#Convention on Biological Diversity

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Over the past two weeks, leaders from more than 175 countries have gathered in Cali, Colombia, for the 16th gathering of parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The topic at hand? Preventing the utter collapse of nature, which is well underway, according to a wide body of research. 

A suite of strategies could help prevent this, but they cost money—and lots of it. Experts estimate that we will need roughly $700 billion each year to fund the scale of conservation necessary to combat widespread biodiversity loss, on top of what countries already spend. 

One of the main agenda items at the UN biodiversity talks is figuring out where this money will come from. The meeting is set to end today, but talks are ongoing. While there was some progress on this front, countries are still at odds about who will bear the brunt of these costs—and how.

Closing the Gap: Members that signed on to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (a treaty from which the U.S. is notably absent) agreed in 2022 on a historic plan to “halt and reverse nature loss.” This global biodiversity framework outlines more than 20 targets and goals for countries to meet by the end of the decade, including protecting 30 percent of land and seas. 

To do that, the plan says we must close the $700 billion financing gap. This may sound like a lot but, as Vox’s Benji Jones points out, it pales in comparison to global gross domestic product, which adds up to more than $100 trillion. Increased funding would be used to help nations, especially in developing countries and Indigenous lands, conserve nature within their borders by establishing protected areas, completing restoration projects and increasing sustainability on farms. 

Countries agreed to submit their individual plans to meet biodiversity targets by the start of this year’s UN talks. However, more than 80 percent of member parties missed the deadline. A few more governments have put forth plans in the past two weeks, but progress is still lagging, according to Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation nonprofit. 

“It doesn’t signal that we’re taking this next step very seriously, and it gives a really sound indicator that we maybe are going to be in deep trouble in terms of actually trying to meet the framework that the party set at the last [UN biodiversity talks],” she told me. “We’re way behind the ball.” 

Experts say the majority of the funding gap could be addressed by reducing subsidies that fuel the destruction of nature. By some estimates, wealthy countries and businesses provide around $1.7 trillion in subsidies and tax incentives for agriculture, fishing, fossil fuel development and other industries. This week, several world leaders and nonprofits called for a rapid phaseout of these incentives, Justin Catanoso reports for Mongabay. 

“We use nature because it is valuable. We abuse nature because it is free,” Barry Gardiner, a long-time Labour Party member of the British Parliament, said Sunday at COP16. “The failure to properly value nature leads to shortsighted decision making, and perverse subsidies that damage the global ecosystem.” 

Deliberations over finances are ongoing. 

[biodiversityday]

Nairobi Observance of the International Day for Biodiversity 2024.

The United Nations has proclaimed May 22 as International Day for Biological Diversity (IDB) to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. When first created by the Second Committee of the UN General Assembly in late 1993, 29 December (the date of entry into force of the Convention of Biological Diversity), was designated. In December 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted 22 May as IDB, to commemorate the adoption of the text of the Convention on 22 May 1992 by the Nairobi Final Act of the Conference for the Adoption of the Agreed Text of the Convention on Biological Diversity. This was partly done because it was difficult for many countries to plan and carry out suitable celebrations for the date of 29 December, given the number of holidays that coincide around that time of year.

Watch the International Day for Biodiversity Celebrations!

[worldecologyday]

Principle 1 - Ecosystem restoration contributes to the SDGs and the goals of the Rio Conventions.

Restoration projects, programmes and initiatives at all spatial scales, from individual sites to large landscapes and seascapes, play an essential role in achieving ambitious global targets for sustaining life on Earth. Successful ecosystem restoration aims to contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to end poverty, conserve biodiversity, combat climate change and improve livelihoods for everyone, everywhere. The SDGs are unlikely to be met unless ecosystem degradation is stopped and ecosystem restoration is undertaken at cumulative scales of hundreds of millions of hectares globally. Effective restoration simultaneously supports achievement of the biodiversity, climate and land-degradation neutrality goals of the Rio Conventions – CBD, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – and allied global initiatives. Preventing, halting and reversing ecosystem degradation, as a contribution to global targets, is a shared responsibility among all public and private sectors and stakeholders at local, national and international levels.

