Biodiversity

New Environmentalism Must Demand Systemic Change

February 8, 2021 James Gustave Speth, Truthout. Strategize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environmental Movement, System Change

Fifty years ago, my young daughter and I were on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the first Earth Day. A group of us were then launching the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Since then, the NRDC and other U.S. environmental groups have racked up more victories and accomplishments than one can count. But here’s the deeply troubling rub: As our environmental organizations have grown stronger, more sophisticated and more global in reach, the environment has continued to slide downhill. And not just slightly downhill. Climate change is coming at us very hard. Worldwide, we are losing biodiversity, forests, fisheries and agricultural soils at frightening rates.

Protesters Say Mine Expansion Ignores Nunavut Agreement

February 8, 2021 Beth Brown, CBC News. Resist! Biodiversity, Canada, Indigenous Sovereignty, Mining

Protests continue in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, on Saturday, as a two-week environmental hearing on an expansion at the Mary River iron ore mine wraps up. At noon Saturday, around 50 residents gathered outside the community hall where the hearings are happening. It was – 32 C with the windchill, according to Environment Canada. "We protested and chanted, 'Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, protect our rights, protect our people, protect our animals'," said resident Sheena Akoomalik. At the protest, she brandished a copy of the Nunavut Agreement. She said the legal agreement between Nunavut Inuit and the Canadian government, and its protections for land and harvesting rights, are being ignored.

It’s Now Or Never — We Stare Into The Abyss

February 3, 2021 Lee Camp, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Biodiversity, Capitalism, mass extinction

This column is hopeful. I promise. The northern white rhinoceros is now functionally extinct. Sudan — the last male of his kind — passed away recently. There are two females remaining but obviously they can produce no more of their species without a male — and mating with nearby giraffes is not something in which they seem interested. This is not the end but the beginning. This is still the beginning of a great extinction, the sixth great extinction in earth’s history and the first one caused by humans. The others were caused by things like massive asteroid impacts creating damage equivalent to a million nuclear bombs, and judging by the humans I’ve met, I could picture us wreaking an equivalent amount of havoc.

Forest Service: Cutting Snags To Eliminate Endangered Species Habitat

January 22, 2021 Chuck Burr, Culturequake. Educate! Biodiversity, Endangered species, Federal Government, Forests

It is an intentional act to seek out and cut large diameter dead trees to prevent them from becoming spotted owl and other endanger species habitat. Annual census of known spotted owl trees are conducted. Owls must be seen living in the trees. If the owls are scared off by nearby clear-cutting, road building, or the tree is downed, the habitat is delisted as critical and may now be clear-cut. If there are no potential habitat trees, owls are prevented from moving into an area. This is an intentional act. Cutting large diameter dead trees is being conducted on gated locked Forest Service and BLM lands. Only staff and contractors can access these areas with vehicles. Not during clear-cuts, the trees are found, cut and left. Small diameter non-habitat trees are skipped.

EPA Approves Pesticide, Then Finds It Harms Endangered Species

November 10, 2020 the Center for Biological Diversity. Educate! Biodiversity, Endangered species, EPA, Pesticide

Washington, DC (Nov. 5, 2020) - The Environmental Protection Agency released an assessment today finding that the endocrine-disrupting pesticide atrazine is likely to harm more than 1,000 of the nation’s most endangered plants and animals. The finding is a result of the agency’s first-ever nationwide assessment of an herbicide’s harm to protected species, an analysis that’s required by the Endangered Species Act. The assessment’s release comes just two months after the EPA reapproved the pesticide’s use for another 15 years.

Reasons To Rethink The Future Of Dams

October 30, 2020 Tara Lohan, The Revelator. Educate! Biodiversity, Clean Energy, climate crisis, Hydropower

The tide has shifted on dams. Once a monument to our engineering prowess, there’s now widespread acknowledgment that dam-building comes with a long list of harms. Some of those can be reversed, as shown by the 1,200 dam removals in the past 20 years. But the future of our existing dams, including 2,500 hydroelectric facilities, is a complicated issue in the age of climate change. Dams have altered river flows, changed aquatic habitat, decimated fish populations, and curtailed cultural and treaty resources for tribes. But does the low-carbon power dams produce have a role in our energy transition?

World Misses 2020 Biodiversity Goals

September 16, 2020 By Chloé Farand, Climate Change News. Create! Biodiversity, climate crisis, United Nations, Women

A draft version of the fifth edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook, seen by Climate Home News, reported that none of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets set in Japan in 2010 have been fully met. It identified failure to account for the role of women as a significant barrier to progress, along with funding shortfalls and harmful subsidies. Prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the report provides a summary of the state of nature and biodiversity worldwide. The final report is due to be released next Tuesday after being reviewed by negotiators, with reflections on the way forward and how Covid-19 recovery packages could help achieve biodiversity goals. It comes as governments are preparing to adopt a new set of biodiversity targets beyond 2020 i

New Documentary By David Attenborough, ‘Extinction: The Facts’

September 15, 2020 Julia P. G. Jones, The Conversation. Educate! Biodiversity, Capitalism, Development, Extinction

We have learned so much about nature from David Attenborough’s documentaries over the past seven decades. In a new BBC film he lays bare just how perilous the state of that nature really is, why this matters for everyone who shares this planet, and what needs to change. This film is radical. Surprisingly radical. I have written in the past about my growing frustration with Attenborough documentaries continuing, decade after decade, to depict nature as untouched by any mark of humans. I felt this might be contributing to unhelpful complacency about how much “wild” was really left.

