Post Tagged with: "Biodiversity"

UN CBD COP’s breach of the ROP: CBD COP doesnt have a legal advisor

UN CBD COP’s breach of the ROP: CBD COP doesnt have a legal advisor

To The Secretary General United Nations   CC: The Executive Secretary CBD Secretariat Your Excellency, Greetings. The adoption of the Global Biodiversity Framework by the CBD COP15, early this week, raises issues of substance as well as serious procedural issues. The substantive issue, in short, is that while ritually repeating the triple objectives of the Convention, the GBF virtually unmakes[Read More…]

by 21/12/2022 Comments are Disabled World
UN Biodiversity COP15: Agreement Signed

UN Biodiversity COP15: Agreement Signed

On Monday, at the UN’s COP15 biodiversity conference in Canada, more than 190 countries approved an agreement to declare 30% of the planet as a protected zone by 2030 and to raise $30 billion per year for conservation in the developing world. Debates over the agreement have been held for nearly two weeks in Montreal, where representatives of about 200 governments[Read More…]

by 20/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Montreal Biodiversity COP15 December 2022

Montreal Biodiversity COP15 December 2022

What is it about a bunch of high-ranking people getting together at a Conference of the Parties (COP) at some major metropolitan center with plenty of 4-star and 5-star hotels in order to figure out how to save the planet, but it never works! For example, the tenth (10th) meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on[Read More…]

by 29/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Amendment of Biodiversity Law Will Weaken Protection Efforts and Rights of People

Amendment of Biodiversity Law Will Weaken Protection Efforts and Rights of People

The importance of protecting biological diversity has been increasingly realized all over the world in recent times. This realization came in the wake of several disturbing trends such as very disturbing pace of destruction of natural forests and fast spread of monocultures over vast farming areas. As biological diversity was lost in nature but its importance was realized by powerful[Read More…]

by 21/07/2022 Comments are Disabled India
Polar bear on Bernard Harbor, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA (photo by Subhankar Banerjee, June 2001)

Kunming Declaration & Biodiversity Fund Set a Path toward a More Just Global Biodiversity Framework

In August 2019, in the middle of heavy monsoon rain and floods, my sister Sudakshina Sen (an avid wildlife photographer) and I arrived at the Western Ghats in southwest India, a global biodiversity hotspot. One day, we got stuck on the sinuous state highway SH-78, due to fallen trees on the road from the storm. Parked by the roadside was[Read More…]

by 21/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
The United States Must Rejoin the Global Biodiversity Conservation Community 

The United States Must Rejoin the Global Biodiversity Conservation Community 

Snow geese, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico. After spending the winter in New Mexico, the snow geese go to the Arctic (Alaska, Nunavut, Siberia) for nesting and rearing their young. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee, 1998). After a long stretch of public inattention, biodiversity conservation is a hot topic again, as if we had suddenly been jolted into awareness[Read More…]

by 13/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Bridge the North-South divide for a UN Biodiversity Framework that is more just

Bridge the North-South divide for a UN Biodiversity Framework that is more just

This month, the leaders of nation states from around the world have been gathered in New York City to attend the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Covid, climate and biodiversity are among the topics they are expected to address. Indeed, on September 21, in his sobering yet passionate address to the assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres focused attention on all[Read More…]

by 24/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Birds and Biodiversity : The Pillar of life on Earth

Birds and Biodiversity : The Pillar of life on Earth

Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears ,as close to us and everyone in the world as universal as birds David Attenborough A healthy planet and rich biodiversity  are essential for our health and wellbeing.   The emergence of COVID -19 has underscored the fact that when we destroy biodiversity, we destroy the system[Read More…]

by 20/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Biden on Biodiversity: The Silence and the Promise

Biden on Biodiversity: The Silence and the Promise

On January 6, 2021, as many of us in the United States were glued to TV watching the horrors of the insurrection against the U.S Capitol, the AFP News in France posted, on its Facebook page, an infographic built with data provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which “confirmed the extinction in 2020 of 36 plant[Read More…]

by 20/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Protecting Indigenous Languages is Protecting Biodiversity

Protecting Indigenous Languages is Protecting Biodiversity

One million animal and plant species face extinction due to human activity, according to the United Nations. Now, think about cultural production—art and literature that we have invested to address the extinction of just a handful of species (passenger pigeon included). Quite a bit actually. The extinction of one million species feels rather abstract, beyond the comprehension of human cultural[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 1 comment World
Need to update EIA norms for preserving biodiversity

Need to update EIA norms for preserving biodiversity

 To   Shri R P Gupta Secretary Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MEFCC) Government of India   Dear Shri Gupta, The National Environment Policy, 2006 (NEP) emphasises the need to conserve the rich biodiversity heritage of the country in the following statements. “Pay explicit attention to the potential impacts of development projects on biodiversity resources and natural heritage.[Read More…]

by 26/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Fetishising ‘The Number’: How Not To Govern Pandemics, Climate and Biodiversity

Fetishising ‘The Number’: How Not To Govern Pandemics, Climate and Biodiversity

As the pandemic continues to dominate public politics around the world, a single number – the reproduction rate (R) – has become the focus of policy-making and public communication.  Keeping R below 1.0 appears to be the primary objective of public health policy.  In the case of climate change the number 2°C (or 1.5°C) operates in a similar way.  And[Read More…]

by 10/07/2020 Comments are Disabled World
(Photos: GBS Photo Archives)

Happy International Biodiversity Day

The National Green Tribunal had asked all States to finish preparing People’s Biodiversity Registers by end of January 2020. This made various States make greater efforts to mobilise volunteers in local government in Taluk Panchayat. Collecting and documenting wild plants is a beautiful task and a never ending one, as new species are added to these registers every day by[Read More…]

by 22/05/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Highlights Of A New Seminal Paper On Indian Forest Management Reform

Highlights Of A New Seminal Paper On Indian Forest Management Reform

The new paper ‘A Framework for Reforming India’s Forest Biodiversity Management Regime’ by Dr S. Faizi and Dr M. Ravichandran published in the UN journal Natural Resources Forum in its August 2016 issue provides a rare insight into India’s forest management and outlines a trajectory for reforming the forest management departing from the colonial approach and taking on board the[Read More…]

Governments Planning To Spend Near Zero Cents Per Person On Biodiversity Conservation

Governments Planning To Spend Near Zero Cents Per Person On Biodiversity Conservation

  There are professionals from NGOs and academic institutions  associated with supporting developing countries to make their biodiversity plans for 2018-2022. Some NGOs and academic institutions are good and some are bad. And it may well be that the 43 countries whose projected budgets for 2018-2022  are uploaded on the CBD website did not take any advice from the appointed[Read More…]

The Great Seed Piracy

The Great Seed Piracy

A great seed and biodiversity piracy is underway and it must be stopped. The privateers of today include not just the corporations — which are becoming fewer and larger through mergers — but also individuals like Bill Gates, the “richest man in the world”. When the Green Revolution was pushed in India and Mexico, farmers’ seeds were “rounded-up” and locked[Read More…]