Biodiversity

Business Lobby Reached Record High At UN Biodiversity Talks

November 13, 2024 Rachel Sherrington, Claire Carlile and Hazel Healy, DeSmog. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, COP16, Corporate lobbying, Environment, United Nations (UN)

Representatives of business and industry groups more than doubled at the UN’s latest biodiversity summit, DeSmog has found, sparking fears over the growing influence of powerful private sector bodies. Despite some important breakthroughs, talks at this year’s COP16 summit in Cali, Colombia – which aimed to reverse the drastic global decline in plant and animal life – ended in disarray on 2 November, with Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts complaining that progress to protect the world’s dangerously depleted ecosystems had stalled after “unprecedented corporate lobbying”.

COP16 Ends Without Consensus On Financing For Nature Conservation

November 5, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Climate finance, Colombia, Conservation, COP16

The COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, ended in disappointment this weekend, with countries failing to determine how to raise $200 billion a year in funding for conservation by 2030, reported Reuters. Originally intended as a check-in on countries’ progress with meeting the goals of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), COP16 went into overtime Saturday as nations scrambled to reach a consensus while delegates dwindled along with hopes for a decisive conclusion. “I am both saddened and enraged by the non-outcome of COP16,” said Shilps Gautam, carbon removal financing firm Opna’s chief executive, as Reuters reported.

Mapped: How Big Industries Hope To Sway The UN Biodiversity Talks

October 30, 2024 Hazel Healy and Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Educate! Activism, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Biodiversity, Colombia, COP16, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Pesticides, Social Justice, United Nations (UN)

Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss. Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries, along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists, are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.

The Convention On Biodiversity COP In Cali, Colombia

October 26, 2024 Global Justice Ecology Project. Resist! Amazon Rainforest, Biodiversity, Brazil, Colombia, COP16, Genetically Engineered, Indigenous Peoples, Protests

More than 100 organizations from over 30 countries demand that Brazil cancel its NINE genetically engineered eucalyptus and stop threatening global forest biodiversity. Organizations and Indigenous Peoples from around the world call upon the world leaders at COP16 to demand a strict application of the CBD’s 2008 de facto moratorium on genetically engineered trees and that Brazil immediately cancel its legalization of 9 varieties of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees for commercial release. Brazil’s legalization is a dangerous precedent that threatens to open the door to the widespread commercialization and large-scale release of GE trees across Latin America and around the world.

Chickpeas Could Become A Major Drought-Resistant Protein Source

October 19, 2024 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Drought, Food and Agriculture

A new study is highlighting chickpeas as a source protein for a potentially drought-stricken future brought on by climate change. The research, led by molecular biologist Wolfram Weckwerth from the University of Vienna, explored the benefits of 36 different chickpea genotypes as climate change impacts continue to threaten food security around the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, only around nine plant species make up 66% of total crop production. However, there are more than 6,000 edible plant species.

Humanity Must Choose A New Path To Avoid Rapid Ecological Breakdown

September 14, 2024 Greg Harman, Resilience. Organize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Ecological breakdown, Indigenous Knowledge

Rapid City, S.D.—Humanity stands at a crossroads and must come together to realize dramatically different and supportive relationships with one another, the Earth, and all life on the planet, if we are to surmount cascading ecological and social crises now underway. That was the message of Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples, who welcomed hundreds of attendees to the 12th World Wilderness Congress convening the last week of August in the Black Hills, or Hé Sapa in the Lakota language. Though these gatherings, dedicated to assessing and often resetting global conservation work, date back to the 1970s, this is the first such congress being convened by a tribal authority.

Meet The Modern-Day Captain Ahab Held In Jail

September 4, 2024 James Rothwell, Captain Paul Watson Foundation. Resist! Biodiversity, Japan, Paul Watson, whales

With his long silver locks and rugged beard, Paul Watson resembles a modern-day Captain Ahab, the fictional whaler in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. But he’s trying to save whales, not destroy them. For decades, the US-Canadian has waged a sea campaign against the bloody business of whalers, notorious for their use of explosive harpoons to maim and kill their prey. At one point Mr Watson’s antics were so popular that he was the star of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, Whale Wars, which followed his Sea Shepherd crew as they used guerilla-style tactics to block and harass whaling ships. But a new twist in an ongoing legal battle between Mr Watson and the Japanese whaling industry could mean that he never sets sail again.

