Biodiversity

UN Talks End With Countries Backing Biodiversity Conservation Plan

March 1, 2025 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Climate finance, United Nations

The COP16 UN Biodiversity Conference in Rome has ended with a plan for nations to contribute $200 billion a year for the protection of the planet’s biodiversity by 2030, but critics say it’s not enough. The countries came to an agreement on how to contribute the funds. The accord also includes a plan for raising $20 billion annually to finance conservation in developing nations starting this year, with the amount rising to $30 billion a year by 2030, reported The Associated Press. Following hours of tense discussions, delegates at the conference applauded when the deal was finally reached.

Rise And Repair Alliance Advocates For Wild Rice Protection Act

February 12, 2025 Akičita Šuŋka-Wakaŋ Ska, Unicorn Riot. Organize! Biodiversity, Food and Agriciulture, Indigenous Rights, Minnesota, Wild Rice

Saint Paul, MN — Urging Minnesota legislators to adopt bills related to environmental conservation at the start of a new legislative session, the Rise and Repair Alliance gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol on January 14, 2025. For many activists present, the main focus was on saving wild rice, which would be a key measure in safeguarding the natural resource as an Indigenous legal right. At the Capitol, singer, artist and organizer Eoin Small hosted activists, providing snacks and coffee while they signed postcards with messages intended for legislators. Unicorn Riot was there to document the family-friendly art-filled action and hear from environmentalists.

Putting Nature At The Center

February 5, 2025 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Strategize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environment, Extinction

Life may be unique to Earth. Even if single-celled organisms can readily evolve in conditions that exist on millions or billions of other planets, we have no actual evidence that complex, multi-cellular life exists anywhere else in the vastness of space. Bacteria appeared on our planet roughly 3.7 billion years ago; by 2 billion years ago, the tree of life was branching into what would become a stunning web of creatures, huge and tiny. Plants, animals, and fungi proliferated, formed relationships, and produced ecosystems. The result was a planet full of life, and one whose atmosphere, temperature, chemical composition, and weather are all largely shaped by the side effects of the strategies that organisms use to thrive.

The Coming Climate Uncertainty Conundrum

January 25, 2025 Rupert Read, DeSmog. Strategize! Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Biodiversity, climate crisis, Extreme weather

This piece is about what we talk about when we talk about ‘climate change.’ Mostly, whether in the campaigning world or the policy world, the tech world or the business world, the everyday world or the world of international summitry, we mainly talk about cutting carbon emissions. And if we talk about impacts, we talk about the impacts of global heating, plus the impacts of the growing chaos. But we don’t talk enough about climate impacts, our vulnerability to them, let alone how to prepare adequately for them, or to tackle them ‘upstream’ before they land or get worse.

Guide To Preserving Sacred Land Near You

January 9, 2025 Jimmy Videle, Resilience. Organize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environment, Land Conservation, Sacred sites

Anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss are the most pressing issues for our planet. Carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere continue to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels and land use change, with the latter occurring primarily in the form of animal agriculture and growing crops to feed livestock. Biodiversity loss is greatly enhanced by these climate changes, causing catastrophic threats to nature. Because these unprecedented climate changes make modeling future scenarios relatively impossible, region-by-region data is the only reliable tool, so conservation efforts must begin regionally.

Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands Now Open To US Military

December 20, 2024 Pablo Meriguet, People's Dispatch. Educate! Biodiversity, Daniel Noboa, Ecuador, US Foreign Bases, US military

The national government of Daniel Noboa approved a resolution that enables US ships and crews to use the Galapagos Islands for control and patrol activities in the area. On February 15, 2024, Noboa signed a series military cooperation treaties with the US government, allowing ships, military personnel, armament, equipment, and submarines to be installed in the natural reserve, which UNESCO declared a World Natural Heritage Site in 1978. In doing so, Noboa ratified the Washington Agreement, signed by former President Guillermo Lasso. The agreement grants US soldiers and their contractors several privileges, exemptions, and immunity in Ecuadorian territory, similar to those enjoyed by members of diplomatic missions as agreed on in the Vienna Convention.

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).

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