The factoid about biodiversity and Indigenous peoples spread around the world, but scientists say bad data can undermine the very causes it claims to support
The statistic seemed to crop up everywhere. Versions were cited at UN negotiations, on protest banners, in 186 peer-reviewed scientific papers – even by the film-maker James Cameron, while promoting his Avatar films. Exact wording varied, but the claim was this: that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is protected by Indigenous peoples.
When scientists investigated its origins, however, they found nothing. In September, the scientific journal Nature reported that the much-cited claim was “a baseless statistic”, not supported by any real data, and could jeopardise the very Indigenous-led conservation efforts it was cited in support of. Indigenous communities play “essential roles” in conserving biodiversity, the comment says, but the 80% claim is simply “wrong” and risks undermining their credibility.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/13/2024 - 03:43
09/13/2024 - 02:00
Nearly 5,000 primary school students took part in the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Wild at Art competition, which invites children to create an artwork depicting one of the country’s threatened native animals or plants
‘A symbol of our nation’: waratah among 20 more species added to Australia’s threatened wildlife list
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09/13/2024 - 02:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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09/13/2024 - 01:00
The newspaper owned by billionaire Kerry Stokes has not been shy about attacking environmental reforms – but are readers getting the full picture?
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Kerry Stokes’ West Australian has not been shy about its support of mining and resources industries.
Last year an opinion piece by the Woodside chief executive, Meg O’Neill, spruiking the fossil fuel company’s interests was stretched into a front-page splash, a separate news story and an editorial without the tabloid troubling itself to include an alternative view on what she had to say.
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09/13/2024 - 01:00
Activities such as mining, dredging and bottom trawling in most MPAs mean conservation targets will be missed, say researchers
Most of Europe’s marine protected areas, set up to safeguard species and habitats, will not meet conservation targets as they provide only “marginal” protection against industrial activities such as dredging, mining and bottom trawling, a study has revealed.
Low levels of protection in 86% of marine protected areas (MPAs) have left the EU far from reaching its 2030 biodiversity targets, which are designed to reduce the risk of species’ extinction, researchers said in a paper published in the One Earth journal. The EU aims to protect 30% of its seas by 2030, with 10% “strictly” protected from damaging activities.
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09/13/2024 - 00:57
In announcing the strategy, climate minister Chris Bowen also took a swipe at the ‘climate inactivism’ of critics of the nascent industry
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The Albanese government has set annual targets of at least 15m tonnes of “renewable hydrogen” by 2050 and dismissed critics who had “gloated” about setbacks to the nascent industry.
The energy minister, Chris Bowen, said on Friday that Australia’s green hydrogen pipeline of projects was “alive and healthy” as he released the government’s new hydrogen production strategy, which updates the 2019 plan he inherited from the Coalition.
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09/12/2024 - 14:51
Storm did not cause large-scale damage or loss of life, but ferocity of winds and rain raises fears for the future
As Hurricane Francine churned offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, Danielle Morris, a resident of the village of Dulac out in the swampy Louisiana coast, made a tough call.
“We’re crazy and we’re staying,” she said, speaking by phone before the hurricane hit, as she stocked up on gasoline for the family’s generator. Some might agree with her judgment of her own sanity – Morris lost her previous home in Hurricane Ida in 2021.
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09/12/2024 - 13:00
Landslide in Greenland caused unprecedented seismic event that shows impact of global heating, say scientists
A landslide and mega-tsunami in Greenland in September 2023, triggered by the climate crisis, caused the entire Earth to vibrate for nine days, a scientific investigation has found.
The seismic event was detected by earthquake sensors around the world but was so completely unprecedented that the researchers initially had no idea what had caused it. Having now solved the mystery, the scientists said it showed how global heating was already having planetary-scale impacts and that major landslides were possible in places previously believed to be stable as temperatures rapidly rose.
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09/12/2024 - 12:57
A research team has found a link between taste and breathing in fish. This discovery may help us better understand how fish perceive and respond to changes in their environment.
09/12/2024 - 11:58
Four galleries to be overhauled and two more spaces to reopen, including Fixing Our Broken Planet exhibition
The Natural History Museum in London has announced a major programme of transformation it says will mark “a step-change from being a catalogue of natural history to a catalyst for change” in response to the climate emergency.
The scheme to renovate the museum’s celebrated Victorian building and develop a new research and storage facility will build on its aim to turn visitors into “advocates for the planet”, it said on Thursday.
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