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Leading scientists warn of global impacts as Antarctic nears tipping points

As governments convene for the annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) June 14-24, 2021, an Expert Working Group1 of leading Antarctic scientists warns that climate change is pushing this remote polar region, which connects all our ocean basins and keeps our planet habitable, towards ...

The 'grand tour' Atlantic Ocean water takes around the world

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and colleagues have created an estimate of the journey water makes around the world ocean basins. They used information from more than 1 billion points of data collected over 25 years.

Is carbon the 'crop' of the future?

An increasing awareness and concern about the environment, changes in government policy, America's re-entry into the Paris Agreement and a robust demand for carbon offsets all point toward an appetite for a different type of agricultural crop—carbon.

Nearly half of Turkey's bird species can be seen at Reyhanlı Dam

Reyhanlı Dam in southern Turkey's Hatay province is proving to be a key point on the seasonal migration route for birds. The dam has only been operational for a year, but it has already become a haven for birds and bird watchers alike with nearly half of the known bird species in Turkey spotted ...

Diana McCaulay | Protecting the Palisadoes

Thanks to The Sunday Gleaner (May 22, 2021) for the story re the sea defence works on the Palisadoes tombolo, pointing out the all-too-common situation that the mitigation measures identified as necessary to avoid environmental damage have not been done 10 years later.

Minister

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
mnretpalau@gmail.com

Planting a million trees in the semi-arid desert to combat climate change

Reflecting on her childhood, Tucson, Ariz., Mayor Regina Romero points to her father as the figure who lit an environmentalist fire within her.

How to develop the urban forest

Nature is in trouble. A keynote research report, The State of Nature 2019 identified that 58 per cent of UK species have declined since 1970 (by which point nature had already been depleted).

Pay dirt: $200 million plan for Australia’s degraded soil is a crucial turning point

The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe, the water we drink – it’s all underpinned by healthy and productive soils. Since Europeans arrived in Australia, the continent’s soil has steadily been degraded. Yet, until now, we’ve lacked an integrated national approach to managing thi ...

It stores pollution 30 times faster than forest. What is blue carbon?

At Australia’s westernmost point lies the Coral Coast, a land of strange extremities. Marine megafauna is more accessible than ever before. Tourists swim with humpbacks and manta rays and whale sharks. They hand-feed playful dolphins that obligingly stick out scarred and blemished dorsal fins sc ...

How Battling Climate Change Can Help The Economy

The strength of the U.S. economy points not only to recovery from the depths of the pandemic, but also expansion above pre-pandemic levels. Forecasts are for GDP growth above 6% for this year—the growth rate in the first quarter alone was a phenomenal 6.4%. In a widely held view, JPMorgan Chase ...

‘Profound ignorance’: Microbes, a missing piece in the biodiversity puzzle

Scientists are clear: the number of plant and animal species on Earth is declining. The climate crisis, habitat loss, pollution and the illegal wildlife trade are all pushing species toward extinction. Researchers especially worry that losing too much biodiversity could push the earth past a tip ...

World should act with sense of responsibility and unity, and work to foster a community of life for man and nature: Xi Jinping

President Xi Jinping pointed out that climate change has posed severe challenges to human survival and development. Faced with unprecedented challenges in global environmental governance, the international community needs to come up with unprecedented ambition and action, discuss ways to tackle ...

The difference between 2˚C and 1.5˚C of warming — why half a degree matters so much

We’re already past the point of preventing global warming — it’s happening. The only question now is how bad it’s gonna get. There’s a big gap between 1.5ºC and 2ºC. Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC could mean 11 million fewer people exposed to extreme heat, 61 million fewer people exposed to dr ...

M. Mohamed Ali Dridi

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
dridi_alitn@yahoo.fr

Biodiversity Act passes at Province House, regulations still to come

MLAs passed Nova Scotia's beleaguered Biodiversity Act late Tuesday night after more than three hours of debate that included pointed criticism from the opposition parties and the lands and forestry minister pushing back against the suggestion that not enough consultation went into drafting the ...

