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Welcome to The Navigator!

Welcome back! It has been a season of extreme weather events – flooding, hurricanes, heatwaves, forest fires, all underscored by the recent IPCC Report. Earth’s tipping points could be even closer than we think, but some can still be headed off if we take urgent action. We’re hoping that big “if” turns into a “when” and “now” at the big global meetings on nature, Antarctica, and climate change over the next few weeks. It’s crunch time for our planet.
 
Brace yourselves, after a couple of months off, it’s a bumper edition!

 

   Seen from the Lighthouse – What's happening now?

Prepping for COP15 - the long and winding road to Kunming
Good things come to those who wait – we hope, as the long-anticipated 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is finally about to begin. Rather than postpone the hugely important summit for a third time, as a compromise solution the meeting will now be split into two, with the first session taking place virtually from 11th-15th October, followed by an in-person event in Kunming, China from 25th April-8th May 2022. The October session will include a high-level segment aimed at generating political momentum behind the preparations of a new 10 year plan to save nature, also known as the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework which States are expected to finalize and adopt at the in-person session in 2022.

Positive discussions took place again during a 2 week virtual Working Group dialogue from 23rd August-3rd September, attended by 1680 participants, during which delegates adopted the First Draft of the Framework – including 21 key targets for urgent action to reverse nature loss by 2030. A highlight was the Pre-COP co-hosted by the Government of Colombia with the Monilla Amena Indigenous community on 30th August, designed to build high-level political commitments. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for greater ambition on targets, while the host, Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez, used his closing remarks to highlight the need for additional financial resources. Financing is certainly key to reaching – and implementing – a strong biodiversity deal at the end of this long road to Kunming, and the stakes are high: COP15 is considered as important for biodiversity as COP21 was for climate change in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was adopted.


Antarctica in the spotlight – Call on CCAMLR to make Ocean history
On 4th October, ministers and leading experts from around the world will meet in Madrid to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Madrid Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty. With runaway climate change and species loss already impacting Antarctica and its surrounding waters, this anniversary is a key opportunity for the signatories of this Antarctic Treaty protocol to commit to new action to confront the challenges of the next 30 years. And they will soon have a chance to prove this commitment by agreeing to protect almost 4 million km2 of the Southern Ocean in MPAs in the East Antarctic, Weddell Sea and Antarctic Peninsula at the all-important 40th Meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) from 18th-29th October.

In the next few weeks, the US, EU, UK and other CCAMLR Member states need to muster all their diplomatic muscle to bring Russia and China on board with this critical biodiversity and climate action. And that’s exactly what the #CallOnCCAMLR campaign is focussing on in the run up to CCAMLR. Momentum is building – with G20 Environment Ministers agreeing in July on a joint communiqué committing to protecting Antarctica’s Southern Ocean from human pressures to allay biodiversity loss and bolster humanity’s climate defences.

At the IUCN Congress in Marseille, on 3rd September, the combined petition by #CallOnCCAMLR, Avaaz and WeMove – signed by 1.5 million people – was handed over to President Macron and European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen, both key players for securing the vote at CCAMLR. Then it was the turn of musicians to inspire action at the ‘Only One Antarctica’ Concert on 16th September, which saw chart-topping artists from Russia, the UK, and Chile perform their hits from the top of icebergs and rub shoulders with penguins – thanks to the latest VR technologies! If you missed it, catch up here. Next up, New York City, where an OnlyOne event on ‘Antarctica: The Greatest Sanctuary’ was held on 21st September, while the UNGA gathered down the road.

Scientists are also coming forward. On 27th September, leading climate scientists sent a strong letter to CCAMLR Members urging them to act now to build resilience into the Southern Ocean ecosystem, before it’s too late. This letter was sent just ahead of the EU’s “Friends of MPA” ministerial meeting on 29th September, which follows a similar event in April where the US and Europe united behind Antarctic marine protection. Now you can also help amplify the scientists’ message by sharing their letter on your own social channels.

Antarctica is helping us fight climate change and governments must act now to protect it, even if it is an Antarctic geopolitical chess game as this article explains. The world cannot afford yet another lost year of inaction. In the spirit of collaboration which delivered the Madrid Protocol 30 years ago, governments must rise to today’s challenge before it’s too late. We can all play a part. If you haven’t done it yet, now is the time to sign and share the petition and Scientist Letter and help deliver ocean protection history in October.

