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Reference: SCBD/SSSF/PBU/JL/OR/TM/91061 (2023-058)
To: CBD national focal points
The report, in the journal Nature, reveals interconnectivity between the two vulnerable yet disparate regions and their bonded tipping points — planetary connections sensitive to climate change that shift abruptly once certain thresholds are reached.
Reference: SCBD/OES/EM/DC/CE/90792 (2023-005)
To: CBD National Focal Points, ABS National Focal Points, Cartagena Protocol Focal Points
Camelina, also known as false flax or Gold-of-Pleasure, is an ancient oilseed crop with emerging applications in the production of sustainable, low-input biofuels.
UN biodiversity negotiations have reached crisis point due to a lack of engagement from governments, leading NGOs have warned, three years after experts revealed that Earth’s life-support systems are collapsing.
Most people won’t thank you for posting them a dead mosquito. But for Canadian scientist Dan Peach, each squished mozzie is another valuable data point in his quest to find out how far the insects are travelling as a result of climate change.
Wednesday (8 June) is World Oceans Day, and the UN is set to host an Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue shortly after. Non-state actors are set to participate more than ever before – so could this year be a tipping point for scaling investment to create a thriving ‘blue economy’?
The Door of No Return is worn smooth, the rust-hued stone frame eroded by the chained feet that shuffled through it to waiting ships. From the 15th to the 19th century, Senegal’s Island of Gorée was a departure point for some of the millions who suffered in the Atlantic slave trade.
As a the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is taking place in Abidjan, many reports from the international organization are pointing out the devastating impacts of drought on the African population. A critic weather conditio ...
Environmental tipping points are fast approaching in the UK, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has said.
As many as 10 invasive alien species (IAS), out of 330 that are known to be invasive in India, have cost the economy $127.3 billion (Rs. 8.3 trillion) in the last 60 years, according to a recent analysis that points to glaring knowledge gaps in costs incurred by these species to the Indian economy.
A gigantic ocean current, which transports heat around the globe and helps regulate weather patterns throughout the North Atlantic, appears to be slowing down.
Most climate-change documentaries sound pre-emptive warnings about the consequences if we fail to take action. But this essential cine-essay by Emmanuel Cappellin – a former cinematographer for Yann-Arthus Bertrand – instead takes as its starting point the idea that all is already lost.
A new study in Environmental Research Letters shows striking disparities in the distribution of conserved land across multiple dimensions of social marginalization in New England—and creates a tool to help address them.
The Amazon rainforest may be nearing a "tipping point" of dieback, the point where rainforest will turn to savannah, a new study shows.
Many natural landscapes are at the point of no return, and without action on climate change the planet will become unliveable.
There is scientific consensus that human civilization is a threat to life on Earth. Efforts are underway to alleviate that threat, but there is much doubt over whether we can turn back our cascading environmental impacts.
Life in some locations on the planet is rapidly reaching the point where it will be too hot for the species that live there to survive, international climate experts said in a report Monday.
If you haven’t seen the projections, you’ve probably still absorbed the gist of them: At some point in the not-too-distant future an astronomical number of people will likely be displaced by climate change. Estimates range from 140 million to 1.2 billion by 2050.
Pointing to the wildfires, drought and heat waves that have marked the start of 2022 in Argentina, environmental organizations call for adaptation, mitigation and effective laws to protect the ecosystem.
Minute fossils unearthed in preserved charcoal point to the existence of an entirely unknown group of plants that were among the first to move onto land.
The CAT Climate Governance series seeks to produce a practical framework for assessing a government’s readiness - both from an institutional and governance point of view - to ratchet up climate policy and implement adequate transformational policies on the ground, to enable the required economy- ...
Tipping points could be identified and triggered to deliver fast action to tackle the climate crisis, according to an analysis led by an academic at Exeter University.
A faint pop punctuated the sound of crashing waves—the first hint something was amiss. Sitting on board the R.V. Falkor in December 2014, David Barclay heard the sound through headphones plugged into an underwater microphone on the ship's hull.