Reflecting On 12 Years In Palestine

August 31, 2020 By Mazin Qumsiyeh, Popular Resistance. Educate! Biodiversity, Human Rights, Israeli Apartheid, Palestine

In Palestine, I have split my time between working on human rights issues for Palestinians and working for the environment. These are not mutually exclusive as there is significant overlap. There are issues of colonizer assaults on the environment and environmental justice. There are issues of human sustainability and food security (dependent on the environment). Of course where and how we act evolves and changes in time. In those 12 years, I learned that our struggle as indigenous people in Palestine is connected to the struggle of indigenous people everywhere. I also learned that since the wealthy elites have no future for themselves without a healthy planet and a healthy planet depends on us indigenous people, the elites must learn to listen to us.

Tired Of ‘Writing Obituaries For Coral Reefs,’ Surfing Scientists Find Ways To Save Them

May 24, 2020 Raul Quintana, Conservation. Create! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Coral Reefs, Oceans

Grim reports and unsettling headlines paint a bleak future for Earth’s coral reefs, which are projected to be wiped out by the end of the century due to climate change and pollution. But a new study shows that this future can be prevented — and outlines the relatively small steps humanity can take to ensure coral reefs’ long-term protection and productivity. Building off of previous work, a group of marine scientists — all of them ardent surfers — identified the criteria that make a coral reef receptive to conservation. This research found that conservation efforts should focus on areas with low-to-medium human impacts on coral reefs, according to Jack Kittinger, a member of the research group and head of Conservation International’s global fisheries and aquaculture work.

‘No Mow May’ Campaign Asks Us To Leave The Lawn Alone To Help Save Bees

May 18, 2020 By Sara Burrows, Return to Now. Create! Biodiversity, Environment, Wildflowers

April showers bring May flowers, and if you like food, you should leave those flowers alone. Not mowing in May results in greater diversity and a number of flowers throughout the summer, a British wildlife organization called Plantlife claims. The organization conducted an experiment in last year in which hundreds of homeowners agreed not to mow their lawns until June. Participants’ lawns produced a much wider variety of flower species and enough nectar to feed 10 times as many bees as normal lawns. The longer your grass grows, the greater the diversity of flower species you get, Plantlife found.

NY Times Magazine Promotes GE Trees – We Set The Record Straight

May 4, 2020 Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project. Educate! Biodiversity, Forests, GE Trees, Media

An article printed in today’s New York Times Magazine, “Can Genetic Engineering Bring Back the American Chestnut?” by Gabriel Popkin, is a disappointing piece of questionable journalism. In this post, I highlight and challenge some of the most egregious statements in the article and question its advocacy for the idea that humans can and should use technology to “improve” nature. Note: Global Justice Ecology Project and our co-founders launched the first campaign to protect forests and communities from the risks of GE trees twenty years ago. Since then, the campaign has expanded globally and GJEP and other campaign members have testified at UN meetings, industry conferences and rural community workshops on five continents. Our advocacy and organizing to expose the potential dangers of GE trees led to a decision by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity warning countries of the risks of GE trees, as well as decisions by forest certification regimes like the FSC to prohibit the use of GE trees.

A Movement Builds To Support Wildlife In Human Spaces

April 30, 2020 April M. Short, Portside. Create! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Gardening, wildlife

The world’s wildlife is in danger of dying off, and inevitably taking humanity out with it. Humans have destroyed enormous portions of the planet’s natural spaces, and caused a climate disaster as well as the unprecedented acceleration of mass extinction events. Among the many species struggling to stay afloat are the butterflies, birds, bats, bees, and other pollinators we depend upon in order to grow basic food crops. People cannot live without the Earth’s diverse, wild plants and animals. Scientists agree that continued disruption of the Earth’s ecosystems threatens the future survival of humanity as much as climate change does. And, the two aren’t entirely separate issues; healthy forests and soil systems, for example, sequester carbon naturally. As they are destroyed, there is increased carbon in the atmosphere.

Worse Pandemics Are On The Way If We Don’t Protect Nature

April 28, 2020 Jordan Davidson, Ecowatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, COVID-19, Pandemic

A group of biodiversity experts warned that future pandemics are on the horizon if mankind does not stop its rapid destruction of nature. Writing an article published Monday by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the authors put the responsibility for COVID-19 squarely on our shoulders. "There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones," the authors wrote on IPBES.

Abrupt Ecosystem Collapse

April 17, 2020 Robert Hunziker, Counterpunch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Ecosystems, Environmental Destruction

A new study in Nature (April 2020) casts a disturbing light on the prospects of abrupt ecosystem collapse. The report analyzes the probabilities of collapsing ecosystems en masse, and not simply the loss of individual species. (Source: Trisos, C.H. et al, The Projected Timing of Abrupt Ecological Disruption From Climate Change, Nature, April 8, 2020) The paper states that a high percentage of species will be exposed to harmful climate conditions at about the same time, potentially leading to sudden and catastrophic die-offs of biodiversity. If high greenhouse gas emissions remain in place, abrupt events are forecast to begin before 2030 in tropical oceans and spread to tropical forests and temperate regions over time. Without doubt, no nation is prepared for the consequences of collapsing ecosystems nor are they doing anything to avert it.

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