From Biodiversity Loss to Pandemic Risk: Addressing the Root Causes

Vince Cinches & Shuang An (World Animal Protection) - Preventing the next pandemic requires more than stronger healthcare systems. How we use wildlife, manage land and produce food also affects the health of people, animals and ecosystems. At COP17, governments can strengthen pandemic prevention by protecting biodiversity and improving animal welfare.

A Field Guide to COP17’s Financial Wildlife

Laurel Sutherlin (Rainforest Action Network) -  Attention, COP17 delegates: a new species has been spotted in the halls of the CBD. Actually, several of them. They travel in flocks, turn up reliably in policy discussions, and have developed an impressive array of songs, ranging from “mobilization” and “de-risking” to “investability” and “innovative finance”. They are, of course, the familiar narratives of biodiversity finance.

Offsets Cannot Redeem the Irreplaceable

Uli Arta Siagian (WALHI/Friends of the Earth Indonesia) - Biodiversity offsets and credits fail because nature is not interchangeable. Damage in one place cannot be  balanced by protecting or restoring nature elsewhere. Habitats, species, and ecological functions are tied to specific places, histories, and social relationships.

Ancestral Knowledge Is Not a Footnote to Conservation

Instituto Alana & Geledés –Instituto da Mulher Negra - Recognizing rights is not enough if decision-making power stays in the same hands - At COP16 in Cali, Decision 16/6 recognized people of African descent in connection with the Article 8(j), alongside Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Its meaning now depends on what follows: territorial protection, direct funding and real influence over decisions affecting their ways of life and the intergenerational knowledge that keeps nature standing.