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TOP STORY
INTERVIEW: No tiger to die – UNDP, Asian nations to launch bonds for species protection
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is in discussions with four Asian countries over issuance of bonds that could generate as much as $200 million to help support tiger ecosystem protection, with successful activities then to be monetised by the sale of “high integrity biodiversity credits”, a member of the organisation working on the project confirmed to Carbon Pulse.
MARKET
Second partnership launches novel eDNA biodiversity air-based commercial sampling
A first-of-its kind technology to filter environmental DNA (eDNA) from air samples to monitor terrestrial biodiversity will scale as a commercial service from a collaboration announced Friday, on the heels of an eDNA marine sampling partnership launched earlier in the week.
BUSINESS & FINANCE
Nature markets “on the cusp” of a financial revolution, says expert
The way nature and biodiversity appear in global financial markets is on the edge of a revolution but they will be treated in a fundamentally different way to carbon, according to a senior member of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), speaking at an event in the UK on Monday.
Analysts urge governments, businesses to put nature-based solutions at heart of fight against water crisis
The public and private sectors along with financial institutions and NGOs must coordinate efforts to enable implementation and investment in nature-based solutions to help stave off the threat of global water shortage, according to analysts.
TNFD co-chair “confident” final nature reporting recommendations will remain similar to draft
The co-chair of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has said that he does not expect the final recommendations on nature-related financial disclosures to substantially change from the draft published at the end of March, with firms already starting to implement the guidelines.
POLICY
UN chief throws weight behind calls for global financial reform, SDG stimulus
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has backed calls for urgent action to transform the global financial system in a bid to ease the deepening debt distress while putting poor nations in a better position to handle critical issues such as climate change and nature loss.
Watchdog says EU is coming up short on pesticides
Pesticide use is still widespread in Europe and on the rise in some countries, and EU lawmakers must do much more if the bloc is to meet its targets on hazardous pesticides that damage ecosystems and public health, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said Wednesday.
MARKET
Holding firm – The Zambian government has refused to downgrade the protected status of the Mulembo Local Forest No. 10 in the Central Province, which needs protection due to its ecological importance and to maintain the livelihood of the Chitambo people. However, individuals have been encroaching on the 19,400 ha forest and there is a threat of illegal logging, leading the nation’s environment minister to say he will seek to fund conservation of the forest through carbon finance. (Carbon Pulse)
BUSINESS & FINANCE
Back to order – Two temperate rainforests in Wales and on the Isle of Man have been named as the first to be restored by the Wildlife Trusts, as part of a wider programme to help the rare habitat recover across the British Isles. Temperate rainforests, also known as Atlantic or Celtic rainforests, are found in places with exposure to the sea – areas with “high oceanicity” – and receive high rainfall and humidity, with a low variation in annual temperature. It is a globally rare habitat, thought to be more threatened than tropical rainforest. (Guardian)
The first million is not so hard – Highlands Rewilding, a pioneering Scottish project focused on scaling nature recovery and community prosperity through rewilding, has secured £1 mln through its crowdfunding campaign, three weeks before it is set to close on May 16. The company operates a frontier rewilding model that allows citizen rewilders to invest from between £50 to £200,000 to co-own rewilding land, earning a potential 5% return. This mass ownership approach has proved popular with smaller and larger investors alike, since it launched at the beginning of Dec. 2022, despite the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. (North Edinburgh News)
Making promises – Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has issued a group declaration on biodiversity to keep in line with the GBF and broadly define initiatives it will take to conserve and restore biodiversity and natural capital. Those include identifying nature dependencies and impact, striving to mitigate negative impacts on nature across all the group’s activities, and recognising the close link between biodiversity loss and climate change. It will also promote recovery and revitalisation of regions through environmental stewardship, share knowledge through collaboration, and raise awareness among employees. The engineering and electronics giant, which employs more than 100,000 people, has published the declaration here.
POLICY
Failure – The US Environmental Protection Agency has in effect ignored a 2020 federal court order prohibiting the use of Monsanto and other producers’ toxic dicamba-based herbicides that are destroying millions of acres of cropland, harming endangered species, and increasing cancer risks for farmers, new fillings in the lawsuit charge. Instead of permanently yanking the products from the market after the 2020 order, the EPA only required industry to add further application instructions to the herbicides’ labels before reapproving the products. (Guardian)
Drawing the line – China has completed work on a nationwide ecological protection “red line” aimed at preserving its ecosystems and reversing some of the damage from rapid urbanisation and industrial growth, a government official said on Thursday. The red line scheme was first proposed in 2011 in the hope of putting vulnerable ecosystems out of bounds and ending decades of “irrational development” that had encroached upon forests and wetlands. The lines have now been fully decided, with roughly 3 mln sq. km of land – about 30% of China’s total, in line with the GBF – as well as 150,000 sq km of marine areas, all of which is under state surveillance, Wang Zhibin, head of the nature protection office at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), told a briefing in Beijing. (Reuters)
No monkey business! – Animal activists took to the streets in Sri Lanka after the agriculture minister announced a plan to export 100,000 endangered toque macaque monkeys to be bought by a private Chinese company. The toque macaque, which is endemic to Sri Lanka, is on the IUCN’s red list of endangered animals, but is not a protected species in Sri Lanka. (ANI)
SCIENCE & TECH
Not enough – The world last year set a target to protect 30% of all land and sea by 2030 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, but that isn’t enough, according to some researchers. April Reside at the University of Queensland in Australia told the publication Futurity that much larger areas must be looked after, saying at least 50% of Earth’s non-Antarctic land surface must remain vegetated.
Crossbreeding coral – Researchers have crossbred coral from Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef for the first time as part of efforts to improve resilience against bleaching events caused rising water temperatures. The “assisted gene flow” technique they used has previously been used with coral from the Great Barrier Reef. Molecular ecologist Kate Quigley, a research director at the Minderoo Foundation’s Exmouth research lab, said the experiment crossbred coral from cooler and warmer waters of the reef, with specimens from the latter potentially more hardy. (ABC)
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