Mr. Hongkoo Kang

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
kooku757@korea.kr

WHO Covid-19 report shows clear link between biodiversity loss and zoonotic disease – Greenpeace reaction

In its official report on SARS-CoV-2’s origins the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed to the potential disease risks of contact between wildlife and people, showing the life-threatening risk of natural ecosystem destruction, which is breaking down the buffer zone scientists say protects us ...

Safe and resilient forests: Commission works for wildfire prevention in Europe and globally

Today, following the International Day of Forests, the Commission has published new guidelines to facilitate a better understanding of land-based wildfire prevention and effective responses. They point towards prevention measures that can be taken through governance, planning and forest manageme ...

The Amazon May Now Actually Be Making Climate Change Worse, Scientists Warn

It's no secret that the world's largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon, is under immense pressure, nearing an ecological tipping point and at risk of collapsing.

Mr. Ubaydullo Akramov

CBD Primary NFP, ABS NFP, Cartagena Protocol Primary NFP, Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
akramov.ub@gmail.com

Sra. Consuelo López López

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point, BCH NFP
consuelo.lopez@conacyt.mx

Ms. Anastasia Pagida

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
anastasia.pagida@ec.europa.eu

Is soil health restricted to agricultural activities?

Soil is considered a viable living ecosystem in itself as it performs numerous functionalities that not only serve as a foundation of agricultural activities but also act as a key focal point for the growth and developmental activities of a nation.

Declaring key ocean habitats off-limits to human activities protects biodiversity and guards against climate change

Ocean life is increasingly threatened: offshore drilling has polluted ocean waters while overfishing has stripped fish populations of their abundance, pushing stocks to the point of collapse.

Climate Change Tracker: Why 2021 is a crucial year to stop global warming

2021 is already shaping up as an important year for climate change mitigation. As scientist and author Michael E. Mann wrote in Newsweek a few days ago, this year could well mark the tipping point for climate action. This is in no small degree a result of the US rejoining the 2015 Paris Agreemen ...

Retroviruses are re-writing the koala genome and causing cancer

The koala retrovirus (KoRV) is a virus which, like other retroviruses such as HIV, inserts itself into the DNA of an infected cell. At some point in the past 50,000 years, KoRV has infected the egg or sperm cells of koalas, leading to offspring that carry the retrovirus in every cell in their body.

Mauritius - a Fisherman's Life Amid Covid-19 and an Oil-Polluted Ocean

"From where we live, we could see that the MV Wakashio had run aground on the reefs," - 39-year-old Bimsen Beeharry.Life was going well for 39-year-old Mauritian fisherman Bimsen Beeharry when COVID-19 hit in early 2020, prompting authorities to impose a lockdown and suspend fishing. The COVID-1 ...

Possible irreversible changes to sub-systems prior to reaching climate change tipping points

Recently a pair of researchers with the University of Copenhagen published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describing their work looking into the possibility of changes to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the circumstances that could lead ...

Ms. Anna Mazmanyan

CBD Primary NFP, SBSTTA NFP, ABS NFP, Cartagena Protocol Primary NFP, Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point, BCH NFP
a.mazmanyan@env.am

Adaptation Can Compound Climate Change Impacts on Energy and Water

In 2014, as California was in the midst of one of the worst droughts in its recorded history, Julia Szinai was working for an electric utility. The worst years of the drought were still ahead, but the impacts of the dry spell on California’s energy system were already clear to Szinai. As water l ...

Ambition to action – could 2021 be a turning point for climate change and localism?

The lead clean growth researcher at Localis, Grace Newcombe, writes on why 2021 could be the ‘environmental super year’ that campaigners have longed for. Initially forecast to be a green ‘super year’, and despite Boris’ pledge for a ‘defining year of climate action’, 2020 did not go as anticipated.

Biodiversity is its own catalyst – to a point

For decades, scientists have wrestled with rival theories to explain how interactions between species, like competition, influence biodiversity. Tracking microbial life across the planet, researchers from McGill University show that biodiversity does in fact foster further diversity in microbiom ...

