Nature Beat #23

Updates, stories, resources and opportunities

Welcome to the latest edition of Global Nature Beat. If you are new here, read my About page to find out what this newsletter is, who I am and why I am doing this. Or just dive in. You’ll find news, reporting resources, job postings, links to some great stories and a look ahead to what’s coming up in the world of biodiversity and nature policy.

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Taking The Pulse

Deep-sea mining: At last week’s meeting of the International Seabed Authority, member nations made limited progress developing regulations for mining in the international waters. Elizabeth Claire Alberts’s story for Mongabay provides a detailed update on the talks and the positions of those for and against deep-sea mining.

Plastics treaty: IUCN and the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law are proposing that the global plastics treaty under negotiation should include references to biodiversity and ecosystems -- watch their recent webinar or read the story and proposed text.

UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): The CBD has a new head. On 2 April, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Astrid Schomaker as executive secretary. She replaces David Cooper who was filling the role on an interim basis. Read the official announcement or the CBD press release.

EU Deforestation Law: Kate Abnett reports that 20 of the European Union’s 27 member states want to scale back or even suspend the bloc’s anti-deforestation law. It’s the latest in a series of moves to weaken environmental law in the EU because of pressure from the farming lobby.

Wildlife trade: The Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) shared information about meetings of its Animals Committee and Plants Committee taking place in July. Both meetings will be live streamed in English, French and Spanish on the CITES YouTube channel.

Elephant hunting: Elephants crossing from Kenya’s Amboseli National Park into Tanzania faced being killed in legal hunts there, prompting a petition calling for a ban on trophy hunting in Tanzania. As Boris Ngounou reports, the governor of one of Kenya’s border counties has expressed concern and asked Tanzania to take action. But conservation scientist Amy Dickman is concerned the emotion is overriding evidence, as she explains in a detailed Twitter thread.

Whose eye is this? Answer below…

In The Spotlight

• Did you see the viral clip of Guyana’s president Irfaan Ali upbraiding BBC journalist Stephen Sackur in a conversation about oil drilling, carbon, climate and forests? As Amy Westervelt brilliantly explains, that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. It’s about far more than Guyana or oil.

• Simeon Tegel wrote about gold miners who are piloting efforts to restore rainforest on land cleared for mining in the Peruvian Amazon.

In Focus: Destructive Fishing

Global efforts to end destructive fishing are hampered by the lack of definition of the term. To address this, academics, NGOs and the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre consulted experts from 32 countries to develop the following definition:

“Destructive fishing is any fishing practice that causes irrecoverable habitat degradation, or which causes significant adverse environmental impacts, results in long-term declines in target or non-target species beyond biologically safe limits and has negative livelihood impacts.”

Read more in the news story or the academic paper that explains how they reached consensus.

Tips And Resources

• What is the future of environmental journalism? On 6 April, join Emilia Askari, Emily Atkin, Tony Barboza, Mark Schleifstein as they share their thoughts in the closing plenary of the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists. It will be webcast here.

• The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Secretariat has a webinar on 17 April on draft modalities for modifying the descriptions of ecologically or biologically significant marine areas.

• The Wildlife Conservation Society is holding an online press briefing on 10 April to announce new funding targets for tigers and discuss the upcoming Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference.

• The Center for International Environmental Law has a webinar on 11 April about obstructionist tactics and other aspects of the negotiations towards a global plastics treaty — see the related PDF.

• The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas has a free online course — in Portuguese  — on solutions journalism. Hosted by Brazilian journalist Daniel Nardin, it starts on 29 April and runs for a month.

See past editions for more tips and resources.

What Caught My Eye

• The city of Toronto, Canada has launched a ‘lights out’ campaign to reduce the number of birds colliding with buildings during their seasonal migration.

• The UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 showed that households worldwide wasted a billion meals in 2022 — more than enough to feed the world’s hungry people. See the press release for more.

• An invasive beetle species from South-East Asia has killed thousands of trees in South Africa and threatens millions more, reports Ed Stoddard.

• Japan has released a strategy to help companies become ‘nature positive’ both at home and in their international supply chains, reports Stian Reklev.

• Lily Hess wrote about a recent symposium on how to make wild meat consumption safe and sustainable.

