Nature

20 June, 2023

Brian O’Donnell, the director of Campaign for Nature, a conservation advocacy group based in Durango, Colorado, says that the success of the framework depends on donor countries making good on their pledges to increase biodiversity funding. In addition to agreeing to contribute $30 billion annually by 2030, wealthy countries said that they would help to find $200 billion per year from private and public sources by 2030. But the countries have not yet started to deliver on these promises.

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Project Syndicate - Op-Ed

5th June, 2023

Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - My work has taken me far and wide, across oceans and vast expanses of land, and I have been lucky enough to see firsthand some of the richest biodiversity hotspots on Earth. But at the end of the day, I always return home – to Liberia, to Africa, which offers the most extraordinary natural landscape and wildlife. The African continent is undoubtedly the planet’s biodiversity powerhouse.

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Media Statement

May 31, 2023

Brazil’s lower house of Congress approved legislation on Tuesday that will have major negative implications for the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples. The legislation allows the government to seize land from Indigenous communities if it deems their cultural traits have changed. It also places an unreasonable time limit and cut off date on claims that will undermine large areas of Indigenous territorial claims.

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Daily Kos - Op-Ed

22 May, 2023

If the US wants 30 by 30 to succeed globally we urgently need all leaders, President Biden included, to publicly affirm their commitment to numeric financial targets, including the financial commitment of $20B in international biodiversity finance from developed to developing countries by 2025. The climate section of the leader’s statement noted the numerical target of $100 billion for international climate finance, and biodiversity requires the same level of specificity for transparency and accountability.

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Media Statement

May 20, 2023

On the eve of World Biodiversity Day, we, the undersigned, are calling on the wealthiest nations to prioritise urgent action to protect and restore biodiversity and just transition their economies to be nature positive. We are encouraged that the G7 leader’s statement reaffirmed a commitment to the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and pledged to meet its goals and targets. 

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Context News - Op-Ed

18 May, 2023

We are facing two parallel crises: climate change and global biodiversity loss. Climate change has captured most of the headlines, but scientists say the nature crisis is equally or even more important. We can't solve one without solving the other. A landmark assessment of global biodiversity in 2019 warned that nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history.

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Carbon Pulse

17th May, 2023

The funds to meet a $20 billion finance target for biodiversity by 2025, a key component of last year’s landmark Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), should not come from biodiversity credits according to the Samoan Minister for Environment speaking during an event on Wednesday, with other stakeholders also suggesting the nascent market is not likely to be ready to scale sufficient finance within less than three years.

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George W. Bush Presidential Center

April 21, 2023

Up to 1 million species currently face extinction, many within decades.

If we want a future with sea turtles, monarch butterflies, joshua trees, whale sharks, orangutans, and lemurs, we must address the largest causes of biodiversity decline – loss of habitat on land and overexploitation of the oceans.  This will help mitigate the impacts of climate change; directly benefit people by providing essential ecosystem services such as clean air, food, water, and medicine; and reduce the increasing risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides.

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Campaign for Nature

Following the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15, Campaign for Nature (CfN) is delighted to announce that a formal partnership between CfN and the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) has been agreed to deliver on the implementation of 30x30.

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CNN

December 19, 2022
More than 190 countries have adopted a sweeping agreement to protect nature at the United Nations' biodiversity conference in Montreal.

The gavel went down in the early hours of Monday on an agreement which includes 23 targets aimed at halting the biodiversity crisis, including a pledge to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030. Only 17% of land and 10% of oceans are currently considered protected. Campaigners have hailed it as a "major milestone" for conserving complex, fragile ecosystems on which everyone depends.

But some countries were unhappy, criticizing the agreement for not going far enough. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has said it cannot support the agreement and has complained that it was rushed through without following proper processes.

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Associated Press

December 19, 2022
Los negociadores en una conferencia sobre biodiversidad de Naciones Unidas lograron el lunes de madrugada un acuerdo histórico que supondría el esfuerzo más significativo hasta ahora para proteger la tierra y los océanos y proporcionar financiamiento crucial para salvar la biodiversidad en el mundo en desarrollo.

El marco global se acordó el día antes del final previsto de la Conferencia de Biodiversidad de Naciones Unidas o COP15, en Montreal. China, que ostenta la presidencia de la cumbre, publicó un borrador al inicio de la jornada que dio el impulso necesario a unas conversaciones en ocasiones acaloradas.

La parte más significativa del acuerdo era un compromiso de proteger el 30% de la tierra y el agua consideradas como importantes para la biodiversidad para 2030. En este momento están protegidas el 17% de la tierra y el 10% de las zonas marinas.

“Nunca ha habido una conservación global de esta escala”, dijo a la prensa Brian O’Donnell, director del grupo conservacionista Campaign for Nature. “Esto nos da una oportunidad de evitar el colapso de la biodiversidad (...) Ahora estamos en la escala que los científicos creen que puede marcar una diferencia en la biodiversidad”.

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The New York Times

December 19, 2022
Roughly 190 countries early on Monday approved a sweeping United Nations agreement to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 and to take a slew of other measures against biodiversity loss, a mounting under-the-radar crisis that, if left unchecked, jeopardizes the planet’s food and water supplies as well as the existence of untold species around the world.

The agreement comes as biodiversity is declining worldwide at rates never seen before in human history. Researchers have projected that a million plants and animals are at risk of extinction, many within decades. While many scientists and activists had pushed for even stronger measures, the deal, which includes verification mechanisms that previous agreements had lacked, clearly signals increasing momentum around the issue.

“This is a huge moment for nature,” Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, a coalition of groups pushing for protections, said about the agreement. “This is a scale of conservation that we haven’t seen ever attempted before.”

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Campaign for Nature

December 19, 2022
In the early hours of December 19th, negotiators from the 196 parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity rallied to finalize an ambitious, global biodiversity framework inclusive of the 30x30 target and Indigenous Peoples’ rights and recognition, while addressing the cavernous funding gap for biodiversity protection and conservation.  

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Edie

December 2, 2022
The meeting that is meant to be the final part of COP15 takes place in Montreal, Canada, from 5 December to 17 December, following a string of delays and postponements to efforts to create a new global treaty for biodiversity.

The summit was originally planned for Kunming, China, in 2020. It was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequently split into two parts, with the first part successfully completed in Kunming in October 2021 and the second meeting in Kunming taking place this spring.

The second meeting was unsuccessful, with no final deal agreed upon. Interim talks in Nairobi were, therefore, added to the UN’s calendar for this summer, and a final meeting scheduled for Kunming in autumn. However, China saw a spike in Covid-19 cases in the first quarter of the year and places including Beijing and Shanghai were put into lockdown because of China’s ‘zero Covid’ approach. And so, more than two years after the summit was meant to have taken place, delegates from UN nations will meet this week to finally agree on a “Paris Agreement style” deal for nature.

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Global National

November 30, 2022
Indigenous nations are leading global efforts to protect the planet's biodiversity. Eric Sorensen explains why their efforts are succeeding, and how they'll be promoting their initiatives at December's United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal.

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