change.

To help prevent widespread ecological collapse, many world leaders have rallied around a common goal to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 — a target informally known as the “30 by 30" initiative.

However, the environmental movement has a complicated past when it comes to working with the world’s Indigenous peoples. Though they are custodians of more than a quarter of Earth’s land and seas and protect 80 percent of global biodiversity, Indigenous peoples have frequently been sidelined from environmental efforts — in some cases, even removed from their territories in the name of conservation.

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MirageNews

August 5, 2021
Improving ecosystem integrity is essential to ensuring human and planetary wellbeing. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are working to adopt a consistent and accurate method to define and measure ecosystem integrity. In the new paper recently published in Conservation Letters, “Towards monitoring forest ecosystem integrity within the Post-2020 biodiversity framework“, scientists and biodiversity experts from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and eight other leading institutions share a pathway to fill this critical gap.

While ecological integrity often goes undefined, this new joint paper establishes a quantifiable definition for it, delineating ecological integrity as a measure of the structure, function and composition of an ecosystem compared to pre-industrial levels. Then, building from metrics, such as the Global Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network’s (GEO BON) Essential Biodiversity Variables, the authors recommend eight key indicators to evaluate ecological integrity, indexing vital markers such as deforestation, species habitat, biodiversity loss or ecosystem resilience. The paper demonstrates how advances in earth observations can be harnessed to track these metrics, providing a clearer picture of the earth’s valuable ecosystems and a way to measure progress towards our biodiversity goals.

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BirdLife International

July 30, 2021
It has been hard not to be deeply affected by the events of the past few weeks: catastrophic floods in Germany, China and India killing hundreds of people; forest fires in Siberia and North America; and drought and famine in Southern Madagascar. We know these extreme weather events have been triggered by the climate crisis, and it acutely demonstrates that we are now living with the consequences of our collective failure to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

The effects on human lives and livelihoods are horrendous, and there are very serious impacts on wildlife as well. It was appalling, for example, to see the video taken by a volunteer of Turkish BirdLife partner, Doğa Derneği, of thousands of dead baby flamingos near Lake Tuz (Salt Lake) in Anatolia, Turkey. This unbearable scene was the result of a major water shortage in the region. Lower rainfall and unsustainable irrigation practices going back to the 1960s had caused a drought. The situation will only get worse, unless more sustainable water and agriculture practices are introduced at pace.

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ENDS Report

July 13, 2021
The forthcoming UN biodiversity pact could aim to remove at least 10 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year by 2030, alongside slashing pesticide consumption and eliminating discharges of plastic waste, according to a first draft.

The secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which released the text yesterday following two years’ work, says that its 21 targets and ten key ‘milestones’ would put the world on course to ‘living in harmony with nature’ by 2050. The treaty is set to be finalised by the 196 parties to the convention during talks in the Chinese city of Kunming this October, preceded by online discussions and refinement by expert groups this summer.

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