[avinash120]

Loss of biodiversity and the new Global Biodiversity Framework

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is an international treaty established to promote sustainable development and conserve biological diversity. Adopted at the Earth Summit in 1992, it aims to protect biodiversity's intrinsic value as a foundation for sustainable livelihoods. The CBD focuses on three objectives: conserving biological diversity, promoting sustainable use of its components, and ensuring fair benefit-sharing from genetic resources. It highlights the importance of indigenous knowledge and community involvement in conservation. Regular meetings of the Conference of the Parties (COP) facilitate collaboration among member states to address emerging challenges and enhance global biodiversity efforts. For more details, see convention on biological diversity.

[markhorday]

Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 2 May 2024.

The General Assembly, Reaffirming its resolution 70/1 of 25 September 2015, entitled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, by which it adopted a comprehensive, far-reaching and people-centred set of universal and transformative Sustainable Development Goals and targets, Reaffirming also its resolutions 53/199 of 15 December 1998 and 61/185 of 20 December 2006 on the proclamation of international years, and Economic and Social Council resolution 1980/67 of 25 July 1980 on international years and anniversaries, in particular paragraphs 1 to 10 of the annex thereto on the agreed criteria for the proclamation of international years, as well as paragraphs 13 and 14, in which it is stated that an international day or year should not be proclaimed before the basic arrangements for its organization and financing have been made, Reaffirming further the intrinsic value of wildlife and its various contributions, including its ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic contributions to sustainable development and human wellbeing, and recognizing that wild fauna in their many beautiful and varied forms are an irreplaceable part of the natural systems of the Earth which must be protected for this generation and the generations to come, Stressing the urgent need to address the unprecedented global decline in biodiversity, including by preventing the extinction of threatened species, improving and sustaining their conservation status and restoring and safeguarding ecosystems that provide essential functions and services, including services related to water, health, livelihoods and well-being,

Underlining that the markhor (Capra falconeri) is an iconic and ecologically significant species found across the mountainous regions of Central and South Asia, including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and recognizing that the markhor was categorized as “near threatened” in 2014 and is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, and has been included in appendix I to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora since 1992, Recognizing that preserving the markhor and its natural habitat is an ecological imperative and a significant opportunity to bolster the regional economy, foster conservation efforts and promote sustainable tourism and economic growth and that conservation efforts will benefit the ecosystem, Stressing that, besides its ecological value, the markhor is a valuable species that contributes to the local economy and conservation initiatives, Recognizing national and regional initiatives for range State cooperation, transboundary approaches and mechanisms at the regional level to foster conservation of the markhor,

Noting the upcoming Ninth World Conference on Mountain Ungulates, to be held in Dushanbe from 12 to 15 October 2024, Recognizing that the greatest threats to the survival of the markhor are habitat loss, illegal hunting, including poaching, and climate change, Recalling its resolution 78/155 of 19 December 2023, entitled “Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and its contribution to sustainable development”, in which it called upon parties to the Convention and stakeholders to strengthen international cooperation measures for the fulfillment of obligations contained in the Convention, Recognizing efforts for the conservation of the markhor, including the establishment of breeding programmes and the development of a regional strategy and national action plans for the conservation of the markhor in some range States that aim to protect the species throughout its range,

Decides to proclaim 24 May the International Day of the Markhor;

Invites all Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, other international and regional organizations, civil society, non-governmental organizations, individuals and other relevant stakeholders to observe the International Day of the Markhor, as appropriate;

Invites all relevant stakeholders to give due consideration to enhancing international and regional cooperation in support of efforts to conserve the markhor, given its role in the overall ecosystem;

Invites the United Nations Environment Programme to facilitate the observance of the International Day of the Markhor, mindful of the provisions contained in the annex to Economic and Social Council resolution 1980/67;

Stresses that the cost of all activities that may arise from the implementation of the present resolution should be met from voluntary contributions and that such activities would be subject to the availability and provision of voluntary contributions;

Requests the Secretary-General to bring the present resolution to the attention of all Member States, the organizations of the United Nations system and civil society organizations for appropriate observance.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 78/278 - International Day of the Markhor.

