14/01/2021

(AU) Fifty Countries, Not Including Australia, Join Global Coalition At One Planet Summit Vowing To Protect 30 Per Cent Of Land And Sea By 2030

ABC News

Australia was not one of the countries that committed to protect plants and animals. (ABC News: Wiriya Sati)

At least 50 countries committed to protecting 30 per cent of the planet, including land and sea, over the next decade to halt species extinction and address climate change issues, during a global summit aimed at protecting the world's biodiversity.

About 30 leaders, government officials and heads of international organisations participated in the One Planet Summit, which was being held by videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Top US officials were notably absent, as were the leaders of Russia, India and Brazil.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, which was launched in 2019 by Costa Rica, France and Britain to set a target of protecting at least 30 per cent of the planet by 2030, has now been joined by 50 countries.

Australia was not among the 50 countries listed by the High Ambition Coalition, which also included Japan, Italy and Ireland.
The ABC has contacted the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment for comment. 

"We know there is no pathway to tackling climate change that does not involve a massive increase in our efforts to protect and restore nature," UK environment minister Zac Goldsmith said. 

French President Emmanuel Macron (left) says human impact on the environment is a threat to our health. (AP: Ludovic Marin)
A 2019 UN report on biodiversity showed that human activities are putting nature in more trouble now than at any other time in human history, with extinction looming for over 1 million species of plants and animals.

Last year, the UN singled out Australia along with Cameroon and Brazil as countries having experienced at least one extinction in the past decade.

"We know even more clearly amid the crisis we are going through that all our vulnerabilities are interrelated," Mr Macron said.
"Pressure on nature exerted by human activities is increasing inequalities and threatening our health and our security.
"We can change the story if we decide to do it."

Climate change has accelerated the destruction of flora and fauna. (Supplied: The Ocean Agency / XL Catlin Seaview Survey)

Emphasis on protecting biodiversity in light of COVID-19

The summit also launched a program called PREZODE which Mr Macron presented as an unprecedented international initiative to prevent the emergence of zoonotic diseases and pandemics, which is already mobilising over 400 researchers and experts across the world.

The move comes as scientists suspect that the coronavirus that first infected people in China last year came from an animal source, probably bats.

Animals, humans and disease

Around two-thirds of the infectious illnesses we suffer are caused by pathogens we've picked up from wild or domestic animals. ABC RN's Rear Vision explores the history of zoonotic diseases.  Read more

"Pandemic recovery is our chance to change course," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.
"With smart policies and the right investments, we can chart a path that brings health to all, revives economies, builds resilience and rescues biodiversity."
Mr Guterres also stressed that according to the World Economic Forum, emerging business opportunities across nature could create 191 million jobs by 2030.
Other leaders at the summit were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

China, represented by Vice Premier Han Zheng, agreed that "collective efforts" are needed.

The event, organized by France, the United Nations and the World Bank, took place without top US officials, as president-elect Joe Biden, a strong proponent of climate issues, does not take office until January 20.

During his campaign, Mr Biden pledged to better protect biodiversity by preserving 30 per cent of American lands and waters by 2030.

Prince Charles calls for private sector to fund nature alliance

Monday's talks sought to prepare negotiations on biodiversity targets at a UN conference on biodiversity in China in October, after it was postponed last year due to the pandemic.

The UN's global climate summit, the COP26, has also been rescheduled for November in the UK.

'Great walls' of trees
China and Africa are busily planting millions of trees to build "green walls" in a bid to keep deserts at bay. But will it work? Read more
A side conference on Monday focused on investment for Africa's Great Green Wall project, which involves gigantic efforts to stop the Sahara Desert from spreading further south.

Participants welcomed the creation of a so-called accelerator, which is expected to release $US14.3 billion ($18.5 billion) over the next five years to finance the program.

Launched in 2007, it aims to plant an arc of trees running 7,000 kilometres across Africa — from Senegal along the Atlantic all the way to Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden.

Another initiative involves a new coalition of Mediterranean countries working to better protect the sea from pollution and overfishing.

Britain's Prince Charles launched an "urgent appeal" to private sector leaders to join a new investment alliance targeting $US10 billion ($13 billion) by 2022 to finance nature-based solutions. 

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Greta Thunberg At 18: 'I'm Not Telling Anyone What To Do'

The Guardian - 

Environmental activist says she has stopped buying new clothes but will not criticise those who fly or have children

Greta Thunberg: ‘It is not the people who are the problem, it is our behaviour.’  Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Greta Thunberg says she has stopped buying new clothes but does not sit in judgment on others whose lifestyle choices are less environmentally friendly than her own, in an interview to mark her 18th birthday.

