Archive for November, 2026

“In 2023, US$7.3 trillion flowed into nature-harming activities, while only US$220 billion supported nature-based solutions.” —2026 Living Planet Report

“The real test is whether natural ecosystems—forests, grasslands, freshwater systems, and oceans—are maintaining or recovering the ecological integrity needed to sustain life,” —John G. Robinson, a Wildlife Conservation Society scientist who co-chairs the IUCN Task Force on Ecological Integrity

“At the core of transformative change lies a shift in values. We need to move away from unlimited abundance to sufficiency, from overexploitation to reciprocity, from performance to robustness. There is no Planet B, but a B-Economy* is possible, an alternative model rooted in values compatible with living in harmony with nature.” https://tinyurl.com/b-economy-possible
—Alain Branchaud, Executive Director of SNAP Québec

A “whole-of-society” approach to turn around a metacrisis whose multi-malignancies attack planetary boundaries and are now punctuating the Earth’s ability to heal itself is critically important. An all-hands-on-deck way is about mobilizing all government institutions, and this most definitely includes civil society. This article looks at the burgeoning commitment for taking on responsibility, creating multilateral institutions and putting a resilient matrix together to counter a society-wide descent into hopelessness.

From autumn 2026 through to January 2027 there are major summits that focus on the UN establishment institutions, but also new treaties and international conferences are bringing forth a strong web of activism for the Earth. Renowned campaigner Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, intentionally changes the spelling of “Earth” to give readers a sense of the far-reaching ramifications of how humanity’s “experiment” with adding fossil fuel pollution and encouraging biodiversity loss is remaking our planet. A vigorous response to that unraveling of Earth systems and precious cultures can be discovered in the important whole-of-society approach.

Canada finally ratified the Global Ocean Treaty on September 23, just in time for the first UN Ocean COP1 in January 2027. By signing, Canada is promising to protect marine biodiversity in international waters and will be able to participate in creating new ocean sanctuaries. Known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, the legally binding UN treaty covers the ocean zones that lie beyond national waters (the “high seas”) and the international seabed area.
https://tinyurl.com/ocean-green-treaty

The 65th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-65) took place from October 12 to 16 this year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Before it began, there were all kinds of delay for the confirmation of the Seventh Assessment cycle, which is the timeline for delivery of the parts of its Seventh Assessment Report that deal with the understanding of climate change. The road to making this happen has been “frustrating and disappointing,” with meetings earlier in the year producing “minimal outcomes,” IPCC chair Jim Skea said. The usual suspects such as Saudi Arabia put up roadblocks to getting the seventh assessment finished.
https://tinyurl.com/frustrating-meetings

For many international planetary agreements 2030 has been the goal of the efforts to achieve successful and ongoing resiliency if there is to be peace between humans and Earth. This is why the UN’s COP17 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which took place from October 16 to 30 in Yerevan, Armenia, emphasized reaching 23 targets by that date in order to achieve flourishing biodiversity by 2050.

More will be said in a future article on whether there was enough progress at the meeting, but at the time this article was published no country had secured anywhere near a tangible resolve to incorporate the targets of the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework’s in order to create the changes needed.

Well before the summit, to move nations forward, the UN Secretary-General launched a first global assessment of progress under the world’s biodiversity agreement, saying,
“Nearly 90 per cent of countries have established national biodiversity targets, but fewer than half of assessed targets are on track.”
https://tinyurl.com/global-review-on-actions

Only two of those 23 targets contain any semblance of progress.

Target 8’s text says: “Minimize the impact of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity and increase its resilience through mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction actions, including through nature-based solutions and/or ecosystem-based approaches, while minimizing negative and fostering positive impacts of climate action on biodiversity.”

Target 10: “Ensure that areas under agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry are managed sustainably, in particular through the sustainable use of biodiversity, including through a substantial increase of the application of biodiversity friendly practices, such as sustainable intensification, agroecological and other innovative approaches, contributing to the resilience and long-term efficiency and productivity of these production systems, and to food security, conserving and restoring biodiversity and maintaining nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services.”

Frankly, I am highly dubious that targets 8 and 10 are anywhere close to realizing their goals.

Meanwhile, Targets 19 and 23 are presently nowhere near making headway in getting nations to contribute financially to protect Global South communities and for ensuring “gender equality in the implementation of the Framework through a gender-responsive approach, where all women and girls have equal opportunity and capacity to contribute to the three objectives of the Convention, including by recognizing their equal rights and access to land and natural resources and their full, equitable, meaningful and informed participation and leadership at all levels of action, engagement, policy and decision-making related to biodiversity.” Take a look at all the targets for 2030: https://www.cbd.int/gbf/targets.

I witnessed the enthusiasm displayed at COP15 in Montreal in 2022. COP17 must follow through on a trajectory to meet 2030 ambitions. As things stand, that’s not going to be achievable…
https://tinyurl.com/report-on-biodiversity

An Lambrechts, head of Greenpeace’s delegation to the COP17 summit, said in a statement: “We’re halfway to 2030 and the evidence is clear: we are far off track to reach the 30×30 targets. The systems that sustain life on Earth are under threat, and decisions made at COP17 must deliver a clear course correction to protect our planet’s ecosystems… This COP can’t become a mere entry in a vast log of destruction… Governments need to agree on concrete actions that tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss, increase finance, and redirect money flows to where they are needed. But decisions in Yerevan will only matter if governments follow through at home. They cannot continue promising to protect nature while supporting its destruction through harmful subsidies and incoherent policies. Any more delay is a threat to our survival on the planet.”

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Turkey will take place from November 9 to 20. For the second Global Stocktake, by which all nations take ‘stock’ of what they have accomplished and make public their aspirations—or, better yet, commitments under the Paris Agreement—parties will also have to address mitigation, adaptation, finance and just transition, among other issues. The UN Emissions Gap Report for 2026 makes it very clear that the discrepancy between what nations said they wanted to do to lower fossil fuel emissions and what actually was achieved is huge.
https://tinyurl.com/emissions-gap-crisis

The First International Conference of the Global Framework on Chemicals (November 16 to 20) will consider “issues of concern” and address proposals for two programmes. One aims to support efforts to manage chemicals throughout their lifecycle, and the other to facilitate industry engagement and action in the areas of textiles, electronics, construction and healthcare. Three core themes are tracking progress, accelerating action and investing for action. A key goal will be the creation of concrete deadlines.
https://tinyurl.com/chemical-summit

The 2026 United Nations Water Conference, co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Senegal, is to be convened in UAE from 8 to 10 December this year. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, states: “To ensure universal access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030, we must invest in infrastructure, protect water-related ecosystems, and promote hygiene education. Improving water-use efficiency is also key to reducing overall water stress. At our current pace, however, the world will not achieve sustainable water management until at least 2049, and reaching water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) targets in schools by 2030 will require doubling our current rate of progress.”
https://tinyurl.com/sdg-water

Some good news-finally! At the 13th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), “83 votes to 12, governments backed a resolution establishing a committee to design a new protocol targeting illegal trade in wildlife and timber, illicit mining and trafficking in minerals, and waste trafficking.” Mongabay News tells us.

It is not only large institutions that create much-needed change not only to help Nature withstand the trespass of humans, but also to enable it to flourish. Many times the institution itself is the cause for intransigence and even failure. The story of how a man with 20 bamboo seedlings created a forest tells us that even one person working alone can transform what appears to be a barren landscape into a verdant and biodiverse haven for wildlife. Jadav Payeng is just such a person. He has won many prestigious awards and is popularly known as “The Forest Man of India” for his unwavering dedication to Nature.
https://tinyurl.com/forest-man