Seventy-eighth session Agenda item 13: Integrated and coordinated implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the major United Nations conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields.

77th plenary meeting - 2 May 2024.

[intlforestday]

Statement by the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity on behalf the International Day of Forests 2024; March 21st ''Forests and Innovation''.

Forests harbor some 80 per cent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity; they support more than a billion people with food, shelter, income, and energy. And they provide three quarters of the world’s accessible freshwater. Containing over half of the global carbon stock in soils and vegetation, forests also support us in combating climate change. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, or the Biodiversity Plan, is a comprehensive plan to protect forests and all ecosystems. Its goals are closely aligned with the Global Forest Goals. They aim to to protect and restore nature; to prosper with nature; to share benefits fairly; and to invest and collaborate for nature. Over the past year, we have seen bold actions on forest conservation regionally and globally. A number of countries have achieved major reductions in the rate of deforestation. The Belem Declaration on the future of the Amazon Forest, the Three Basins Summit, and the Climate Change Conference all set renewed commitments to step up action to protect forests. But forests continue to face major threats. The theme this year for International Day of Forests “Forests and Innovation: New Solutions for a Better World” is thus very pertinent. We need innovation and new solutions to provide early warning of forest fires and other threats, to combat organized crime, and to promote sustainable forest management and fair supply chains in support of a sustainable bioeconomy. New solutions can build on the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous peoples and local communities and help to secure their rights over land and resources. Let us all work together to protect forests and to implement the Biodiversity Plan. Let us work to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity by 2030, towards our vision on living in harmony with nature. We can all be part of the Plan.

David Cooper, Acting Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, International Day of Forests 2024.

[internationalwomenday]

Statement by the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity on behalf the International Women’s Day 2024, March 8th.

Gender equality benefits us all. Yet achieving it remains one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time. We must invest in women and girls to achieve sustainable development, justice and equity, and to achieve the goals and targets of the Biodiversity Plan. Currently there is a staggering 360 billion USD annual deficit in spending on genderequality measures. The current economic system is exacerbating poverty and inequality and is negatively impacting the environment. This reality disproportionately affects women and other marginalized groups around the world. Shifting towards and investing in a green economy is one of the ways to amplify women’s voices. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, known also as “the Biodiversity Plan” aims to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity by 2030 for the benefit of people and planet. Women play critical roles in biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, ecosystem restoration and environmental justice. So, as recognized in the Plan, successful implementation will depend on ensuring gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, and on reducing inequalities. A specific target (Target 23) aims to ensure gender equality through a gender-responsive approach, recognizing the equal rights and access to land and natural resources for women and girls, and their full, effective, meaningful, and informed participation and leadership at all levels of action, engagement, policy, and decision-making processes related to biodiversity. The Biodiversity Plan is accompanied by a very ambitious Gender Plan of Action. This sets out concrete actions to be taken by all actors to enable women and girls to fully participate and contribute in implementation. This International Women’s Day, let’s agree to #InvestInWomen – to invest in our future: a gender equal, just and sustainable future.

Statement by the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity on behalf the International Women’s Day 2024, March 8th. "Invest in Women: accelerate progress".

[delicatelysublimeforester]

Youth Leaders Rise

[wildlifeday]

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Acting Executive Secretary Message for World Wildlife Day 2024.

Executive Secretary, Mr David Cooper of the Convention on Biological Diversity on World Wildlife Day 2024.

[indigenouspeopleday]

Statement by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples 2023.

Statement by Acting Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, David Cooper EN | video statement

[wetlandsday]

What percentage of the world's species live or breed in wetlands?

20%

40%

50%

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Vox:

The United States is, by many measures, a global environmental leader, barring four years under former President Donald Trump. It has some of the strongest environmental laws in the world, such as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. The country invests billions of dollars to fight climate change and wildlife declines. It also produces much of the world’s leading environmental research.