• The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is launching an “emergency response” to investigate a rash of deaths and weird behaviour among endangered smalltooth sawfish, reports Maya Yang. As noted in the journal Oryx last week, all sawfish species are now critically endangered.

• Monica Piccinini wrote about the environmental and social challenges in Belém, the Brazilian host city of next year’s COP30 climate change conference.

• Abhaya Raj Joshi wrote a three-part series on Nepal’s plans for development in and around protected areas, including stories on proposed rule changes to allow hotel-building, cable cars and adventure tourism in national parks.

• Kaamil Ahmed, Damien Gayle and Aseel Mousa reported on the environmental destruction caused by Israel’s military action in Gaza.

• South Africa published a revised policy position on the conservation and sustainable use of elephants, lions, leopards and rhinoceroses. Taylor Tench of the Environmental Investigation Agency offers some thoughts on it here.

• Patricia Ramírez wrote for Causa Natura about myths surrounding industrial seaweed farming (in Spanish).

• Uganda’s lion population has fallen by 45 percent in 20 years due to poaching and retaliatory killings.

• Sabrina Shankman reported on research showing how groups opposed to climate action are falsely blaming whale deaths on offshore wind farms.

• Sammy Roth wrote about the writers pitching climate change stories to Hollywood studios.

• A court in the United States has acquitted a Cambodian official accused of links to monkey smuggling, reports Gerald Flynn.

• The One World Media Awards longlist has many great environment stories in different prize categories.

From The Journals

In case you missed it, my latest round-up of new research included papers on: Preventing pandemics. Failing dolphins. Cerrado winners and losers. Better fake reefs. A great urban shift. And much more… Read the summaries here.

Can You Help?

If you can spare £1 a week for a paid subscription, you will be helping me to keep it going for everyone else who cannot afford to pay. If you cannot, then please consider supporting the newsletter by sharing it with new readers.

Jobs And Opportunities

• The Arizona Republic is offering an environmental reporting fellowship — apply here.

• Politico is hiring a Brussels-based sustainability editor — no deadline listed.

• Freelancers contributing to media outlets in France, Germany and the United Kingdom can apply for grants for solution-focused stories relating to any of the first six Sustainable Development Goals — deadline 5 April.

• Climate Tracker is seeking journalism mentors from six countries in Latin America — deadline 14 April.

• There are bursaries available for journalists to join the Social Data School at the University of Cambridge to focus on machine learning and environmental issues — deadline 21 April.

• The Sentry seeks an investigator to focus on illegal logging — deadline 21 April.

• Early-career science journalists in the United States from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups can apply for a year-long fellowship — deadline 26 April.

• Journalists from Brazil, Chile and Colombia can apply for training on covering a just transition to sustainability, and one of the ten selected will go to the COP29 climate change conference — deadline 28 April.

• Is anyone writing a book about a desert or deserts? You can apply for the US$3000 Waterston Desert Writing Prize — deadline 1 May.

• The Pulitzer Center invites journalists to join the second cohort of its Ocean Reporting Network — deadline 26 May.

Bonus content: There are 36 jobs, grants, fellowships and other opportunities listed here for Global Nature Beat’s paying supporters. Paid subscriptions are less than £1 per week. A free seven-day trial is available.

On The Horizon

10-12 April 2024: The UN Ocean Decade Conference takes place in Barcelona, Spain.

15-17 April 2024: The 9th Our Ocean Conference takes place in Athens, Greece.

15-19 April 2024: The Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is holding a dialogue on National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, and a workshop on Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, for Caribbean countries. Both take place in Georgetown, Guyana.

15-26 April 2024: The 23rd Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues takes place in New York City, United States.

17-21 April 2024: The International Journalism Festival takes place in Perugia, Italy.

22-23 April 2024: The Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference takes place in Bhutan.

Bonus content: The full calendar for The Nature Beat’s supporters includes 57 nature-related intergovernmental negotiations, scientific conferences, report launches, and other events up until 2026. Paid subscriptions are less than £1 per week. A free seven-day trial is available.

Whose Eye Was It?

The eye belongs to a silvereye (Zosterops lateralis). Photo credit: Bernard Spragg / Flickr — Creative Commons

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