 

The MPA Guide – it's here, it's clear, it's been reviewed by peers
Ocean Unite celebrated the release of The MPA Guide alongside UNEP-WCMC and a host of Ocean partners earlier this month, after years of research, analysis and input from hundreds of stakeholders and experts around the world. And The Navigator is particularly proud that our very own CEO Karen Sack is one of its contributing authors. The MPA Guide: A Framework to Achieve Global Goals for the Ocean is a scientific, peer-reviewed synthesis that includes a system designed to combat inconsistency and confusion in the current marine protection system. Informed by decades of social and ecological research, the synthesis aims to connect MPA science to management and policy action by proposing a new, science-driven, policy-relevant framework to categorize MPAs and track their outcomes for nature and people. The MPA Guide provides tools to illuminate how much of the ocean is currently Fully to Highly Protected, highlight places where MPAs are not yet implemented, and identify prime opportunities to support communities and countries to design and modify MPAs to make effective protection a reality. It gives everyone a clear scientific framework to consistently plan, map out, evaluate and monitor the achievement of their MPA goals. As co-author Dr. Naomi Kingston from UNEP-WCMC explains, “If the global community can use it to scale up the level of protection, extent and effectiveness of MPAs, we can achieve our global ambition to conserve life in the ocean.”



Shipping emissions – demand for drastic IMO action
Global shipping is a big emitter – estimated to be responsible for 3% of global GHG emissions, and expected to rise to 10% by 2050. In September, 3 Pacific Island states – the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands – made an official demand that the IMO drastically scale up its ambition for decarbonizing the global shipping sector and commit to cutting emissions to zero by 2050 at the latest. This would be a major step up from the current, woefully weak target of just halving emissions by mid-century and would bring the shipping into line with the 1.5C global heating climate target. The joint call to action gains even greater resonance in light of the recent IPCC report warning that entire island countries could disappear within the next century. But will these alarms and demands be heeded by participants at the IMO-UNEP-Norway hosted Zero and Low Emission Innovation Forum from 27th-29th September, aimed at accelerating the marine sector transition towards a zero-and low-emission future and addressing the needs of Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS)? Or will there just be more hot air?

Meanwhile, in response to reports from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center that Arctic summer ice has reached its 12th lowest level as well as Greenland ice at a current record low, the Clean Arctic Alliance has called for urgent cuts to black carbon emissions from shipping at an IMO meeting planned for November. One fifth of shipping’s emissions are from black carbon (soot) and the rest from CO2. Because of its closeness to snow and ice, black carbon coming from ships operating in the Arctic has disproportionately greater impacts on the climate, with particles landing on ice, darkening, warming and melting ice.

 

   Ocean Signals  Short announcements

  • The Ocean Unite Network congratulates Lewis Pugh for completing the incredible #ClimateSwim in Greenland, raising the awareness of climate impacts on the polar regions ahead of COP26 (12 days, 7.8km, freezing temperatures)! Watch a short video on his icy swim here.
     
  • France will host the international One Ocean Summit.
 
 

   Waves on the Horizon – What's coming up? 

Glasgow is a Go! Gearing up for COP26
Heads of State, experts and activists will be setting off to sunny Scotland in a few weeks’ time for the high stakes COP26 climate summit. At least, some of them will be. Others will be forced to attend virtually or not at all, as vaccine apartheid threatens to exclude many participants from the Global South. Pressure is mounting – not least on the UK hosts – to make sure COP26 delivers, and some are already issuing advance warnings that the talks will not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfil the Paris Agreement goal to limit global heating to 1.5C. One thing everyone does agree on is that finance is key – particularly honoring the long-standing promise by rich countries to provide US$100 billion a year to help developing countries prepare for and adapt to climate change. And there’s been good news on that front in recent days, with President Biden confirming at the UNGA that he intends to double US contributions to US$11.4 billion by 2024, and the EU pledging to add another US$4.7 billion between now and 2027 to the US$25 billion in climate funding it already commits annually. That means the US$100 billion goal should be reached by COP26 – though some argue that it is still too little, too late. On the private sector side, the new Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) brings together 160 firms with US$70 trillion in assets behind the common goal to steer the global economy towards net-zero emissions.

Financial investments are also crucial for Ocean-climate action in the “race to zero”. According to a recent article by the co-chairs of the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA), Chip Cunliffe and Karen Sack: “We need a new generation of financial backers from institutional investors to family offices, and from banks to insurers to put capital to work in the ocean. This will fight climate change, it will protect coastal communities, and it will preserve the assets that people around the world depend on for their livelihoods and for their financial security.” COP26 may have been delayed by a year, but whether on land, sea or air, we’ve been ignoring the climate warning signs for much longer than that. Now we need to act, fast.


