Katharine Hayhoe

Breaking news: We have a global biodiversity treaty!

In the early hours of the morning in Montreal today, after two weeks of negotiations, the world agreed to a “Paris Agreement“ for biodiversity.

It's the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and its goals aren't expressed in degrees of warming but rather in land and water protected: 30% by 2030 globally.

As this BBC article explains, the main points of what will be known as the GBF include:

*Maintaining, enhancing and restoring ecosystems, including halting species extinction and maintaining genetic diversity

*“Sustainable use“ of biodiversity - essentially ensuring that species and habitats can provide the services they provide for humanity, such as food and clean water

* Ensuring that the benefits of resources from nature, like medicines that come from plants, are shared fairly and equally and that indigenous peoples' rights are protected

* Paying for and putting resources into biodiversity: Ensuring that money and conservation efforts get to where they are needed.

As Andrew Deutz, our The Nature Conservancy Global Policy Director, says: “In a World Cup metaphor – it really did feel like a championship game heading into extra time in knife-edge fashion.

The big difference is that while Messi and teammates now get to luxuriate in a hard-fought victory – for the global biodiversity community, the next phase of hard work already beckons: mainstreaming the framework’s architecture into country-level policy that will deliver meaning progress where it matters most, across the imperilled ecosystems that represent our planet’s collective life-support system.“ [https://lnkd.in/gxqZ5dXu]

In this season of giving, this means that every one of us has just received the best possible gift for any living thing who depends on this planet for the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the resources we need: a Global Biodiversity Framework.

Read more:

#biodiversity #conservation
https://lnkd.in/gtFGgB_d

Have you seen “Don’t Look Up” yet? It’s the number one streaming movie on Netflix this week and that’s good news: because it means that millions of people are seeing what happens when the world ignores scientists’ warnings.

The movie is a deliberate metaphor for how scientist’s warnings about climate change are being ignored and, as a scientist, I have to say that a lot of it struck very close to home.

For more from a scientist’s perspective, check out what my colleague Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA, shares so eloquently here:

https://lnkd.in/etzEQj3E

Any climate scientist who sticks their head out of the ivory tower can't go a day without being attacked for sharing the truth about the climate crisis. This happens to me regularly, and my experience is shared by many of my colleagues. For example: https://lnkd.in/gStHD3id

For the last 12 years, Michael Mann has been fighting to hold some of the worst offenders responsible. Today, he won.

Fully 50% of the oxygen we breathe comes from tiny phytoplankton in the ocean.

A billion people depend on coral reefs for food and income.

11% of the earth’s surface provides all the food we eat.

3% of the water on earth is freshwater - and we can’t live without it.

The earth doesn’t need us: we need it. That’s why every day is #EarthDay!

Photo: The Mackenzie River in northern Canada. Landsat/USGS/NASA