The current administration, led by President Joe Biden, prides itself on these environmental achievements.

That’s what makes this so surprising: The US is the only nation in the world, other than the Vatican, that hasn’t joined the most important global treaty to conserve nature. The treaty, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), is designed to safeguard Earth’s life support systems, its animals, and ecosystems. And it’s not just some inconsequential agreement: It’s the best shot the world has at staving off ecological collapse.

This week, the Convention is meeting in Cali, Colombia, for an event known as COP16. Its members — governments from more than 190 countries — are negotiating plans for protecting forests and oceans, including how to raise around $700 billion for conservation. Critically, it’s the first meeting under the Convention since 2022, when its members agreed to a historic deal to stop biodiversity loss, known as the Global Biodiversity Framework. The framework includes 23 targets to reach by 2030, including conserving at least 30 percent of all land and ocean.

The US does have a presence at COP16. The country sent more than three dozen federal officials from the State Department, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and other divisions. And these representatives can influence the negotiations, two senior government officials told Vox.

As non-members to the Convention, that influence has a clear limit. The US can’t formally participate in negotiations or object to decisions at COP16. Those decisions could be administrative — such as where COP17 will take place — or relate to, say, what big drug companies should pay for using the DNA of wild organisms. The US is also noticeably absent from public discussions among environmental ministers that anchor COP16.

Dozens of countries signed the agreement then and there, including the UK, China, and Canada. But the US — then under President George H.W. Bush — was notably not one of them. And it largely came down to politics: It was an election year that pitted Bush against then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and a number of senators in Bush’s party opposed signing the treaty, citing a wide range of concerns.

Among them was a fear that US biotech companies would have to share their intellectual property related to genetics with other countries. There were also widespread concerns that the US would be responsible for helping poorer nations — financially and otherwise — protect their natural resources and that the agreement would put more environmental regulations in place in the US. (At the time, there was already pushback among the timber industry and property rights groups on existing environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act.)

[biodiversityday]

SBI-5: Plenary 6 at COP16 – United Nations Biodiversity Conference 2024.

Fifth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation: 6th Plenary (Agenda Item 2 (continued). Adoption of the recommendations; Item 3. Other matters. ; Item 4. Adoption of the report. Item 5. Closure of the meeting).

Watch the SBI-5: Plenary 6 at COP16 – United Nations Biodiversity Conference 2024!

[worldecologyday]

Ten principles that underpin ecosystem restoration.

Towards this end, UN Decade partners engaged in a multi-stage process to develop principles for ecosystem restoration. The process began with a synthesis of published principles for distinct types of restorative activities. The synthesis was then used during an expert consultation process, to identify priority themes and to inform an initial, draft set of principles. These were widely shared through an online global consultation process; feedback from the consultation informed the development of the final principles presented here. The principles are broadly based on the Ecosystem Approach and the Short-Term Action Plan for Ecosystem Restoration (STAPER), both adopted by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as well as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Principles for Nature-Based Solutions,Principles for Ecosystem-Based Approaches, Principles for a Landscape Approach, Principles for Forest and Landscape Restoration,the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER)’s International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration, the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM)´s Rewilding Principles, and FAO´s Principles and Approaches for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, Agroecology, Sustainable Land Management and the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries. The ten principles for ecosystem restoration include a first principle that orients restoration in the context of the UN Decade, followed by nine best-practice principles. These best-practice principles detail the essential tenets of ecosystem restoration that should be followed to maximize net gain for native biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, and human health and well-being, across all biomes, sectors and regions. The principles are complementary and should, therefore, be read and considered altogether. Regardless of the type of land ownership and the types of stakeholders engaged, these principles can improve restoration outcomes for all types of projects, programmes and initiatives. As an overarching guideline, it is important to note that while ecosystem restoration and other nature based solutions are essential for, inter alia, climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection and land degradation neutrality, restoration is not a substitute solution for conservation, nor for a rapid and deep decarbonization of the world’s economy. As such, investments in restoration in the context of climate action must be based on sound science-based targets and a clear pathway towards net zero emissions. Ecosystem restoration and the sound stewardship of nature can only be successful, in the long term, in the context of a wider socio-economic transition towards a nature-positive economy, by decoupling economic growth from unsustainable use of natural resources, and detoxifying and decarbonizing economic activity.