These are the ‘positive’ tipping points that could slow global warming

There may be light at the end of the tunnel in the battle to reduce carbon emissions. Governments and institutions could help halt carbon emissions with just a few carefully selected policy measures, according to a new paper, which looked at the experience of the energy industry and changing tre ...

Climate change: what would 4°C of global warming feel like?

Another year, another climate record broken. Globally, 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year ever recorded. This was all the more remarkable given that cool conditions in the Pacific Ocean – known as La Niña – began to emerge in the second half of the year. The Earth’s mean surface temperature ...

Mr. Josphat N. Muchiri

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point, BCH NFP
jmuchiri@biosafetykenya.go.ke

Dr. Anil Jasinghe

CBD Primary NFP, ABS NFP, Cartagena Protocol Primary NFP, Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
sec@env.gov.lk

Positive ‘tipping points’ offer hope for climate crisis

A tipping point is a moment when a small change triggers a large, often irreversible response, researchers have previously warned that the world is dangerously close to several tipping points that could accelerate climate change.

Biodiversity Loss: Alarm Bell Tolls – Analysis

Biodiversity loss is one of the most pressing challenges humanity faces today. All the recently published reports on biodiversity – the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystems, the Living Planet Report, the Global Forest Resources Assessment Report and the Global Biodiversity Out ...

Review of the coordinates of the National Focal Points for the Global Taxonomy Initiative

Reference: SCBD/SSSF/AS/JSH/VA/KM/89336 (2021-002)
To: CBD National Focal Points; Cartagena Protocol Focal Points; ABS Focal Points; SBSTTA Focal Points; GTI Focal Points; Consortium of Scientific Partners on Biodiversity; indigenous peoples and local communities and relevant organizations

English 

Transformative Adaptation to Climate Change in Southeast Asian Coastal Cities: Entry Points for Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City, December 2020

This study is part of the UNRISD project “Transformative Adaptation to Climate Change in Southeast Asian Coastal Cities” which explores adaptation decisionmaking processes and barriers to transformative solutions in order to inform more progressive policy making in the context of Southeast Asian ...

Weak policy oversight could be pushing Brazilian forests closer to a tipping point

Home to more than 60% of the Amazon rainforest, the largest tropical forest in the world, Brazil is beyond rich in biodiversity and life. The country is also rife with deforestation, and violations of environmental laws and Indigenous people’s rights.

Electric cars and vegan diets: Are 'good' climate tipping points at hand?

Not all climate tipping points are bad - and some good ones may be just on the horizon. Scientist Tim Lenton explains the shifts in behavior and technology that could soon spur large-scale climate action

Mass lake drainage in Alaskan tundra another sign of climate change: researchers

Scientists say a year in which almost 200 tundra lakes drained away could point to what’s in store for Canada’s North. Between 2017 and 2018, 192 lakes in northwest Alaska lost at least a quarter of their area as the permafrost that held them melted.

New Map Developed To Show Distribution Of Bee Species, Populations Around The World

In an effort to understand where the bee population reside the most as well as to record different bee species and conserve them, researchers have created a global map that shows where bees live around the world. The map is supposed to act as a jump-off point for future bee-related research.

Only A Balanced Approach To Ocean & Inland Aquaculture Will Nourish The World, Research In Nature Communications Asserts

New research evaluates claims that ocean aquaculture is the next sustainable and equitable food frontier, points to a balanced approach that includes land-based aquaculture as essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Megaprojects risk pushing forests past tipping point – report

Infrastructure megaprojects risk pushing the world’s remaining forests past a “dangerous tipping point” and making climate targets unachievable, a report says.

Ms. Birgül Özen

Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
birgul.guner@tarimorman.gov.tr

Mr. Myong Ju Jo

ABS NFP, Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
pptayang@star-co.net.kp

M. Komi Anthe

Cartagena Protocol Primary NFP, Cartagena Protocol emergency contact point
direfaune@yahoo.fr