SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
convention on biological diversity
'The Window Is Closing': Fears Grow That World Leaders Will Fail to Protect Nature at COP16
"The very limited progress we've seen so far in the negotiations at COP16 is insufficient to address the very real implications of getting this wrong," one expert said.
Oct 31, 2024
As a major international biodiversity summit approaches its Friday conclusion, environmental advocates fear that world leaders will not make the conservation and financial commitments needed to halt the destruction of nature.
The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity launched in Cali, Colombia on October 21. It is the first international meeting since nations pledged to protect 30% of land and ocean ecosystems by 2030 and generate $700 billion a year to fund the protection of nature, with a smaller goal of $200 billion per year by 2030.
Yet nations are not on track to meet these goals, even as studies released this month warn that vertebrates have declined on average by nearly three-quarters in the last half-century and that over a third of analyzed tree species are at risk of extinction.
"Each passing day without the fulfillment of agreed commitments is a missed opportunity to protect biodiversity."
"The very limited progress we've seen so far in the negotiations at COP16 is insufficient to address the very real implications of getting this wrong," Yadvinder Malhi, a University of Oxford professor of ecosystem science, toldThe Guardian. "Biodiversity is continuing to decline at an alarming rate. I really hope that the crunch discussions this week yield those commitments, for the sake of a flourishing future for people and for our planet."
World leaders failed to meet a single one of the biodiversity targets set for 2020 in Aichi, Japan. There was hope, after nations agreed to a Global Biodiversity Framework during the Kunming-Montreal talks that concluded in December 2022, that the next decade would be different. Yet progress so far has been lagging.
Ahead of COP16, nearly 85% of countries missed the deadline to submit new national biodiversity strategies and action plans, according to an analysis from Carbon Brief. Since the deadline passed, only five more countries had submitted plans as of October 25.
An official progress report published Monday by the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center and the International Union for Conservation of Nature concluded that only 17.6% of land and 8.4% of the ocean are currently protected. To meet the 30 by 30 goal, nations will need to protect a land area the size of Australia and Brazil put together and a marine area larger than the Indian Ocean within the next six years.
"This report is a clear reminder that with only six years remaining until 2030, the window is closing for us to equitably and meaningfully conserve 30% of the Earth," IUCN director general Grethel Aguilar said in a statement. "The '30 by 30' is an ambitious target, but one that is still within reach if the international community works together across borders, demographics, and sectors."
A major stumbling block to meeting any targets is the question of who will pay for it, how, and how much. This has emerged as a central point of contention in the talks, with Global South nations and environmental justice advocates calling on the wealthier nations of the Global North to do more.
Wealthier countries have pledged $20 billion a year in public money by 2025, yet the African delegation said that the idea these countries would reach the goal was "wishful thinking," The Guardian reported.
On Monday, the U.K., Germany, France, Norway, and four other countries promised $163 million. But Alice Jay, Campaign for Nature's director of international relations, said actually meeting the target "would require them to announce $300 million each month from now to 2025, and then keep that up each year until 2030."
"Countries from the Global South expect more from the Global North," Nigeria Environment Minister Iziaq Kunle Salako said. "Finance is key in the context of implementing all the targets."
Brian O'Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, told The Guardian that progress had been "too slow."
"I think political prioritization of nature is still too low," O'Donnell said. "This is reflected by progress on the targets. Several target[s] are very easy to measure: 30x30 has metrics on area and quality, finance has a dollar figure. We have new data on both that show we're not on pace."
O'Donnell added that it was "disturbing' to approach countries about their finance plans and be received as if making an unrealistic demand, rather than a follow-up on a pledge the country had already made.
"To me, that is a reflection of not a true commitment to this," he said.
As the second week of negotiations began on Sunday, Greenpeace called on wealthier nations to step up and also to offer funds for Indigenous and local communities that are on the frontlines of protecting biodiversity in their territories.
"Each passing day without the fulfillment of agreed commitments is a missed opportunity to protect biodiversity," Estefania Gonzalez, Greenpeace Andino's deputy campaigns director, said in a statement. "Countries with greater resources have both the capacity and responsibility to drive change, by meeting the agreed goals and supporting those facing the greatest impacts of biodiversity loss."
An Lambrechts, a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said that progress had partly been held up by lobbying efforts from the private sector, as has notably been the case at international climate talks as well.
"Well-paid industry representatives are doing their worst to undermine progress to ensure they can continue profiting off nature for free," Lambrechts said. "We need less big promo shows for false solutions like 'biodiversity credits' and more of the new money for actual nature protection that is absent so far. What is clear in Cali is the world is ready for global action on biodiversity if governments can deliver a real outcome at COP16."
Indigenous advocates have also called for money to be sent to them directly, rather than through intermediaries.
"Very little reaches the territories," Tabea Cacique, a member of the Asháninka people of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, said at the talks, as El Paísreported. "Do not look at us as Indigenous peoples who cannot manage the funds; teach us."
Yet even as funding remains illusive, the stakes are high.
"Nature is life," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in an address at COP16 on Tuesday, "and yet we are waging a war against it. A war where there can be no winner."
