In a new article, a scientists warn about the ongoing collapse of global insect populations.

Published in Ecological Monographs, the article delves into potential explanations for the decline of insects, including as habitat loss and fragmentation, lethal new pesticides, climate change and extreme weather events, destructive wildfires, among others. 

The article also assesses the ecological impacts of insect declines – for instance, on the many species of plants that require insects for pollination, or the diversity of animals that feeds on insects.  

Climate change is one of the most important anthropogenic pressures on the environment. The accompanying effects could be very negative, especially in terms of threats to the survival of species and a variety of ecological services that biodiversity provides.

Insects, which are essential parts of many ecosystems, are a group of species most impacted by climate change, with effects ranging from individuals, populations and species to entire insect communities. The researchers discuss the impact of the progressive rise in global surface temperature on insects in terms of physiology, behavior, phenology, distribution, and species relationships in a special scientists’ warning series.

The scientists caution that if steps are not taken to better understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on insects, we will significantly diminish our capacity to create a sustainable future based on healthy, functional ecosystems.

The article examines viewpoints on pertinent approaches to protecting insects from climate change and provide various important recommendations on management practices that might be applied, regulations that should be pursued, and the involvement of the public and restoration and conservation efforts.

Source: Ecological Monographs

Photo credits: Kiran Rawal, Luciano Andres Richino

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Scientists now understand that without biodiversity ecosystems lose their resilience and potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere at the rates required to keep inside the 1.5 °C warming limit, both in the ocean and on land. Whales are crucial allies in the battle against climate change.

It is critical that a market-ready whale credit system and the required policy be developed in order to encourage global whale monitoring and conservation. Data on whales and the ocean, scientific investigation, monitoring technology, and cooperation among ocean stakeholders are all necessary for determining the value of whale ecosystem services and developing a market solution.

The distinctive contribution of Whale Seeker is to develop ethical AI and visual remote sensing technologies that can monitor whale presence and prevent harm from companies that share the whales’ ocean environment. With the help of this technology, business operational procedures and standards will be more accountable and verifiable.

Whale Seeker™ is leading this project in the Canadian Arctic, to develop and test a scalable whale carbon and biodiversity detection methodology and credit system to incentivize all marine actors to monitor marine mammal presence and take meaningful action to avoid conflict with them. By basing our methodology on images, we are both providing an auditable quantitative measure of marine mammals and firm metrics to aid in ESG reporting. The pilot project will focus on narwhals (Monodon monoceros), using existing scientific data collected over 10 years to model and verify whale services, while also bringing in new and existing aerial imagery and satellite technology to measure whale abundance in relation to ocean productivity and health. With these advances in science and technology, along with other test cases around the globe to address other whale threats such as entanglements, we aim to deliver verified carbon/biodiversity credits to marine industries in the next two years.

“Our current economic paradigm values dead whales that are sold for their meat. In contrast, living whales are valued at zero dollars although their ecological services, including carbon sequestration, are incredibly valuable to our own survival and well-being as well as to the health of our ocean. We need a new economic paradigm that recognizes and values the services of a living and thriving nature, both flora and fauna. This new nature-positive economy will lead to sustainable and shared prosperity for all” … says Ralph Chami, Assistant Director at the IMF.

“Increasing the world’s whale populations is a win-win strategy to capture more carbon from the atmosphere and improve ocean health. However, for whale protection measures to be adopted on a global scale, we need to incentivize businesses and other stakeholders by proving the benefits of protecting whales far exceed the cost. By using ethical AI we aim to set not only a high technical standard for whale detection but also an ethical one.”, adds Emily Charry-Tissier, CEO and Co-Founder of Whale Seeker.

“For centuries people have used the latest technologies to hunt down and kill whales,” says Ed Goodall, from project board member WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “It is a measure of just how far we have come from those dark days that we are now using the latest technology to hunt down and save them. Whales play an outsized role in the marine ecosystem and carbon capture, but these ‘services’ have not fully recognised or valued before. We are now in a race against time to build the evidence base, and secure the finance needed to help whale populations recover, and we are delighted to be working with Whale Seeker on this exciting, cutting-edge project.”

This project will develop scalable, replicable methodology and market solutions for marine mammal health and ocean protection on a worldwide scale. The status of the whale populations around the world is a powerful tool for reducing climate change and a clear sign of the health of the oceans.

Source

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“Animate the Carbon Cycle: Supercharging ecosystem carbon sinks to meet the 1.5C target” is a collaborative research and demonstration project that will confirm the massive positive and highly-undervalued impact that intact and functional nature has on stabilizing the climate, and humanity’s urgent need to protect and restore intact ecosystems. Scientific research shows the essential role that healthy populations of wild animal, plant, and fungal species play in the world’s carbon cycle.