Judge Orders Increased Protection Of Marine Species From Oil Drilling

August 22, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Resist! Biodiversity, Drilling, Legal System, Oceans, Oil and Gas

At the urging of Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other green groups, a United States federal judge has thrown out a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) assessment governing how threatened and endangered marine species like whales and sea turtles ought to be protected from oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The Maryland district court struck down the assessment — known under the Endangered Species Act as a “biological opinion” — which was required to ensure that endangered and threatened species would not be jeopardized by exploration and drilling for fossil fuels in the Gulf, a press release from Sierra Club said.

The Messy Middle Paths Through Climate Breakdown

August 7, 2024 Jamie Bristow and Rosie Bell, DeSmog. Strategize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Optimism, Realism, Sustainability

In the escalating drama of climate breakdown — especially as we navigate the apparent crossing of the 1.5C warming threshold — a binary is emerging that wastes a huge amount of time, energy and passion, needlessly limiting our vision to confront and adapt to our situation at all levels of society: Are we (optimist) solutionists or (realist) doomers? As “optimists” we’re committed to the idea that it’s not too late to fix things (think ever steeper net zero pathways dependant on direct air capture). As “realists,” we’re committed to telling “the truth” of just how bad things are already (think cascading tipping points and trajectories towards Hothouse Earth).

Cry, The Beloved World

August 5, 2024 Gus Speth, Resilience. Strategize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environment, Sustainability

Here is a topic miles away from the 2024 elections, though it should not be. Its political salience is just about zero, but it concerns the future of life on Earth. I could be referring to the recent surge in spending on nuclear weapons, but the devastation I will write about is slower yet no less problematic. If you are of a certain age, you may remember the children’s book, The Wump World. It first appeared in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day. Its message was clear. The bountiful, bucolic world of the Wumps, with its lovely bumbershoot trees and plentiful grasses for grazing, was denuded and impoverished by the Pollutians, who had colonized the Wump’s planet because they had destroyed their own.

World’s Oceans Face ‘Triple Threat’, Study Finds

June 6, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environment, Ocean Acidification, Oceans

A new study has found that the planet’s oceans are experiencing a “triple threat” of oxygen loss, extreme heat and acidification. The researchers discovered that, as global heating has worsened, increasing stress has been placed on marine species, with as much as 20 percent of the world’s oceans affected by these threats. “The global ocean is becoming warmer, more acidic, and losing oxygen due to climate change. On top of this trend, sudden increases in temperature, or drops in pH or oxygen adversely affect marine organisms when they cannot quickly adapt to these extreme conditions,” the study said.

Cities, Roads, And The Sixth Extinction Event

April 4, 2024 Nick King, Resilience. Educate! Biodiversity, Ecosystems, Environment, Extinction

Earth’s biosphere entered the stage of large, complex, multicellular life (following an extended – approximately three billion year – period of dominance by unicellular life) starting approximately 650 million years ago. This ‘metazoan’ stage saw the tree of life proliferate and complexify, and has expanded into a huge variety of niches across the planet through to the present day. A key phenomenon over this period has been extinction events; this describes periods of rapidly changing environmental conditions which have resulted in species die-offs and restructuring of ecosystems at different scales.

Thacker Pass Protectors File First-Ever ‘Biodiversity Necessity Defense’

March 27, 2024 Max Wilbert, Last Real Indians. Resist! Biodiversity, Environmental Justice, Indigenous Activism, Lithium, Necessity defense, Nevada, Thacker Pass

Winnemuca, Nevada — In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for six people sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation for protesting the Thacker Pass mine are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’ The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.

Greenpeace Calls For Bold High Seas Ocean Protection Of Galapagos

March 12, 2024 The Canary. Resist! Biodiversity, Conservation, Environment, Galápagos Islands, Greenpeace, Oceans

On Monday 12 March, Greenpeace called for new marine protections for the ocean surrounding the Galapagos – a vital biodiversity hotspot. Specifically, the environmental campaign group pushed for governments to create a high seas marine protected zone under a new UN treaty to secure a much wider area around Ecuador’s archipelago. The islands sit some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the mainland of Ecuador, and have flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world. The islands unique diversity of life famously inspired British scientist Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Treat Climate And Biodiversity Crises As One Global Health Emergency

October 28, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Public Health, World Health Organization

A new editorial published in more than 200 health journals challenges health professionals and world leaders to look at global biodiversity loss and climate change as “one indivisible crisis” that must be confronted as a whole. The authors of the editorial call separating the two emergencies a “dangerous mistake,” and encourage the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global health emergency, a press release from The BMJ said. “The climate crisis and loss of biodiversity both damage human health, and they are interlinked. That’s why we must consider them together and declare a global health emergency.

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