The Breakthrough Agenda agreed at COP26 could help trigger positive tipping points to tackle the climate crisis, researchers say.
In 2017, an elephant in Cambodia’s Kirium National Park was electrocuted as it leaned against power lines in a formerly forested area. This wasn’t an isolated incident—another elephant reportedly died in the same manner the previous year— and prompted conservationists to point to the widening im ...
Thousands of migratory birds have failed to make their annual visit to Albania's western coast this winter, experts say, pointing to climate change, overfishing and urbanisation as likely factors.
"She's our wonder baby!" says elephant keeper Katie Morrison, smiling broadly. Katie points to five-year-old Indali, an elephant survivor of an often deadly virus, which has killed seven calves at Chester Zoo.
Felipe “Pipe” Henao is a young environmentalist from the small town of Calamar in southeastern Colombia. At the meeting point of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, it’s an area of abundant biodiversity and an important biological corridor to the Andes mountains.
Wildlife and open-canopy ecosystems like grasslands are rarely a part of discussions surrounding climate change mitigation. Now, a new review points to interactions between wild herbivores and vegetation to show how restoration efforts could be optimized by aligning climate goals with biodiversi ...
Nigeria has emerged as the top transit point in the world for illegal ivory and pangolin scale trafficking from Africa to Asia. Between 2016 to 2019, over half of the pangolin scales seized globally came from Nigeria, Ugo Aliogo reports.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels today are higher than at any point in the past 800,000 years or more. During a year when terms like carbon neutrality and net zero have become more and more commonly used, it appears the world is waking up to the imperative underscored in every high-level climate asse ...
I stepped onto the battlefield of climate change, sidestepping carcass after carcass. In the grass were the remains of Arctic terns, common terns, and roseate terns. Along the boulders, researchers pointed out dead puffin chicks.
No longer the ‘forgotten solution’, nature appeared prominently in the final text of the Glasgow Climate Pact, the agreement reached at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Historically the thick green of the Amazon has been our planet’s largest carbon sink, though this tipping point has also been breached earlier this year. But a new wave of research over the last few years, including a new study published recently in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Societ ...
The authors of a new study, which appears in BMJ Global Health, point out that producing red meat for export has environmental costs in terms of lost habitats and biodiversity and harms consumers’ health.
The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) has called for Scotland’s new farming policy to recognise native livestock and equine breeds for their biodiversity significance, In a response to the Scottish Government’s consultation paper on a new national agricultural policy, RBST pointed out that the ...
A rapid rate of land subsidence could make sea level rise estimates worse for one of Colombia's tourist destinations. This could serve as a warning sign to other coastal cities.
Abrupt changes in ice core samples and other records indicate dramatic changes in climate occurred at certain points in the past. In Chaos, climate scientists identify abrupt transitions in climate records that may have been caused by the climate system crossing a tipping point.
On Friday, COP26 came to a close in Glasgow. Though assessment of its success or failure remains a point of contentious discussion, we are delighted that Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault signed onto the World Health Organization (WHO)’s COP26 Health Programme ...
For millions of young people around the world, climate breakdown is something they have known their entire lives. Many live in regions that are particularly at risk of being affected by tipping points - parts of the Earth’s system where small changes, such as increased temperatures, could lead t ...
Glasgow is hosting an event that Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a September speech to the United Nations must be a “turning point for humanity”. It is the most important event held, not only in the city and Scotland, but also hosted by the United Kingdom, drawing leaders from more than 170 ...
Joanna Lumley has suggested that a system of rationing similar to that seen during wartime, under which people would have a limited number of points to spend on holidays or lavish consumer goods, could eventually help to tackle the climate crisis.
Microplastics, owing to their chemical properties, can carry micropollutants into a fish's digestive system where they are subsequently released through the action of its gastric and intestinal fluids. EPFL scientists, working in association with other research institutes, have studied this proc ...
China's ambassador to the United Nations said on Friday that conferences held in China this month on biodiversity and green-themed transport provide new starting points for efforts toward innovation-driven development.
