Glenn Scherer

The combined effects of humanity’s actions are making ecosystems less resistant to change, and threatening the vital ecosystem services humanity relies upon, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. It’s already well known that humanity is driving myriad systemic environmental changes: altering the climate, converting forests to farmland, polluting the oceans with plastics, diminishing […]

Forest defenders were stunned and concerned by the European Commission’s recent proposal for a 12-month delay in implementation of the EU’s new law to reduce global deforestation and forest degradation. While the European Parliament must still approve that proposal, forest advocates battling the multibillion-dollar wood pellet industry and other commodity sectors fear that the extra time will give the biomass industry, other commodity suppliers and exporting nations an opportunity to weaken or undermine the law’s current modest requirements. “I think the biggest threat from a delay is that it’s an excuse to gut the law by giving more time to already aggressive industry opposition,” Heather Hillaker, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in North Carolina, told Mongabay. “With climate change, every month matters when we’re trying to avoid [carbon] emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.” On Oct. 1, the European Commission, an executive body that proposes new laws for parliamentary consideration, called for a 12-month delay to the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). This wide-ranging law was approved in June 2023 and set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2025. Observers felt blindsided by the recommended delay and called the proposed postponement “a surprise” and “shocking.” Just one week prior, the commission had said there would be no delay to the EUDR. Large-scale soy plantations bordering rainforest in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. The law requires commodity suppliers to certify that their goods (soy, coffee, cattle, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and wood products, including…This article was originally published on Mongabay

CALI, Colombia — At COP16 an international conference here on the edge of the Amazon that is devoted to enacting plans to protect forests, oceans — and the biodiversity living in both — a staggering financial reality took center stage in a day-long event Sunday:

CALI, Colombia — At COP16, an international conference here on the edge of the Amazon that is devoted to enacting plans to protect forests, oceans and the biodiversity living in both, a staggering financial reality took center stage in a day-long event Sunday: Each year, wealthy countries and large institutional lenders devote $1.7 trillion in subsidies, tax incentives and tax breaks that damage or destroy nature while directing just one-quarter of that amount to conserving or restoring the natural world, according to World Wildlife Fund. At the start of the final week of the 16th biennial United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, attendees are hearing unusually bold talk and high ambition focused on the typically off-limits notion of reducing and eliminating so-called “perverse subsidies.” What’s a “perverse subsidy? Here’s one example: the $640 billion provided annually to the fossil fuel industry that has generated enormous profits for that industry and economic prosperity largely for the Global North, while simultaneously creating the conditions for global warming, ruinous weather disasters, runaway deforestation and record species extinctions. That’s $640 billion every year given as a gift by wealthy governments to oil, gas and coal companies that are actively resisting steps to avoid climate catastrophe. That’s a government giveaway to fund global greenhouse gas emissions that soared to a record 57 gigatons last year, according to the just-released 2024 U.N. Emissions Gap Report. According to the report, Earth is on a path to heat up by an estimated 2.6° Celsius (4.7° Fahrenheit) by…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The COP16 biodiversity summit ended on a mixed note. Delegates from 177 nations agreed to language saying that companies “should” pay conservation

CALI, Colombia — The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16, ended on Nov. 2. Several days before delegations from 177 nations completed their work, a top finance official offered some stern advice to anyone comparing the biennial biodiversity summits to the U.N.’s parallel annual climate summits (the 29th of which opens a week from now in Baku, Azerbaijan). “We live in a world where huge climate fatigue is setting in on the climate side,” warned Valerie Hickey, global director for the World Bank’s division on environment, natural resources and oceans. “Important things are being done, but all you hear is that the world is on fire and nothing is working. You can’t rally a constituency around dread and fear. “On the nature side, if we want to build a coalition not just of the willing but of the working, we have to make the difficult choices and celebrate our successes. We have to rally people around a positive vision for the future because [the] climate [community] hasn’t done well enough in that regard …. The nature community needs to break from that tradition and start talking about what we can do, not just everything that’s wrong.” This Mongabay summary hits on highlights from Cali — acknowledging both successes and failures. While headway was made at COP16, the summit fell into chaos on Nov. 2 before final decisions could be made on important financial issues — with many delegates from developing nations forced to leave Cali, as they could…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The chances for a stronger international agreement on limits to plastic production may have increased dramatically as the world nears a U.N. deadline for achieving a plastics treaty. The game changer: The United States, one of the world's largest producers of plastics, has shifted its position to recognize the need to control the entire life cycle of plastics, whereas previously it had advocated for a nonbinding treaty emphasizing mainly recycling and reuse.

In 2015, the world came together to achieve the landmark Paris climate agreement. But in 2016, Donald Trump's ascendency to the U.S. presidency

As 198 nations convene in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the 29th United Nations climate summit, one word will almost certainly dominate COP29 technical negotiations and private discussions: finance. After two years of record heat, prompting an unprecedented string of extreme weather disasters, there appears to finally be a global consensus that a climate crisis — devastating […]

A bobcat, with its characteristic reddish fur and black markings, trots across a snow-covered field in central Oregon, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, hunting birds at the Warm Springs National Fish Hatchery. It could almost be mistaken for a giant domestic cat, except for its massive legs, a shorter neck than any house feline, ears […]