"Every year, we see temperatures climbing higher," he continued. "Every day, we lose more species. Every minute, we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers, and lakes. Make no mistake. This is what an existential crisis looks like."
In his address, Guterres called for "making peace with nature."
"Biodiversity is humanity's ally," he said. "We must move from plundering it to preserving it. As I have said time and again, making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century."
Keep ReadingShow Less
A Shadowy Campaign Is Targeting Pesticide Opponents. I'm One of Them.
While it may be creepy to read an industry-funded dossier on you online, it pales in comparison to what other pesticide industry critics have faced.
Oct 29, 2024
As I head back from Cali, Colombia after attending the Convention on Biological Diversity this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the attempts by countless advocates around the world to take on one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity collapse: toxic pesticides. Reducing the use of pesticides is one of the key ways we can help beneficial insect species rebound, protect vital pollinators, ensure thriving aquatic ecosystems, and much more—all while protecting human health.
With all that we know about the benefits to biodiversity of reducing pesticides, why haven’t we made more progress in tackling these toxic substances? The latest clue came to us last month thanks to an investigation by Lighthouse Reports, which revealed that the Trump administration had used taxpayer dollars to fund a pesticide industry PR operation targeting advocates, journalists, scientists, and UN officials around the world calling for pesticide reforms.
The investigation exposed the details of a private online social network, funded by U.S. government dollars, with detailed profiles of more than 500 people—a kind of Wikipedia-meets-doxxing of pesticide opponents. It showed how the network was activated to block a conference on pesticide reform in East Africa, among other actions.
My interest in the leaked private network is also personal: I’m one of those profiled, attacked for working on numerous reports, articles, and education campaigns on pesticides. In my dossier, I’m described among other things as collaborating on a campaign alleging pesticide companies “use ‘tobacco PR’ tactics to hide health and environmental risk.” Guilty as charged. While it may be creepy to read an industry-funded dossier on you online, it pales in comparison to what other pesticide industry critics have faced.
When you don’t have science on your side, you have to rely on slime.
There’s Dr. Tyrone Hayes, the esteemed UC Berkeley professor, who has persevered through a yearslong campaign to destroy his reputation by the pesticide company Syngenta whose herbicide atrazine Hayes’s exacting research has linked to endocrine disruption in frogs. There’s journalist Carey Gillam who faced a Monsanto-funded public relations onslaught for raising substantive questions about the safety of the company’s banner herbicide product, Roundup. There’s Gary Hooser, former Hawaii State Senator and Kauaʻi County Councilmember who weathered a barrage of industry attacks for his advocacy for common sense pesticide reform—a barrage so effective he lost his seat in office. The list goes on.
Why develop elaborate attacks on journalists and scientists raising serious concerns about your products? It’s simple: When you don’t have science on your side, you have to rely on slime.
This latest exposé does not surprise me, of course, nor many colleagues who are also listed in this private online network. I’ve been tracking industry disinformation and its attacks on those working to raise the alarm about the environmental and human health impacts of pesticides for decades: this is what companies do. They try to defame, marginalize, and silence scientists, journalists, and community advocates who raise concerns about the health harms of their products.
Growing up, I saw this up close. My father, the toxicologist and epidemiologist Marc Lappé, was a professor of medical ethics and a frequent expert witness in legal cases where chemicals were a concern. He died at age 62 of brain cancer. By the time he passed away, I had heard countless tales of his legal wranglings in depositions and on the stand. Cases where he served as an expert witness for lawsuits on behalf of people harmed by exposure to dangerous chemicals, lawsuits against some of the biggest chemical companies in the world.
Thanks to this investigation, we now have another example of how the pesticide industry tries to shift attention away from these very real concerns, even using taxpayer dollars to do it.
The defense attorney’s strategy with my father was always the same: undermine his expertise, rattle his equanimity so juries would trust well-paid lawyers, not my dad. There was the time they quoted an excerpt of one of his journal articles to make it sound like he was contradicting himself, which backfired when he asked the lawyer to read for the jury the rest of the paragraph, putting the words in context and solidifying his point. The worst story was from a trial not long after my stepmother died in a tragic accident, leaving behind my three younger half-siblings. As my dad walked to the stand, one of the defense lawyers said under his breath, “Marc, how was Mother’s Day at your house this year?” Slime indeed.
But while they have the slime, we have the science: We know that many of the pesticides now ubiquitous in industrial agriculture are linked to serious health concerns, from ADHD to infertility, Parkinson’s, depression, a swath of cancers, and more. The insecticide chlorpyrifos is so toxic there are no determined safe levels for children or infants. Paraquat, linked to Parkinson’s, is so acutely deadly a teaspoon of the stuff can kill you—something its largest producer, Syngenta, has known for decades. And, 2,4-D, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War to wipe out forest cover in that country has been linked to birth defects among children there—and in the United States—even decades after the war.