Thunberg, whose solo school strike in 2018 snowballed into a global youth movement, stopped flying several years ago, travelling instead by boat. She is vegan and said she had stopped consuming “things”.

Asked what she thought of celebrities who talk about the climate emergency while flying around the world, the teenager declined to criticise them, although warned that others might.

“I don’t care,” she told the Sunday Times magazine. “I’m not telling anyone else what to do, but there is a risk when you are vocal about these things and don’t practise as you preach, then you will become criticised for that and what you are saying won’t be taken seriously.”

Greta met the Dalai Lama virtually on Saturday.

Avoiding long flights is one of the most effective ways individuals can reduce their carbon emissions but the biggest impact is from not having children, according to studies.

Nevertheless Thunberg was not about to tell people not to procreate. “I don’t think it’s selfish to have children,” she said. “It is not the people who are the problem, it is our behaviour.”

While her lifestyle is far removed from that of most western teenagers, Thunberg says she does not feel she is missing out.

On clothes, she said: “The worst-case scenario I guess I’ll buy second-hand, but I don’t need new clothes. I know people who have clothes, so I would ask them if I could borrow them or if they have something they don’t need any more. I don’t need to fly to Thailand to be happy. I don’t need to buy clothes I don’t need, so I don’t see it as a sacrifice.”

Thunberg was famously told to “chill” by Donald Trump but she said her passion and concern about the environment did not get her down. “I don’t sit and speculate about how the future might turn out, I see no use in doing that,” she said. “As long as you are doing everything you can now, you can’t let yourself become depressed or anxious.”

She named her ideal birthday present as a “promise from everyone that they will do everything they can” for the planet. However, when pressed on a more tangible gift, she opted for replacement headlights for her bike, explaining: “In Sweden, it gets very dark in the winter.”

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Climate Crisis: A Rapidly Declining Insect Population Spells Trouble For Humans

Inverse - Tara Yarlagadda

"Nature is being cut, rended, burned, despoiled — tortured by a thousand cuts."


Apart from bug-loving entomologists and innovative roboticists, most humans regard insects with a mixture of disdain and disgust. Our aversion to insects means we neglect to consider these tiny critters' fate in the climate crisis. Instead, we give attention to starving polar bears and other awe-inspiring megafauna affected by environmental disasters.

They are deserving of it, but a special publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences gives us a new reason to think about how human-driven climate change and environmental damage has affected the world's insect population.

Hailing from a variety of scholarly backgrounds, the experts on the issue's 12 papers all share one thing in common: growing concern over insect biodiversity, which is declining in some populations at an alarming rate of 1-2 percent each year.

A figure from a study in the special publication, showing insects that are beneficial to humans. Figure courtesy of Kawahara et al. LARGE IMAGE

What's new

In his introduction to this special feature, David Wagner, a professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, summarizes the "insect apocalypse" in a simple statement: "Nature is under siege." No surprise: humans are to blame, largely due to our growing population, which has rapidly exploited Earth's natural resources, used up nearly all arable land for agriculture, and pushed the planet to the brink with the climate crisis.

"It is clear that 7.8 billion [people] are already using more resources annually than the world can yield annually," Wagner tells Inverse. "Nature is being cut, rended, burned, despoiled—tortured by a thousand cuts."

Wagner calls out three factors that have particularly contributed to the insect's decline:
  • Climate change
  • Habitat loss
  • Degradation
Wagner focuses particularly on the role our lavish lifestyles in the developed world have played in contributing to agricultural intensification:
"Overconsumption demands greater agricultural production--achieved by increasing yields, industrializing agriculture, increasing pesticide usage, manufacturing and adding unprecedented amount of nitrogen to the earth’s geological nitrogen budget, and, worst, deforesting the planet to make yet more croplands."
Increased agricultural activity since World War II can be directly linked to insect biodiversity loss, accord to Wagner.

"Agriculture threatens insects and nature on many axes: foremost through loss of habitat, but also by exacerbating global warming, elevating exposure to pesticides, nitrification of lands and waters that have been geologically nitrogen limited, and more," Wagner says.
"Climate change, unlike most other anthropogenic stressors, has the potential to drive extinction far from sites of human activity."
These agricultural "megafarms" also make it difficult for even the tiniest creature — like an insect — to pass over them, further limiting the natural habitat of bugs, according to Wagner.