Leaders may be going into the UN climate summit in Glasgow with the do-or-die goal of limiting global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, but breaching that cap is not what keeps scientists awake at night.
At the root of global climate change and the worldwide plastics problem are two related carbon-based fuels -- oil and natural gas. Not only are the two among the key drivers of climate change, they are instrumental in the manufacturing of plastics. As storms intensify and become more frequent, t ...
Agricultural soils are the largest anthropogenic emission source of nitrous oxide (N2O)—a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Mitigating N2O emissions from agricultural soils is an important requirement to stop global warming below the 2°C target.
Professor Susan Jebb , Oxford's diet and population health expert maintains, "We cannot meet Net Zero targets without changing our diet.". Talking in the latest of 10 videos from leading Oxford experts in the run up to the COP26 climate conference, Professor Jebb points out that agriculture acco ...
This week, China took charge of hosting a major UN environmental conference for the first time, at the opening of Cop15 in Kunming. The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter and largest consumer of natural resources might seem a strange choice to host talks to stop the destruction of ecosystems ...
Speaking during the show, Dirk Fransaer, managing director at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research, cautioned that the world is on the right track to reaching the goals, but not at the right speed. "Worldwide, you see that multinational companies really take SDGs too hard. So from th ...
Improved climate modeling can predict fish stocks in the North Atlantic, as well as warming effects across the Northern hemisphere, for instance in Europe and North America.
We’re at something of an inflection point in the history of conservation and Indigenous engagement.
Cop26 must be a “turning point for humanity” in just 40 days’ time, Boris Johnson has urged in a call to arms to fellow global leaders ahead of the climate summit in Glasgow.
A significant reduction in agricultural production in the European Union with full implementation of the Farm to Fork Strategy of the European Green Deal: that is one result of the study to assess the impact of the Green Deal published today (Monday 13 September), which was led by Professor Chri ...
In July 2021, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced that 866 West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus) had died in the state of Florida in the first seven months of the year alone. The news shocked and saddened many Floridians, for whom the gentle, slow-moving mammal is a statewide mascot, ...
A meta-analysis study assessed the performance of site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) applied to smallholder cereal cropping systems in Asia and Africa; the evidence points to triple-wins but weak extension, and unfavorable policies hamper adoption.
Seahorses have long been a popular attraction in public aquariums, but they remain mysterious. They are a fish with a difference in that they swim in an upright, vertical position. They have flexible necks and long, tubular snouts that point downward, giving them the appearance of a horse's head.
Climate change is driving periods of unusually high temperature across large swaths of the planet. These heat waves are especially detrimental in the Arctic, where they can push surface temperatures in regions of significant permafrost past the melting point of ice lenses.
In a grim report released on August 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that climate change was “unequivocally” caused by human activity and that within two decades, rising temperatures will cause the planet to reach a significant turning point in global warming.
Thousands of scientists have repeated calls for urgent action to tackle the climate emergency, warning that several tipping points are now imminent.
A new study tracking the planet’s vital signs has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up.
A new “vulnerability index” for the world’s tropical rainforests will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests, in an effort to identify and direct conservation resources to areas most at risk.
The global economy's business-as-usual approach to climate change has seen Earth's "vital signs" deteriorate to record levels, an influential group of scientists said Wednesday, warning that several climate tipping points were now imminent.
Summer 2021 will mark a turning point in how heat is seen by the public and communicated by experts. For the first time in its 167-year history, the UK's Met Office has issued an amber warning for extreme heat for much of Wales and parts of southern, central and western England, where temperatur ...
Human beings crave clarity, immediacy, landmark events. We seek turning points, because our minds are good at recognizing the specific – this time, this place, this sudden event, this tangible change.
The whole point of curbing climate change is to preserve our planet for future generations, as we’re often reminded. It has become clear that a changing climate is something existing generations like mine will have to deal with, but I still imagined those changes would only be a noticeable issue ...
Global warning may have already passed an irreversible tipping point, the scientist who led the biggest-ever expedition to the Arctic has warned.