Professor Oswald Schmitz, Yale School for the Environment, is a key originator of the concept of Animating the Carbon Cycle (ACC): “Restoring, rewilding, and conserving the functional role of vertebrate and invertebrate species can be a game changer by magnifying carbon uptake by 1.5 to 12.5 times (in some cases more) across the world’s terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.”

Examples already exist of how different animal species can “supercharge ecosystem carbon sinks”. For example, the restored wildebeest population in the famous Serengeti has almost completely prevented wildfires, and the rejuvenated grasslands now capture carbon up to the equivalent of the annual human-caused CO2 emissions of Kenya and Tanzania combined. Through protecting wolf populations across the North American boreal region, an amount of carbon equivalent to 10% of USA’s CO2 emissions. By restoring the forest elephant population in the Congo Basin to historic levels, an amount of carbon equivalent to France’s annual CO2 emissions would be stored.

The potential for restored wildlife populations in the ocean to help stabilize the climate is staggering. If we restore whale populations to their estimated pre-historic population levels, the annual emissions of Russia – or more than that of all African nations – could be captured. And, although our fish stocks are severely overexploited, they still capture an amount of carbon equivalent to twice the CO2 emissions of the EU-27. Imagine the climate potential if we rebuild the world’s severely depleted fish populations!

Over the next year this new initiative will document the scientific, economic, and practical potential of animating the carbon cycle, and provide concrete measures to achieve this – including field methodology, financial, legal and policy solutions. Leading this is a consortium of organizations facilitated by the Global Rewilding Alliance (GRA) and including One Earth, Yale School of the Environment, Re:wild, GRID-Arendal, Rewilding Argentina, the Wilderness Specialist Group (IUCN) and The WILD Foundation, with input from a diverse group of expert scientists, economists, policymakers, and practitioners.

This new coalition advocates a very simple solution — preserving still-intact nature and restoring and rewilding functional ecosystems at large scale; and with urgency, because only 2.8% of the land surface could be considered functionally intact.” The situation for our seas is hardly any better.

Animating the Carbon Cycle is an extremely cost-efficient, nature-based solution that allows nature, climate, and people to prosper. Carbon is managed, species are saved, and Indigenous Peoples and local communities who steward many of these intact areas are supported and their cultures strengthened. Animating the Carbon Cycle is the critical, missing link between biodiversity and climate change.

The Global Rewilding Alliance is a network of practitioners and messengers of +130 members working on every continent (except Antarctica), restoring and rewilding nature on more than 350,000 ha of land and sea.

“The concept of animating the carbon cycle provides the missing link between biodiversity and climate problems and solutions, and underlines the importance of our rewilding and wildlife reintroduction programmes.” says Arend de Haas, Director at the Rewilding Academy.

Vance Martin, representing the Global Rewilding Alliance (GRA), summarizes the objective of this initiative: “If we’re going to solve the climate crisis and meet the 1.5C target, the Global Rewilding Alliance believes it’s necessary to urgently supercharge ecosystem carbon sinks through animating the carbon cycle. This needs to be recognized by the UNFCCC and other global processes such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and be immediately implemented by all countries and institutions and civil society.”

This initiative is part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration through the Global Rewilding Alliance (www.rewildingglobal.org .

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Transient communities

Species are responding differently to climate change and form so-called ‘transient communities’, with constantly changing species composition due to colonisation and extinction events. Such changes in community structure can be abrupt when environmental variables pass certain tipping points and ecosystems flip to alternative states. In contrast to non-transient communities, transient communities have a high extinction and colonization rate.

Researchers of the University of Wageningen and Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences tried to unravel the mechanisms of response to climate change for terrestrial species in these transient communities and explore the consequences for biodiversity conservation. Their research reviewed spatial escape and local adaptation of species dealing with climate change from evolutionary and ecological perspectives, with the goal to derive species vulnerability and conservation management options to mitigate effects of climate change.

Ecosystem restoration and conservation

From the perspective of the dynamic, shifting equilibriums in transient communities, this may affect the success of conservation approaches that focus on single species in specific locations. Conservation management should therefore move away from static single species conservation approaches and focus on community dynamics and species interdependency, while addressing species vulnerability considering their importance for the community.

Frequent spatial data collection is vital for monitoring the change in communities and distribution of species. Conservation management and rewilding options supporting the development, dynamic stability and evolution of ecological communities include active approaches such as increasing connectivity and landscape resilience through the development of corridors, assisted colonisation through reintroduction, and prioritisation of species protection in the context of transient communities.

