The climate crisis is coming to an end: What are we really trying to tell the world? How much carbon dioxide will we be producing in the next 100 years?
The lack of progress at the climate summit held last month is worrying experts, who worry it will be bad for the biodiversity meeting. There is hope in this situation. The agreement made at COP27 to establish a ‘loss and damage’ fund to compensate low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) for climate impacts indicates that richer nations are open to talking about funding, which has also been a major sticking point in biodiversity negotiations.
There have been some bad things to happen. Australia, led by a newly progressive government, doubled its planned cut to 43 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030. A handful of other countries, including Chile, which is working to enshrine the rights of nature into its constitution, have already promised more cuts or say they will soon. Most of the updates are from smaller companies like Australia that are trying to catch up with larger companies that have submitted more detailed goals. A lot of the low-hanging fruit has been picked.
The wins have made it easier to make good on promises made last year. Fransen points to the United States, where the recent Inflation Reduction Act represented a massive step toward meeting its pledge of a 50 percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels. But the US still isn’t on track to reach that commitment. Further upping the ante on its goals this year would “strain credibility,” she says, given the nation’s political gridlock.
Fransen is one of the people in the business of keeping track of all those emissions plans and whether countries are sticking to them. It is difficult to take stock. It means measuring how much carbon nations emit. It also involves showing the effects those emissions will have on the climate 10, 20, or 100 years from now.
Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to determine how much CO2 humanity is producing—or to prove that nations are holding to their pledges. That’s because the gas is all over the atmosphere, muddying the origin of each signal. Natural processes also release carbon, like decaying vegetation and thawing permafrost, further complicating matters. Think of trying to find a leak in a swimming pool. Researchers have tried pointing satellites at the Earth to track CO2 emissions, but “if you see CO2 from space, it is not always guaranteed that it came from the nearest human emissions,” says Gavin McCormick, cofounder of Climate Trace, which tracks greenhouse gas emissions. That is the reason we need more sophisticated methods. For instance, Climate Trace can train algorithms to use steam billowing from power plants as a visible proxy for the emissions they’re belching. Scientists are using weather stations to monitor emissions.
Digital Sequence Information and the Conservation of Nature in Low- and Middle-Area Micron Continuum (LMIC) Biodiversity
Money is needed to make the protection of nature a reality, but some people don’t agree with it.
If we intend to limit global warming and avert the worst impacts of climate change, we must protect and restore our northern forests. The same thing is true for wetlands, grasslands, temperate and tropical forests, marine ecosystems and even landscape architecture in urban areas. The recently announced White House nature-based solutions roadmap is an encouraging start.
Climate talks are currently stalling because of the lack of support by world leaders that were a part of the road to Paris.
Change can’t come too soon. Nature is on the brink. Not a single target to preserve nature that was set in Aichi, Japan in 2010 was met by 2020. That, coupled with underfunding and lack of regard for the rights of Indigenous peoples who steward much of the world’s remaining biodiversity, means more species than ever are at risk of extinction. Serious impacts on human wealth and health from biodiversity loss loom ever larger. Over the past three years, four difficult rounds of negotiations have not resulted in a framework to replace Aichi. There are hundreds of unresolved issues.
The second major point is how to fairly and equitably share the benefits of digital sequence information from plants, animals and other organisms. Communities in biodiversity-rich regions where genetic material is collected have little control over the commercialization of the data, and no way to recoup financial or other benefits. A multipurpose fund for bio-diversity could provide a simple and effective way to share the benefits of these data and support other conservation needs of LMICs.
Climate Change and Coral Reef Protection in Brazil’s Biodiversity Regime: The Case of a Critically Endangered Blazing Toad
The upcoming change in Brazil’s leadership is one reason to hope for a breakthrough. Conservation organizations such as the wildlife charity WWF have accused the world’s most biodiverse nation of deliberately obstructing previous negotiations, holding up agreement on targets such as protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. But Brazil’s incoming president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has signalled that the environment is one of his top priorities. He won’t take over until January, but that’s not stopping him from sending an interim team of negotiators to Montreal.
As this vitally important convention gets underway, here is what we know: Because of human activity, life on Earth is undergoing an extinction crisis approximately 1,000 times faster than natural rates, according to a landmark study published in Conservation Biology. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 1 million species are at risk of extinction. A 2019 Science paper led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology reports that North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds — 29% of the continent’s total — since 1970, and BirdLife International shows nearly half of all birds declining worldwide.
The most at risk are reef-forming corals. The critically-endangered bleeding toad is in Mount Gede Pangrango National Park in Indonesia and is one of the few surviving salamanders in the world.
These toads were thought to be extinct until the year 2000, when some were spotted by a team led by Mirza Kusrini, a herpetologist at Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia. But the researchers found that the amphibians were infected with chytrid (Chytridiomycota sp.), a fungus that has devastated global amphibian populations. Kusrini says that climate change is probably making life hard for the tiny toad, which got its common name from the crimson, splatter-like spots covering its body. Warm weather can stimulate fungal outbreaks and shift the timing of behaviours, such as the toads’ breeding season, making the amphibians vulnerable.
