Featured image by Amos Nachoum.

SANTIAGO, APRIL 22nd, 2021

During the 2021 Virtual Leaders Climate Summit hosted on Earth Day, President Sebastian Piñera announced Chile will launch efforts to create a fully protected high seas marine protected area (MPA) in the Eastern Pacific as a priority measure to address the climate crisis.  The high seas MPA will be the first of its kind, protecting the Nazca Ridge, an area incredibly rich in biodiversity and abundant in endemic species.  The Nazca Ridge includes a series of connected submarine mountains offering refuge to both resident and migratory marine species, including threatened blue whales and leatherback sea turtles that return to these waters annually to breed and feed.  The area proposed for protections has been designated as an Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area (EBSA) in need of protection under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).…

By Dan Laffoley and Dr. Sylvia Earle

Later this year a major meeting will occur in China under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which will establish the ‘post-2020’ global biodiversity goals to better protect nature and the planet. This meeting is set against ever-increasing urgency and desperation to get a grip on the now deeply concerning and accelerating decline in nature, increases in major disruptions from climate change, and the impacts of this on the planet, nature, people, and the very viability of options for our future. In doing so the meeting in China remains one of THE opportunities of our generation to focus the attention of Governments on significantly scaling up ocean biodiversity protection. But why then does the CBD seem to be dropping an emphasis on the ocean?…