Deja-vu at the WTO – still fishing for a deal
“Are we days away from a WTO deal on fisheries subsidies?” we asked optimistically in the last issue of The Navigator. Spoiler alert: no. For those of us who’ve been on subsidy talks deadline countdowns before, there was a distinct feeling of deja-vu when it was announced that the agreement promised to be reached at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in July would be delayed – again! But states reportedly did “edge closer” to a deal in July and now they hope to close the remaining gaps by the next ministerial at the end of November, with the help of a marathon negotiation schedule that kicked off on 1st September. It is vital that reaching a good deal is prioritized as – after more than 20 years of deliberations – the health of the Ocean and the credibility of WTO are both on the line. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala agrees. She wants to wrap up the fish talks, but it is not all plain sailing. India, and other developing states, are calling certain elements of the latest draft agreement "unequal, unfair, unjust" and pushing for wide exemptions from subsidy curbs. The Navigator will be watching and hoping for a strong deal by the end of November!
 
 

   Ocean Reflection – A look back at what's been happening

Code Red for Humanity: the IPCC Climate Report
Climate change is “widespread, rapid, and intensifying” is the headline message of the latest landmark IPCC Report, released on 9th August. The findings of the AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis report show that both the scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Global heating is now affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible. But the report also insists that human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of Earth’s climate. Unless there are immediate, rapid, large-scale reductions in GHG emissions, limiting warming to 1.5C or even 2C will be beyond reach. The release of the #IPCC #ClimateReport is a “code red for humanity” and an important moment in the lead-up to COP26. There is now only a very small window to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. It’s time to heed the climate warning, listen to the Ocean, and listen to the science. The report makes grim reading, albeit with a remaining glimmer of hope. Hopefully this is the wake-up call that’s needed before it’s too late.


UNGA focuses on the 3 Cs: Covid, Conflicts and Climate
It almost felt like life was back to “normal” when flocks of dignitaries descended on mid-town New York for the 76th UNGA from 14th-27th September. But the issues on the table were very 2021: Covid vaccines and recovery, conflicts over Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the climate crisis and COP26. The good news is, at the closing of the General Debate, the new President of the Assembly declared that multilateralism “is indeed alive and well” and that the active and inclusive event was “a sign of a world that continues to believe in dialogue and diplomacy.”

There was progress on climate and nature too. At a high-level meeting to tackle energy issues and accelerating ambitions towards achieving SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, 43 Heads of State and Government and over 100 other high-level leaders from governments, UN entities, other organizations, the private sector, and civil society announced over 137 commitments called “Energy Compacts.” The UN Secretary General is now expected to translate the outcomes of the High Level Dialogue on Energy into a decarbonization roadmap to present to the General Assembly.

Also at a side event organized by Campaign for Nature and partners on the 22nd September, an astounding US$5 billion in pledges from philanthropists and investors were made to the global movement to protect at least 30% of the planet by 2030. Leaders of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) also announced that 72 countries now support the global goal. Excitingly, that means that – between the HAC, the Global Ocean Alliance, and other initiatives – over 100 countries now support the Ocean “30x30” target that will hopefully be finally adopted at the CBD COP next year.


IUCN Congress – Conservationists spotted in the wild!
The IUCN Congress finally happened, in real life, in Marseille from 3rd-11th September! As the first large international meeting on the environment since the pandemic, participants were brimming with enthusiasm and solidarity – and the results reflected this positive spirit.
 
Held every 4 years, the Congress allows IUCN's 1400 Member organizations to democratically determine the most pressing issues and actions in nature conservation. This year, coming just weeks ahead of CBD COP15, the meeting was a key chance to advance progress towards the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and securing the 30x30 goal, which originated at IUCN back in 2016. A full list of the motions passed at the Congress can be found here, and a summary report here. Filter by ‘restoring ocean health’ in ‘Congress themes’ for a closer look. IUCN motions are not binding, but they do create good leverage and mobilize attention. And they lift the spirits. We hope to see the same positivity at COP15, CCAMLR, and COP26 in the critical weeks ahead.
 
Highlights for The Navigator include the passing of a motion calling for an ambitious High Seas Treaty to be concluded as soon as possible (i.e. in 2022) and to provide for a network of effective High Seas MPAs. And, as the cherry on the cake, the Congress also voted yes to a moratorium on deep-sea mining! Hopefully the fact that the vast majority of governments, NGOs and civil society groups (85% of delegates in total) voted in favour of the momentous moratorium will put pressure on the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to strictly regulate it going forward. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition welcomed the vote and stressed that: “Member countries of the ISA, including France which hosted this Congress, need to wake up and act on behalf of civil society and the environment now, and take action in support of a moratorium.”

Other Key News

 

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