Recommended conservation measures:

1. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
2. Reduce other human pressures
3. Increasing monitoring effort
4. Assess species vulnerability
5. Study species interactions
6. Protect species globally not locally
7. Facilitate species to rearrange in space
8. Increase ecosystem resilience

Learn more:
Biodiversity conservation in climate change driven transient communities

Schippers, P., Abarca, E.L., Verboom, J. et al. Biodiversity conservation in climate change driven transient communities. Biodivers Conserv (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02241-4

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Where is the Anthropocene headed? The current trajectory of the Earth System is a rapid exit from the Holocene, accelerating towards a much hotter climate system and a degraded, ill-functioning biosphere. Perhaps most concerning is a possible ‘fork in the road’ beyond which lies ‘Hothouse Earth’. The key element of this trajectory is a ‘tipping cascade’, in which a series of interlinked tipping points – the melting of polar ice, the conversion of forest biomes to grasslands or savannas, changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation – take control of the trajectory of the Earth System and move it to a much hotter, biodiversity-impoverished, but stable state.

Professor Will Steffen (Climate Council of Australia, Australian National University) argues that avoiding this possible tipping cascade requires fundamental changes to human societies. These changes include not only advances in technologies but also more fundamental changes in societal structures and core values.

Source: The Royal Society of Victoria

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Nairobi, 14 January 2021 – As temperatures rise and climate change impacts intensify, nations must urgently step up action to adapt to the new climate reality or face serious costs, damages and losses, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report finds.

Adaptation – reducing countries’ and communities’ vulnerability to climate change by increasing their ability to absorb impacts – is a key pillar of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The agreement requires its signatories to implement adaptation measures through national plans, climate information systems, early warning, protective measures and investments in a green future.

The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020 finds that while nations have advanced in planning, huge gaps remain in finance for developing countries and bringing adaptation projects to the stage where they bring real protection against climate impacts such as droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Public and private finance for adaptation must be stepped up urgently, along with faster implementation. Nature-based solutions – locally appropriate actions that address societal challenges, such as climate change, and provide human well-being and biodiversity benefits by protecting, sustainably managing and restoring natural or modified ecosystems – must also become a priority.

“The hard truth is that climate change is upon us,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Its impacts will intensify and hit vulnerable countries and communities the hardest – even if we meet the Paris Agreement goals of holding global warming this century to well below 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C.”

“As the UN Secretary-General has said, we need a global commitment to put half of all global climate finance towards adaptation in the next year,” she added. “This will allow a huge step up in adaptation – in everything from early warning systems to resilient water resources to nature-based solutions.”

Adaptation planning is growing, but funding and follow-up lagging

The most encouraging finding of the report is that 72 per cent of countries have adopted at least one national-level adaptation planning instrument. Most developing countries are preparing National Adaptation Plans. However, the finance needed to implement these plans is not growing fast enough.

The pace of adaptation financing is indeed rising, but it continues to be outpaced by rapidly increasing adaptation costs. Annual adaptation costs in developing countries are estimated at USD 70 billion. This figure is expected to reach USD 140-300 billion in 2030 and USD 280-500 billion in 2050.

There are some encouraging developments. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has allocated 40 per cent of its total portfolio to adaptation and is increasingly crowding-in private sector investment. Another important development is increasing momentum to ensure a sustainable financial system. However, increased public and private adaptation finance is needed. New tools such as sustainability investment criteria, climate-related disclosure principles and mainstreaming of climate risks into investment decisions can stimulate investments in climate resilience.

Implementation of adaptation actions is also growing. Since 2006, close to 400 adaptation projects financed by multilateral funds serving the Paris Agreement have taken place in developing countries. While earlier projects rarely exceeded USD 10 million, 21 new projects since 2017 reached a value of over USD 25 million. However, of over 1,700 adaptation initiatives surveyed, only 3 per cent had already reported real reductions to climate risks posed to the communities where the projects were being implemented.

Nature-based solutions for adaptation can make a huge contribution

The report places a special focus on nature-based solutions as low-cost options that reduce climate risks, restore and protect biodiversity and bring benefits for communities and economies.

An analysis of four major climate and development funds – the Global Environment Facility, the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund and the International Climate Initiative – suggested that support for green initiatives with some element of nature-based solutions has risen over the last two decades. Cumulative investment for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects under the four funds stood at USD 94 billion. However, only USD 12 billion was spent on nature-based solutions – a tiny fraction of total adaptation and conservation finance.

Stepping up action

According to the report, cutting greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the impacts and costs associated with climate change. Achieving the 2°C target of the Paris Agreement could limit losses in annual growth to up to 1.6 per cent, compared to 2.2 per cent for the 3°C trajectory.

All nations must pursue the efforts outlined in UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2020, which called for a green pandemic recovery and updated Nationally Determined Contributions that include new net-zero commitments. However, the world must also plan for, finance and implement climate change adaptation to support those nations least responsible for climate change but most at risk.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to hit the ability of countries to adapt to climate change, investing in adaptation is a sound economic decision.

Source: unep.org

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