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29/11/2021

15/11/2021

New global biodiversity goals must take these key lessons into account
A framework to help countries develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of their natural resources is nearing completion. The so-called ‘post-2020’ global biodiversity framework will provide goals and targets to stem and reverse the decline in nature until 2050.

The framework is being developed through a wide consultative process undertaken by the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, to meet its three objectives: to conserve biodiversity, meet people’s needs sustainably and do this equitably. All but two countries are party to the convention, and the last set of targets, known as the Aichi targets, ran for the decade from 2010 to 2020.

Early next year, countries are expected to negotiate and adopt a final version of the framework at the 15th Conference of Parties of the Convention, to be held in China. Country delegations are led by ministries of environment, but the new framework is intended to set biodiversity goals across all sectors, under the umbrella of the Sustainable Development Goals.
While conservation efforts in the last decade have been great, none of the 20 Aichi targets were met in full. The main reason is that national environment ministries, which negotiated the targets, had little power to address causes of biodiversity decline – principally economic and population growth. Climate change is an increasingly important cause of biodiversity loss, but itself is just a symptom of these same drivers.

Nature has continued to decline, visible in the continued loss of species and ecosystems and in declining benefits from nature to people across all scales.

For the coming decades, we need much stronger, smarter and more engaging goals and targets, with realistic timescales. These must also reflect the complexity of nature and its interactions with people.

COVID-19 has delayed the biodiversity negotiations for over a year. This has given an extended time for wide consultation and inputs from the delegations but also from observers, including communities and indigenous peoples, private sector interests and scientists.

Here I focus on two scientific papers reflecting on two critical issues that must be addressed: more effectively conserving nature, and redressing imbalances in equity in conservation.

Ambitious, synergistic targets
In the first paper, a group of almost 40 scientists (including myself) from around the world urge parties to the convention to consider three points essential to conserving nature effectively.

First, goals for each facet of nature are required because of nature’s complexity. The goals should cover genes through species to ecosystems, as well as the benefits we depend on from nature – such as food, materials, clean air and water, and a stable climate.
Second, goals can’t be defined in isolation – nature’s facets are very interlinked and this has to be considered. For example, the right diversity of species and their functions must be assured. A low diversity plantation forest that traps carbon or produces timber cannot replace a mature natural forest hosting hundreds to thousands of species and providing myriad benefits to people.

Third, only the highest level of ambition in setting each goal, and implementing all goals in an integrated manner, will give a realistic chance of ‘bending the curve’ on biodiversity loss in coming decades.

What is sobering is that these requirements are even more ambitious than the 2020 Aichi Targets. But there is a growing understanding that an improved state of nature is necessary to meet people’s immediate needs, and for a stable and just planet. Many hope that this realisation will help release the commitments necessary to succeed.

Sharing benefits and burdens
The second paper focuses on meeting people’s needs – from an African perspective. I worked alongside 15 African scientists, conservation leaders and civil society representatives, to highlight our challenges and a way forward that is good for nature and people.

Past approaches to establishing protected areas have, in many cases, alienated and directly disadvantaged local communities and indigenous groups.

There are now ambitions from a wide consortium of governments, NGOs and civil society groups to further raise the area under protection between 2030 and 2050. To protect local communities and indigenous peoples, and support their economic growth and increased wealth, we propose a new 'shared earth/shared ocean’ approach that focuses on making conservation work for people. This would not just be in areas where nature is intact but, most importantly, where people live, work and depend on nature daily.

For example, in rural farming landscapes or coastal fishing communities conservation integrated into farming and fishing practices can improve the overall condition of nature and benefit people directly. New guidance suggests that in these places 20% of local area should be under native, or intact, habitat. This is enough to provide most locally important contributions from nature to people, such as pollination of crops, water filtration, access to wild species, and soil regeneration. Done right, it can also deliver on biodiversity conservation targets. Critically, this fraction needs to be achieved down to the smallest scales, so that people can access the benefits.

15/11/2021

Bright skies named colour of the year – here’s why there’s so much more to the heavens than blue
The colour of 2022 will be “bright skies”, according to paint manufacturer Dulux.