A never-ending boom of agricultural growth has also contributed to the other big issue decimating insects: climate change.

"Moreover, agricultural expansion, further exacerbates global climate change by destroying carbon sinks — forests, especially in the tropics — agriculture, and especially livestock," Wagner says.

Wagner notes that these activities generate enormous quantities of methane, which he calls "one of the most ominous of the greenhouse gasses."

These climate change impacts are most devastating to insects in certain places, such as the tropics.

Wagner adds, "One of the most important themes or questions that came out of the 12-paper PNAS collection is that the impacts of climate change could be much greater than previously recognized: in tropical forests, cloud forests, mountains, and other fragile communities."

A figure illustrating insect diversity from Wagner's introduction. Figure courtesy Wagner et al. Images credit: Michael Thomas (photographer) LARGE IMAGE

Digging into the details

 The feature publication presents a variety of perspectives on insect biodiversity, though not all of them are in agreement on the specifics of insect population trends. For example, not all insects are in decline everywhere.

A study from Puerto Rico, led by Timothy D. Schowalter and colleagues, directly challenges previous research that indicated a devastating loss of insects in the region. Furthermore, the scientists found that frequent storm systems, rather than global warming, affected insect populations in Puerto Rico.

Plus, plenty of bugs are doing just fine during the apocalypse. The tenacious cockroach will probably be A-OK, much to the disappointment of homeowners and renters everywhere.

"Bed bugs and some cockroaches will do just fine and likely increase in our cities," Wagner says. He adds that as the planet warms, insects may expand their natural ranges and increase in places that have become more habitable, such as the Arctic.

"No matter what we do to the planet, there will be insect winners and losers… but [the] number of losers are increasing at an unacceptable and unprecedented rate," Wagner says. "My guess, is that future generations will look back at our time, and regard our actions — and inactions — with great disapproval and dismay."

Although the special publication notes that insect populations are most in decline in "areas of high human activity," the biodiversity loss has been recorded all around the globe.

"Climate change, unlike most other anthropogenic stressors, has the potential to drive extinction far from sites of human activity, deep into mountainous regions, rainforests, badlands, and other wild places," Wagner says.

It's clear that more data is needed so we can paint a more complete picture of insect biodiversity loss around the globe.

"There are still too little data to know how the steep insect declines reported for western Europe and California’s Central Valley—areas of high human density and activity—compare to population trends in sparsely populated regions and wildlands," writes Wagner in his introduction.

But some scientists are working to tackle that data problem. A study by two 'insectometers," Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs, represents a bold move by Costa Rica to create a biological inventory of insects, which could help with species conservation.

An illustration of the 'death by a thousand cuts' on insect populations. Illustration: Virginia R. Wagner (artist) LARGE  IMAGE

Why it matters

From the special publication, we can learn that biodiversity loss has hit some insect species harder than others.

"The species that are being lost at the greatest clip tend to [be] the bigger species, more specialized species, those with complex species. These are being replaced with the weedy, generalized, and plebeian species," Wagner says.

These specialized species perform unique roles in different ecosystems, so their loss is a significant blow that has huge ripple effects for other species — including humans. Insects provide many essential functions that are vital to human life, including fruit and vegetable pollination; decomposition of leaves and wood; and pest control on crop plants.

"Insects tether together our terrestrial ad freshwater ecosystems," Wagner says. These tiny bugs comprise "the stuff of food webs—the very fabric of nature," according to Wagner.

Therefore insect biodiversity loss is directly intertwined with human existence. A UN report concluded that biodiversity loss is as significant a problem for humans as climate change.

What's next

The studies have far-reaching implications for tackling the climate crisis, since global warming directly contributes to declining insect populations.

The clock is increasingly running out on climate change, according to Wagner, but we can still make an impact if we act decisively.

"We must find ways to mitigate our collective impacts, reduce consumption, and learn to live sustainably," Wagner says.

In a study led by Akito Kawahara, researchers provide eight straightforward ways that individuals can tackle the insect biodiversity crisis, ranging from reducing pesticide use to growing more native plants.

But, ultimately, Wagner suggests that we must think bigger and tackle systemic issues that contribute to climate change.
"The personal and collective actions of individuals, communities, and nations, i.e., how we choose to live, can also help society to close the gap, between what we use and nature can provide, and to help build a just and sustainable future, one where we are using and exploiting nature at a rate where she has time to heal, maintain, and flourish."
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