Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle. You can also submit opinion essays to us for our consideration for posting on our new “Bright Ideas” op-ed page.
By Polen Cisneros, Wildlife Crime Program Officer, International Fund for Animal Welfare As a conservationist and a millennial, it is easy to say that 2019 was rather a disheartening year for nature. Not only did the current administration weaken certain protections for animals at the risk of extinction, but the 2019 IPBES Report also painted […]
Continue Reading 680 words
While 2019 was the year of CBD , 2020 will shape up to be the year of the other (arguably way cooler) CBD: the Convention on Biological Diversity. If we’ve lost you, just remember that this year the UN warned that 1 million species are at risk of extinction, making it imperative that we take […]
Continue Reading 304 words
Yesterday was #HumanRightsDay and the importance of access to and conserving nature as a basic human right was emphasized repeatedly at the UN Climate Meeting in Madrid — sustaining biodiversity is increasingly recognized for its benefits to addressing the climate emergency. And as developing countries are stepping up to fill the leadership void at the Climate Meeting, their leaders are looking for multifaceted climate solutions that conserve biodiversity and provide for sustainable use of natural resources.
Why This Matters: It is just this simple — without biodiversity, life on Earth for humans is not possible. But if we started by protecting or restoring 30 percent of the planet by 2030 for nature itself, that would provide huge carbon capture as well as biodiversity benefits.
Continue Reading 582 wordsStay in the know, empower yourself to be a #FriendOfThePlanet, sign up to receive ODP in your inbox each morning!
Over the past 50 years, fewer crops are feeding the world’s people and diets around the world are becoming more alike. This puts us at risk of a “globalized diet” based on major crops such as soybeans, wheat, rice, and corn–which are grown on almost half the world’s agricultural lands.
Continue Reading 424 words
Scientists have scrambled to find solutions to help reverse damage to coral reefs and a new study suggests that loudspeakers may serve as an important remedy.
Continue Reading 314 words
If you’ve been following along with us all week then by now you’ll have a pretty good understanding of the biodiversity crisis we’re facing and why it’s so important that we protect nature. That’s where the Campaign for Nature comes in… In October of 2018, the Wyss Foundation, a charity focused on protecting wild places, announced […]
Continue Reading 431 words
Throughout this week we’ve written about what biodiversity means, what’s driving its loss and how it relates to climate change. It’s been pretty somber content so we also wanted to talk about what’s being done to ensure that we don’t see the worst biodiversity loss scenarios. Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the […]
Continue Reading 497 words
Climate change has emerged as a leading cause of biodiversity loss. As Scientific American noted, it will be the fastest-growing cause of species loss in the Americas by midcentury and in Africa it could cause some animals to decline by as much as 50 percent by the end of the century, and up to 90 […]
Continue Reading 421 words
Rising global temperatures are worrying truffle hunters around the Italian town of Alba, where the most prized specimens can fetch twice the price of gold. To stave off the longer-term climate change impact on the production of the highly prized white truffle, experts have launched initiatives to better preserve the territory where they grow.
Continue Reading 333 words
Over the last century, humans have come to dominate the planet, causing rapid ecosystem change and massive loss of biodiversity across the planet.
Why This Matters: without a vibrant Earth our chances of adequately feeding and sustaining 9.8 billion people by 2050 become slim.
Continue Reading 352 words
We write a lot about biodiversity, but it’s a complicated topic and we thought that we’d use this week to take a deeper dive into what it means and why we should all care about the issue. So here goes, the American Museum of Natural History defines biodiversity (from “biological diversity”) as the variety of […]
Continue Reading 380 words
by CT Harry, Marine Campaigner, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) North Atlantic right whales once numbered tens of thousands in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean from the Labrador Sea to the coast of Florida. They were nearly driven extinct by whaling at the turn of the century and, tragically, once again, are […]
Continue Reading 790 words
