Up to 87% of global wetlands have been lost in the past 300 years, 1/3 of those just since 1970. The world’s ‘wetland blindness’ is inexplicable given the pivotal role of healthy wetlands in delivering global commitments on climate change, sustainable development & biodiversity. Wetland loss has significantly contributed to the huge loss of species populations over the same … [Read more...]
EU commission plans green reset for agriculture
Yesterday, the European Commission published their roadmap for EU policy action on biodiversity and food for the coming decade. In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak that has brought our relationship with the natural world into sharp focus, the strategies have never been more timely. The EU Farm to Fork and 2030 Biodiversity Strategies launched today are potential game … [Read more...]
Big potential benefits from restoring spekboom thicket ecosystems
When the goats on his farm had nothing more to eat, the soil had eroded and most of the vegetation had been destroyed, South African farmer Pieter Kruger had to make one of the toughest decisions of his life. “I have always been a farmer,” he says, “but that moment in 2007, I knew that I could not go on. There was no more water. Zandvlakte is the last farm in our valley in the … [Read more...]
Ecosystem restoration is everyone’s responsibility
Delegates at the 8th World Conference on Ecological Restoration have expressed their unanimous support for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021 – 2030 with a call to action: ‘One earth, one future, one chance.’ At the conference, more than 850 knowledge holders from 68 countries shared their experiences and expertise of ecological restoration research, … [Read more...]
The global rise of crucial eco-restoration camps
For millennia we humans roamed the vast lands of this planet Earth, foraging for foodstuffs, hunting animals to supplement our diet as necessary. We took what we could find, as needed, and our searches led us across the accessible landmasses. It is fascinating to think of the various landscapes that scores of successive generations saw - Earth in a state before any human … [Read more...]
UN decade puts focus on ecosystem restoration and climate change
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, declared today by the UN General Assembly, aims to massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight the climate crisis and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity. The degradation of land and marine ecosystems undermines the well-being of 3.2 billion people and costs … [Read more...]
BP oil spill killed several trillion larval fish
Louisiana's coastal marshes will be the key focus of $8.8 billion BP will pay to restore vast natural resource losses caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, part of a $20.8 billion settlement with federal and Gulf state governments announced Monday (Oct. 5). The environmental portion also includes targeting significant money on Gulf of Mexico resources, federal … [Read more...]
Around the world for global change
On board the BIO Hespérides, docked in the Cape Town harbour, we met the first team of researchers ever circumnavigating the globe to research the impact of global change on the oceans. The Malaspina expedition was named after the Spanish naval officer, Alajandro Malaspina, in whose footsteps, or rather waves, this initiative followed. Some 200 years ago he launched the … [Read more...]
Cargill expands responsible soy programme
Cargill has announced a new $3 million grant to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to protect the Brazilian rainforest and help farmers grow soy more sustainably. The grant expands a program that has already helped 383 farmers comply with conservation laws. Since 2004, the Responsible Soy project has successfully promoted responsible soy production in the Santarém area in the … [Read more...]