This mellow light blue may certainly seem familiar. Depending on where and at what time of the day you look at the sky, you might well expect to catch a glimpse of a similar colour.

Yet take the time to watch the sky from the horizon to the expanse above your head, during all weathers and from dawn to nighttime, and of course you’ll see that it is filled with many colours. Over hundreds of years, physicists have worked to understand why the sky holds so many shades, from a myriad blues to red and even green. Here’s what we’ve learned, and what to look out for while contemplating “bright skies” and immersing yourself in skywatching.
The Sun’s light is made up of different electromagnetic waves, and their various wavelengths are associated with a different colour. Shorter waves are seen as blue, slightly longer waves as yellow, and even longer as red.
When these waves are seen together they look white. But this light has to travel through our atmosphere before it gets to our eyes, and atmospheric molecules are much smaller than the wavelength of the Sun’s light. As the light hits these molecules, they scatter it in all different directions. This effect is called Rayleigh scattering.

In this process, more of the bluer light, which has shorter wavelengths, is scattered, resulting in the sky becoming blue wherever you look. Meanwhile, the Sun becomes more yellow looking since the light from it is now missing those longer blue wavelengths.
Adding white
But the daytime sky isn’t the same blue all over. You’re more likely to find the Dulux bright skies colour closer to the horizon where the blue is more washed out or lighter.

This is the impact of Mie scattering, which is a similar process as Rayleigh scattering but caused by larger particles (such as water vapour or fine pollution particles in little droplets). These types of particles remove the red, yellow and blue colour components from a white light beam in equal measures and do not alter the colour of the light passing through the atmosphere or being scattered back to an observer. This leads to the sky turning whiter in addition to the blue caused by Rayleigh scattering.

The influence of white within the blue of the sky becomes stronger towards the horizon where the light has to pass through much more atmosphere to arrive at the observer. The various tones and shades of blue observed become nature’s visualisation of what the atmosphere is currently composed of. The whiter it appears, the more extra particles are present.

A tool to measure just how many particles are suspended in the sky was developed by Horace Bénédict de Saussure, an 18th-century Swiss geologist and alpine explorer. Called a cyanometer, it is a colour wheel featuring 53 different colours for the observer to compare to the sky.

15/11/2021

From dragonflies to kingfishers: the science behind nature’s brilliant blues
Sitting by the edge of a river on a lazy summer’s day, the sky is a beautiful blue overhead. Lush greenery crowds the bank. The river is alive: minnows, coots and water voles fuss at the water’s edge.

Amid this truly delightful scene, most eye-catching of all are the brilliant flashes of blue: on the bodies of dragonflies, the wings of mallard drakes, and the eye-catching feathers of any fast-gliding kingfishers that patrol the river.

These creatures gleam with the same distinctive blue we see in peacock plumage and Amazon butterflies. It’s a jewel-like, metallic hue that serves a particular purpose: to help these creatures stand out against their comparatively dull environment.

But how do these plants and animals acquire their magical blue shimmer? A true blue pigment is actually relatively rare in nature, so plants and animals instead perform tricks with the light to generate this dazzling effect.
Complicated molecules
In the natural world, we come across blue pigments less frequently than red, green or black pigments, because molecules that reflect blue light are inherently more complicated.
To produce any particular colour, molecules must absorb all the light they don’t reflect. For blue pigments this means absorbing red light, which has lower energy than blue light. But low-energy light is harder to absorb, so any molecule that reflects the colour blue has to work harder to absorb red light.

Molecules which accommodate this process are large and complicated, making them more resource-heavy for organisms to produce. That’s why they’re less likely to turn up and persist through the long slog of evolution – they’re often too costly for organisms to maintain in the survival of the fittest.

Many plants and animals which are blue have evolved this way for an important reason — perhaps to entice a particular pollinator, attract a mate or warn off a predator. For example, cornflowers are blue in order to attract insect pollinators, and use a complex arrangement of molecules to adapt the molecule that makes roses red so that it instead reflects blue light.

15/11/2021