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ECO 70(2) - Tuesday, 22 October

In this issue:

President Petro is Right: COP16 must and can act on Artificial Intelligence threats to biodiversity.

At the COP16 opening ceremony on Sunday night, Colombian President Gustavo Petro launched a clear series of warnings on the growing threat posed by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry to biodiversity, climate and society. He warned that fossil fuel -powered expansion of the sector and technological elites driving the technology could propel the world towards “armageddon”. He called on the international community to take urgent measures to regulate the deve-lopment and use of artificial intelligence, stressing that without concerted global action, the effects of AI and climate change could be irreversible. “It is necessary to build public, rational and collective regulation to avoid collapse,” he said.
President Petro has bravely opened the door to a conversation that parties at COP16 urgently need to engage in. >>>

 

Time for Action: Finance, biodiversity and the risks of deep sea mining

The Deep Sea Mining Campaign has published a briefing paper for financiers on deep sea mining’s (DSM) biodiversity risks and the potential impacts that investing in the sector could bring.
The COP agenda is increasingly recognising how central the question of finance is, both in terms of the 2022 framework having called for $700 billion per year for nature protection and restoration, alongside attempts to increasingly involve private finance in nature-based solutions. While this is a controversial area, one rela-tively easy decision that financiers and insurers can make is to avoid those sectors which carry the greatest risks for biodiversity. >>>

 

“Green Paradox”: subsidising biomass to destroy biodiversity

Biomass co-firing results in more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than fossil fuels per unit of energy produced. Co-firing prolongs the time required to phase out the coal plants and are artificially prolonging their life cycle. Without subsidies in different forms, either for biomass for electricity generation or biofuels production, biomass would not be a feasible economic choice. >>>

 

Northern forests need protection too

Forests host over 80% of terrestrial biodiversity, store over 850 gigatonne of carbon - equal to almost a century of fossil fuel emissions - and are home to 300 million people, many belonging to vulnerable communities and indigenous nations. While overall the rate of forest loss has been reduced, we are still losing approximately 10 million ha of forests each year. Similarly the amount of carbon stored in forests is going down and recent studies indicate that trees and lands nowadays emit as much carbon as they absorb. >>>

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