Updates

2024, November

The 16th UN biodiversity summit (commonly known as COP16) was held from from 21st October to 2nd November, 2024 in Cali, a city in Columbia.  It ended because it lost quorum, so it is not officially finished. It was attended by 23,000 people from around the world. It has recently been reported that we are losing biodiversity and thus ecosystem services at an increasing rate, and it was hoped that COP16 would go a long way to repairing this situation. The conference has been reported as having mixed success. A list of opinions on the outcomes of COP16, last updated 28 January 2025.

• Nations Back Landmark Health Deal at Troubled UN Biodiversity Summit
• UN Biodiversity Talks Stalled, but Protecting Nature Cannot Wait
• What was achieved, and not, for Indigenous and local leaders at COP16
• Biodiversity COP 16: Important Agreement Reached  Towards Goal of “Making Peace with Nature”
• Cop16: the world's largest meeting to save nature has ended with no clear path ahead 
• Global biodiversity offsetting doesn’t work – keep schemes local, say experts
• COP 16 desertification conference: Outcomes
• We hit the temperature record. Now what? Reasons to (still) look forward to 2025 nature and climate action

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2024, October

What happens if we start to lose the ecosystem services that nature provides? Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing? According to this report

The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating.

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2024, July

A new discovery has shown us that the Deep Ocean has been providing an ecosystem service that we were not previously aware of - a new source of oxygen. Read more about it. Discovery: "Dark oxygen" is produced on the ocean floor without sunlight

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2024, April

Sea level rise, due to climate warming, is looming as a threat to existence on our planet.

Scientists estimate that global sea levels have already risen by 21-24 centimeters (8-9 inches) since 1880, and the rate at which this is happening is speeding up. Recent data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found that sea levels rose nearly 1 cm (0.4 in) between January 2020 and 2022, setting a new record. (See Sea level rise looms, even for the best-prepared country on Earth)

In the past, rising sea levels have been treated almost solely as an engineering problem to be combated by building seawalls out of stone. Often the stone has to be imported. Ecologists have come up with ways to protect shorelines from erosion by using ecosystem services. New living shorelines have been assembled using local timber and a selection of salt tolerant plants. See U.S. East Coast adopts ‘living shorelines’ approach to keep rising seas at bay for more details.