Global warming, which has been raising sea temperatures, is also responsible for harming coral reefs around the globe (see ‘Threat assessment’). Over a period of 9 years, up to 2018, 14% of the world’s coral died out — a massive problem, because today, coral reefs support one-quarter of all marine species.
How diverse is an ecosystem? Evidence from biodiversity and ecosystems for the resilience of a forest-level survival system to a wildland fire
It is difficult to predict because knowledge of what species are present in a rainforest and their functions is needed. Many of the information is not known. However, scientists have shown3 that ecosystems with less biodiversity are not as good at capturing and converting resources into biomass, such as happens when plants capture nutrients or sunlight used for growth.
Neither are less-diverse ecosystems as good at decomposing and recycling biological materials and nutrients. For example, studies show that dead organisms are broken down, and their nutrients recycled, more quickly when a high variety of plant litter covers the forest floor4. The more diverse the system, the less resilience it has, as it’s able to bounce back from a fire more quickly than the less diverse one.
“If we lose parts of our system, it simply won’t function very efficiently, and it won’t be very robust,” he adds. The science behind that is rock solid.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04370-4
The impact of loss of species on the ecology and food supply in the era of rapid population growth: The role of pesticides, insecticides and malaria
Ecosystems also provide clean water and can sometimes prevent diseases from spreading to humans. Service degrades whenspecies are lost, Kusrini says. For example, most amphibians eat insects, many of which are considered pests, such as cockroaches, termites and mosquitoes. Studies have shown a rise in cases of malaria — spread by mosquitoes — in areas in Central America where amphibian populations have collapsed5. “You know when they disappear”, Kusrini says, because insect numbers rise and people start using more pesticides to kill them.
The framework wants to cut the introduction of certain species in half in order to end the practice of pornography. Some estimates suggest that invasive predators, such as cats and rats, are responsible for more than half of all extinctions of birds, mammals and reptiles7.
It is important that nations agree to a framework with quantifiable targets so that progress can be measured and that they can be held accountable if they fail to meet their targets, researchers say. They will have a long list ofaffles, Pimm says. We need to measure things.
Jane Alexander: An Ambassador for the Canadian Biodiversity Convention and an Oasis-informed Advisor to the National Audubon Society
Jane Alexander was former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a board member of the American Bird Conservancy. Alexander is the author of “Wild Things, Wild Places: Adventurous Tales of Wildlife andConservation on Planet Earth.” She is also a Tony and Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated actress. The views that she gives are her own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.
From my home in southwest Nova Scotia, I look out on the warming and rising Atlantic Ocean with alarm. The nursery to many aquatic species, the kelp forest, was going through a tough time this summer. This continued years of decline in this precious aquatic ecosystem.
The beach by my home was a graveyard for eiders, guillemots, gulls, curlews and other birds, many of which succumbed to their own pandemic — avian flu — which has been devastating seabirds throughout Canada’s Atlantic provinces.
Meanwhile, my local spruce trees and other conifers are giving way to deciduous trees, ending much of the seed cone production that rodents, birds and insects depend on.
The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity started this week in Montreal, and is taking place with an urgent need, and I am attending it as a board member of the National Audubon Society.
We are tearing holes in the fabric of life on Earth that support our lives. We rely on Earth’s diverse and varied forms of life for food, medicine, clean air and water, our mental health, inspiration and materials for great feats of art and engineering, pure joy and recreation — and so much more.
Yet there is hope. In my life time, I have seen bald eagles, peregrine falcons and ospreys rebound sharply from their mid-20th century population crashes because of widespread use of the pesticide DDT, which causes eggshells to thin and break. Banning the pesticide led to their recovery.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/opinions/cop15-world-biodiversity-alexander/index.html
The First 100 Years of the Sustainable Development Goal: Why Canada Needs a Treaty and How World Governments Can Make Effort
All of this is why Canada needs a treaty to protect its global flora and fauna. Three steps can be taken to achieve that goal.
Too often, governments and NGOs still fail to honor and invest in indigenous peoples’ rights and expertise across the board. We can change this, but we have to.
In the face of extraordinary circumstances, world governments must commit to action. Too much is at stake and apathetic half-measures simply won’t do. We need meaningful commitments coming out of Montreal.
Another example of ambitious thinking and action is the 30 by 30 initiative, which challenges world governments to protect 30% of lands and oceans by 2030. The United States and Canada are among more than 100 countries that support this global goal.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/opinions/cop15-world-biodiversity-alexander/index.html
A beaver dam and the many lives of the shrews, Canada’s national emblem to frogs, turtles and insects
At my Nova Scotia home, I’ve found a partner in restoration and rejuvenation: a beaver, who took up residence in my pond. Thanks to the beaver dam, small fish, frogs, turtles and insects are thriving, feeding all manner of creatures. The threat of extinction existed for the shrews, Canada’s national emblem. We can find a way if we give it a try.