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TOP STORY

FEATURE: Health companies reliant upon nature are among the first to engage with TNFD

Health companies reliant on functioning ecosystems and healthy water supplies for business continuity are taking the lead in reporting their nature dependencies through the Taskforce on Nature Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and striving to curb their impacts on the natural world, with several leading multinationals mapping their value chains to understand their biodiversity impacts more closely.

MARKET

Plastic Credit Exchange addresses damning pollution reports

Marketplace Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX) has claimed parts of two reports raising concerns about pollution from plastic credits, linked to burning the material as fuel, are inaccurate.

UK nature credit company raises £470,000 in third investment round

UK-based CreditNature has closed its third funding round at £470,000, increasing its valuation to almost £5 million, the company has said.

POLICY

Fingers point at lobbyists as latest round of plastic talks come to barren end

A third round of plastic talks ended in Nairobi Sunday, with negotiators failing to achieve the goal of agreeing a draft treaty text for approval next year and observers blaming excessive influence from fossil fuel and petrochemicals lobbyists.

Nations found to ignore Indigenous peoples, local communities in biodiversity plans

The vast majority of countries overlook or insufficiently involve Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) when drawing up biodiversity action plans, despite a large body of evidence that including them makes for far more effective nature conservation strategies, a report has found.

EU agrees to strengthen environmental crime laws with broader coverage, stricter sanctions

The EU has provisionally agreed to update its environmental crimes and sanctions rules, with Parliament and Council negotiators clinching a deal to introduce an updated list of offences and related sanctions.

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Bezos Earth Fund donates $30 mln to forest, grassland conservation

The Bezos Earth Fund has granted a third donation of $30 million to the US National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), earmarked for protection of threatened longleaf pine forests and Northern Great Plains grasslands.

TOOLS & GUIDANCE

Better prioritisation can make land protection to avoid mammal extinctions twice as effective, study finds

A new approach to deciding which areas get selected for protection can save almost twice as many mammals from extinction globally, a study has found, with more than half of the most crucial habitat located in just seven countries.

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Giveaway – In Australia, renewable energy company Neoen has transferred ownership of a 1,000 ha property near Worlds End Gorge to the South Australian state government, with the intention of it being turned into a national park. The France-headquartered company had originally bought the property as part of native vegetation offset requirements related to its construction of a 412 MW wind farm. The state government in 2019 won a tender to manage the land and the offsets for Neoen.

Checking it out – Australia’s Elanora Offshore has teamed up with Nature Metrics to analyse the environmental DNA in an area off the coast of Gippsland in southeast Victoria, to get a better understanding of the local marine environment and biodiversity, where it plans to build an offshore wind farm. Local fishermen have been engaged to collect water samples from Elanora Offshore’s proposed site, which are then sent to laboratories for analysis, Energy Magazine reports. Elanora Offshore CEO, Maya Malik, said the project sees opportunities to employ new technologies to gain more accurate data that can be collected more efficiently, and in ways that are not intrusive.

Third call – Papua New Guinea has issued a third call for OECMs under its Biodiversity and Climate Fund, as part of efforts to meet its 30×30 target under the GBF. The first two calls focused solely on management of existing and future protected areas, and other key biodiversity areas. The scope in the third call has been expanded to include sustainable development activities that benefit the people of PNG, knowledge and understanding of biodiversity and climate issues, and capacity-building. Successful applicants will receive grants of up to $100,000 each.

POLICY

Better water – The Australian government has announced it will spend an extra A$50 mln ($32.9 mln) to improve water quality in the Great Barrier Reef, taking its total spending to A$200 mln. Poor water quality is considered one of the main reasons for the reef’s bad health as low-quality run-off from eroded gullies and riverbanks flows into nearby catchments and causes higher algal growth, higher concentrations of pollutants, and reduced light, the government said. A crediting market is emerging to help fund projects that could improve the situation.

Setting up shop – Togo has established a National Office for Protected Areas (NOPA), which will be tasked with implementing national forestry policy in the management of national parks, wildlife reserves, habitat and species management reserves, natural resource management areas, areas of hunting interest, and zoo-botanical gardens. The move was made to help the West African country achieve SDG 15 on preserving terrestrial biodiversity, Afrik21 reports.

UK water ruling – The UK government has failed in its duty to protect waterways from pollution, in a court ruling that could force a policy overhaul, The Guardian has reported. The judge said the Environment Agency failed its legal duty to restore rivers, as there was no evidence its programme of measures would achieve its objectives, the outlet said. Ministers may be forced to strengthen policy to protect water bodies as a result of the announcement, following the case brought by Fish Legal and Pickering Fishery Association.

SCIENCE & TECH

Solar side effects – Evidence on the effects of solar panels on biodiversity is “scarce”, an academic paper has concluded. More research is “urgently needed” on how they affect non-flying mammals, bats, amphibians and reptiles, French researchers said in a paper published on Environmental Evidence. More information will help decision-makers to select the solar panels least damaging to biodiversity, they said.

Illegal caviar – The caviar and meat trade of sturgeon “urgently” needs to improve if the fish are to have a future, academics have said in a paper. Analysis of 149 food samples in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine showed 21% were illegally caught in the wild, 32% had deceived consumers, and 11% violated regulations. The Danube river is the last with functional populations of four sturgeon species, but they are on the “brink of extinction”, European researchers said in a report published on Current Biology.

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