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Biodiversity

Youth Launch ‘Stronger Campaign’ For UN Biodiversity Day

May 25, 2021 Alison Kentish, Inter Press Service News Agency. , , ,
International Day for Biological Diversity is observed on May 22 under the theme ‘we’re part of the solution.’ A network of youth groups is informing policymakers that young people are tired of the same old rhetoric and platitudes.

Species Solidarity: Rediscovering Our Connection To The Web Of Life

May 12, 2021 Michelle Nijhuis, Yale 360. , , ,
If it wasn’t already clear, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it painfully obvious that our lives are entwined with the lives of other animals. Our health depends on theirs, not only because viruses from their bodies can enter ours, but because we survive thanks to the soil they fertilize and the plants they pollinate. And as climate disruption escalates, it’s evident that many animals are buffering us from its worst effects, maintaining ecosystems that absorb carbon and help mitigate the effects of sea-level rise. Conservationists have long cared deeply about the survival of other plants and animals, often for reasons that go well beyond self-interest. But sociologist Carrie Friese, a researcher at the London School of Economics, speculates that in this era of intersecting crises, conservationists and others will be more and more motivated by a sense of multispecies solidarity — a profound understanding that, as Rachel Carson warned in 1963, humans are “affected by the same environmental influences that control the lives of all the many thousands of other species.”

Love Letter For Our Afflicted Earth

April 22, 2021 Intemerate Earth. , , ,
Dear Earth, in this journey that we call our existence, we produce, consume, we eat, drink, breathe and survive because you are the very essence of life.   Your voice is clearer than our words, stronger than our laws, and more just than our principles. How do we renew the promises of our Original Trust, and restore the confidence that you gave to past generations? Dear Earth, this Original Trust is an agreement. You have whispered its many names and have warned us of deep contradictions in our understanding of that trust. Now a poison threatens you, us, our home. Its identity might be cloaked but its name is not a mystery. Some have listened, but mostly we have ignored the signs. We have inflicted a deep wound on our own house, and don’t seem to know how or if we will heal. We stand for justice and liberty, but too often brought to our knees by tyranny, alienation and frustration. How do we come to shiver under the hypocrisy of our own principles in practice? 

‘Ecocide’ Movement Pushes For A New International Crime

April 8, 2021 Nicholas Kusnetz, Katie Surma and Yuliya Talmazan, NBC News. , , ,
In 1948, after Nazi Germany exterminated millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II, the United Nations adopted a convention establishing a new crime so heinous it demanded collective action. Genocide, the nations declared, was “condemned by the civilized world” and justified intervention in the affairs of sovereign states. Now, a small but growing number of world leaders including Pope Francis and French President Emmanuel Macron have begun citing an offense they say poses a similar threat to humanity and remains beyond the reach of international criminal law: ecocide, or widespread destruction of the environment. The pope describes ecocide as “the massive contamination of air, land and water,” or “any action capable of producing an ecological disaster,” and has proposed making it a sin for Roman Catholics.

British Columbia Urged To Protect At-Risk Old Growth Forest

March 17, 2021 Canadian Press, Vancouver Island News. , , ,
The most at-risk ecosystems should be set aside from logging while British Columbia shifts its forestry policies toward a more sustainable system, says a forester who helped write a provincial report on old-growth forests. The report last April co-written by Garry Merkel urged B.C. to act within six months to defer harvesting in old forest ecosystems at the highest risk of permanent biodiversity loss. “There (are) some of those ecosystems targeted for harvesting right now,” he said in an interview this week, six months after B.C. released the report and pledged to implement the recommendations from the panel of two independent foresters who were commissioned to write it. “I do share the impatience of a lot of folks.”

New Environmentalism Must Demand Systemic Change

February 8, 2021 James Gustave Speth, Truthout. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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.
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