[lurking-latinist]

👀👀 wanna say more about your eusocial timelord theory?

when you sent this ask like a year ago apparently I did not, for which I apologize.

now it's the wee small hours and I'm trying to clear out my asks. but eusocial time lords are so fun. forgive anything that doesn't make sense/jars weirdly in this, I'm trying to explain some quite spitbally worldbuilding.

among other things, it's an explanation for (1) why are there so few time ladies on screen and (2) that very strange thing in I think it's in Gallifrey where Pandora was 'the first female President' and apparently that's a big deal? but like why would a different planet (where they regenerate!!) have the same manifestations of sexism as we have? and also vaguely riffing on the VNAs lore that Gallifrey used to be a matriarchy and Rassilon overthrew it, but also kind of completely transforming that lore.

so forget gender, this is not about gender. "male"/"female" is at best a very rough translation of the binary that Gallifreyans are concerned with, which is worker/queen. They are bees!

The Time Ladies (i.e. Gallifreyans played by female human actors) that we see in the pre-War era (all of this applies to the pre-War era)--Romana, the Rani, Flavia, Inquisitor Darkel--are biologically the equivalent of insect queens. (And the Doctor, the Master, Borusa, the Floating Time Lord, Commander Maxil, etc. etc. are the equivalent of worker bees. The fact that the former all present as female and the latter all present as male is just sort of a translation convention/useful coincidence, I guess.) Gallifreyans evolved from a eusocial species and their early political structures were developments of the hive structure, with reproductive capacity strongly linked to political authority.

Presumably this is what Rassilon, or whatever revolutionary Rassilon stole credit from, is supposed to have overturned--the link between reproductive capacity and political authority. But in my version, it was before that that Looming became a thing: the queens had control of the Looms, so it was the ultimate refinement of their arts and sciences, and it was their way of getting rid of whatever drone class there used to be, if they weren't already parthenogenetic.

And that's why there's the stereotype in Gallifrey--mentioned in connection with Pandora, suggested as a concern about Romana--that a "female" (queen) President will be autocratic. It's seen as a potential return to "how things once were."

And then I did a lot of worldbuilding for how government worked at a stage in history when there was a sort of uneasy balance between reproductive and political power, but that was for a fic Moki was working on and I think she's still working on it, so no spoilers!

So what you end up with is a hive structure where the role of the queen has been sort of abstracted away into... well, the hive itself. The power at the heart of Gallifrey is Gallifrey. I feel like that explains a lot of what's wrong with them.

There might be another branch of the species that evolved away from eusocial structure into something more like solitary bees and that's the Shobogans, possibly, since nobody seems at all clear what the Shobogans are.

Also I read that with naked mole rats, the only eusocial mammal, there are a few in each colony that are predisposed to not fit into the colony and instead go and wander and find other colonies, to promote genetic diversity, and I'm just saying, renegades.

And after the War when there are often maybe two Gallifreyans left, that's why whatever's left of the hivemind keeps trying to get at least one of them to turn out as a Time Lady. Fortunately for the universe, neither of them seems that interested in reproducing.

[akaashmaharaj]

Moving the UN from Prim Words to Urgent Deeds

Our world is enduring the sixth mass extinction in its history: the Anthropocene Extinction. Species are disappearing at a thousand times the natural rate.

Unlike the great dyings of past epochs, this one is driven not by natural planetary catastrophes, but by human activity.

My role as a member of Canada’s state delegation at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is to wield Nature Canada’s policy expertise, to press the treaty from prim words to urgent deeds.

🌱 http://via.maharaj.org/cop16