Open letter to Environment Ministers re. Convention on Biological Diversity
Civil society and business orgs urge governments and UN to forge ahead with date and location for urgent Nature Talks
Civil society and business orgs urge governments and UN to forge ahead with date and location for urgent Nature Talks
Monday 16th November — Why choosing priority areas for conservation works to help wildlife, store carbon and fight climate change. A new report co-authored by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and supporting partners shows that coordinating priority areas to conserve both biodiversity and carbon stocks is key to meeting ambitious goals for both nature and climate.
Friday 30th October 2020 — N4C congratulates IPBES for pulling this seminal analysis together. The statistics are both terrifying and emboldening. On one hand, the report cites that the likely cost of COVID-19 was $8-16 trillion globally by July 2020. It further estimates that costs in the United States alone may reach as high as $16 trillion by the 4th quarter of 2021.
Monday 28th October 2020 — Political leaders participating in the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity in September 2020, representing more than 60 countries from all regions and the European Union, have committed to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. By doing so, these leaders are sending a united signal to step up global ambition and encourage others to match their collective ambition for nature, climate and people with the scale of the crisis at hand.
Wednesday 20th May 2020 — The EU has just released its new Biodiversity Strategy, a plan to tackle the accelerating collapse of nature both within Members States’ territories and those countries from which they import key commodities. Halting biodiversity loss within both land and ocean ecosystems is essential to sustain the natural systems providing protection, food, and livelihoods that our societies and economies rely on.
Today, the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, released a major report detailing past biodiversity losses and prospects for people and nature. Governments and scientists worldwide agree we are exploiting nature faster than it can renew itself, and the threat from the loss of nature will be as big a challenge to the world as rising temperatures. Dr. Cristiana Pașca-Palmer, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity and United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, shares her response to the report.
This week, as we expect to read in the IPBES report assessing the state of Earth’s biodiversity, we discover that there are even more reasons to halt the extinction crisis we’re facing – one being the climate benefits bestowed upon us by a selection of unlikely climate heroes. The humble beaver, the endangered pangolin, and the iconic elephant seem to have little in common, but all three tend to the environment in a way that is critical to preserving habitats that provide huge climate benefits.
Next week, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) will launch its Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – the first global snapshot in more than a decade of the state of the world’s biodiversity and is also the first-ever such report that is intergovernmental. It is a collation of existing evidence: what sets it apart is its aggregation of the science, combined with endorsement by governments.
The WWF has released its highly anticipated Living Planet Report (LPR) which presents an overview of trends in global biodiversity and natural systems. The report draws a depressing picture of wildlife around the world, under increasing pressure from human activities.