The threat for biodiversity is severe, too. A 2019 comprehensive review of more than 70 studies around the world powerfully tied widespread pesticide use to insect declines worldwide. And, as reported in the Pesticide Atlas (I edited the U.S. edition), despite these known risks, pesticide use is increasing in many regions in the world. In South America, pesticide use went up 484 percent from 1990 to 2017. In Brazil, alone, pesticide sales have shot up nearly 1000% between 1998 and 2008
Thanks to this investigation, we now have another example of how the pesticide industry tries to shift attention away from these very real concerns, even using taxpayer dollars to do it. As I land in Colombia, where tens of thousands are gathered to envision a world conducive to thriving biodiversity, I hope this reporting will remind policymakers to rely on science, not spin.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Instead of a Climate Villain, Livestock Can Be a Solution With Legs
For places where livestock is deeply embedded in livelihoods and culture, it is critical to see these farm animals from our perspective and help channel climate and biodiversity finance into their potential as a force for good.
Oct 08, 2024
Livestock are a vital component of both the African food system and rural livelihoods. The continent has around 400 million cattle alone, and the livestock sector accounts for a significant 30-40% of the total agricultural gross domestic product across the continent.
Small amounts of meat, milk and eggs can have life-changing benefits in tackling malnutrition, and these animals also provide a reliable income source when alternatives simply do not readily exist.
Yet, from an environmental perspective, livestock are often perceived only as a problem, contributing to habitat loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and land degradation. This narrow view can hold back much-needed finance into the sector, yet it misses a much more nuanced reality.
International climate finance should prioritise support for sustainable livestock systems, recognizing their unique role in tackling broad environmental challenges while providing food, livelihoods, and economic growth.
As the United Nations prepares for three major environmental meetings over the next few months—on biodiversity conservation, climate change, and land management, respectively—it is important for the world to rethink how it perceives livestock in the context of development progress, and to begin to see such animals as cows, goats, camels, and pigs as “solutions with legs” in combating these intensifying climate and environmental crises at scale.
For countries like Kenya, where livestock is deeply embedded in livelihoods and culture, it is critical for U.N. meetings to see these farm animals from our perspective and help channel climate and biodiversity finance into their potential as a force for good.
Firstly, contrary to popular belief, livestock can be powerful agents of biodiversity conservation when managed correctly. Well-managed grazing systems help maintain ecosystems, control invasive species, and foster the regeneration of diverse native plant life in degraded areas. Pastoralist communities in Kenya, from the Maasai to the Samburu, have long understood this, using livestock grazing as a tool to balance ecosystems and promote biodiversity while providing essential sources of income and producing almost 20% of Kenya’s milk.
And in many conservancies, livestock are intentionally integrated into wildlife conservation strategies. Cattle are grazed rotationally, mimicking natural patterns seen in wild herbivores like zebras and gazelles. This approach helps prevent overgrazing, maintains healthy grasslands, and supports both livestock and wildlife populations.
Secondly, in terms of climate action, the role of livestock is often framed solely around their methane emissions, particularly in the case of ruminant animals like cattle. However, the potential for livestock to contribute to climate solutions is much broader, particularly in places like Africa.
In terms of mitigation, improved rangeland management and the adoption of climate-smart feeding practices can significantly reduce livestock-related emissions. For instance, integrating climate-resilient forages into grazing systems improves both productivity and environmental outcomes.
Moreover, sustainable grazing practices can play a crucial role in lowering the emissions intensity of meat and dairy production through carbon sequestration. Rangelands, often considered wastelands, are actually some of the planet’s largest carbon sinks. When managed properly, they store significant amounts of carbon in their soils, and proper management can contribute as much as 20.92 gigatons of climate mitigation by 2050.
On the adaptation front, livestock are a critical lifeline for communities facing increasing climate variability, including in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands. By moving their livestock across landscapes in response to rainfall variability, pastoralists effectively manage scarce resources while avoiding overgrazing.
This adaptive mobility, coupled with the use of Indigenous livestock breeds adapted to harsh climates, provides a critical buffer against droughts and other climate stresses—even more so when index-based livestock insurance is available. The East African Zebu cattle, for example, are better equipped to survive on limited, poor-quality forage in dry conditions, making them crucial to climate resilience in Kenya.
Lastly, as the global land degradation crisis worsens, it is becoming increasingly clear that sustainable livestock management can be a tool for land restoration and rehabilitation. Somewhere between 25% and 35% of rangelands globally suffer from some form of degradation. If left unattended, they become unproductive, reducing food security and driving people to abandon rural areas. Livestock systems can actually help reverse this trend by promoting soil health and regenerating landscapes.
Sustainable grazing practices, including rotational grazing and controlled stocking densities, allow grasslands to recover and restore soil fertility. By moving livestock strategically across the land, these practices prevent overgrazing and promote the growth of deep-rooted plants, which stabilise the soil and improve water retention. Furthermore, healthy rangelands support a wide variety of plant species, protect watersheds, and improve overall ecosystem resilience.
Which begs the question, if livestock are so critical to all these environmental issues, why does the sector receive so little funding? International climate finance should prioritise support for sustainable livestock systems, recognizing their unique role in tackling broad environmental challenges while providing food, livelihoods, and economic growth.
Livestock are not the enemy in this fight. Rather, they are an integral part of the solution, especially in places like Africa where pastoralist and livestock-keeping communities depend on them for survival.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular