Protect Whom?

LISTENING: to the piano of the above song
FEELING: actually quite sad
SEEING: my cat stare me down for his next meal

It's unseasonably warm here in New York, but my mind is on Colombia, where world leaders are meeting to discuss the future of biodiversity protections.

Known as COP16, this year's conference is focused on checking in on how governments are meeting the goals they established two years ago when they signed onto the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Think of the framework like the Paris Agreement — but for biodiversity, not climate. The treaty sets forth a vision of where the globe should be by 2030 and 2050. Goals are ambitious, such as ending human-induced extinction and providing financial resources and support for all countries to take these actions.

The text defines its mission as such:

To take urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery for the benefit of people and planet by conserving and sustainably using biodiversity and by ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources, while providing the necessary means of implementation.

The U.S. hasn't committed to any of this.

Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and we can't save wildlife and ecosystems without protecting the people who steward them best.

We know already that Indigenous peoples protect 80 percent of today's existing biodiversity areas. If we want their forests and rivers to remain and thrive, the people who are guarding these areas need to be safe, too.

The annual environmental defenders report from human rights group Global Witness found that 40 percent of all murders of environmental defenders happened in Colombia last year. Some 43 percent of all last year's 196 deaths were Indigenous people, too. These are individuals defending their territories from mines and logging, dams and pipelines. These major development projects often come at the cost of wildlife and ecosystems.

If we want to keep more wilderness areas intact, there needs to be stronger laws that protect the people who know these places best. There needs to be accountability for those who harm them — and the governments that fail to prevent their killings. And the U.S. should be standing in solidarity.

There's so much that will be discussed at COP16 until it ends on Nov. 1. Keep your eyes on the discussions. Humanity is at a pivotal point where we either do what we must to live on a planet that can continue to nurture us — or destroy it beyond repair. This isn't an exaggeration. It's science. 🌀

Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more disasters like these.

Record-breaking rainfall in New Mexico this week killed at least two people.

In Cuba, where a terrible power outage has been afflicting the country for some days, Hurricane Oscar made landfall as a Category 1 storm Sunday, killing at least six people.

Tropical Storm Trami has killed at least 14 people in the Phillippines.

Currently Reading

Noise pollution includes the horrifying sounds of war. A team from the Guardian has such an important story on Gaza's ongoing suffering.

Poetry

the breeze on my skin
the leaves beneath my toes
I breathe you in
and let you go

-ylf-

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- Yessenia