Author: Web Desk

Populations of a vulnerable species of marine mammal, numerous species of abalone and a type of Caribbean coral are now threatened with extinction, an international conservation organization said Friday.

 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced the update during the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, conference in Montreal. The union’s hundreds of members include government agencies from around the world, and it’s one of the planet’s widest-reaching environmental networks.

 

The IUCN uses its Red List of Threatened Species to categorize animals approaching extinction. This year, the union is sounding the alarm about the dugong — a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.

 

The dugong — a relative of the manatee — is vulnerable throughout its range, and now populations in East Africa have entered the red list as critically endangered, IUCN said in a statement. Populations in New Caledonia have entered the list as endangered, the group said.

 

The major threats to the animal are unintentional capture in fishing gear in East Africa and poaching in New Caledonia, IUCN said. It also suffers from boat collisions and loss of the seagrasses it eats, said Evan Trotzuk, who led the East Africa red list assessment.

 

“Strengthening community-led fisheries governance and expanding work opportunities beyond fishing are key in East Africa, where marine ecosystems are fundamental to people’s food security and livelihoods,” Trotzuk said.

 

The IUCN Red List includes more than 150,000 species. The list sometimes overlaps with the species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, such as in the case of the North Atlantic right whale. More than 42,000 of the species on the red list are threatened with extinction, IUCN says.

 

IUCN uses several categories to describe an animal’s status, ranging from “least concern” to “critically endangered.” IUCN typically updates the red list two or three times a year. This week’s update includes more than 3,000 additions to the red list. Of those, 700 are threatened with extinction.

 

Jane Smart, head of IUCN’s Center for Science and Data, said it will take political will to save the jeopardized species, and the gravity of the new listings can serve as a clarion call.

 

“The news we often give you on this is often gloomy, a little bit depressing, but it sparks the action, which is good,” Smart said.

Pillar coral, which is found throughout the Caribbean, was moved from vulnerable to critically endangered in this week’s update. The coral is threatened by a tissue loss disease, and its population has shrunk by more than 80% across most of its range since 1990, IUCN said. The IUCN lists more than two dozen corals in the Atlantic Ocean as critically endangered.

 

Almost half the corals in the Atlantic are “at elevated risk of extinction due to climate change and other impacts,” said Beth Polidoro, an associate professor at Arizona State University and the red list coordinator for IUCN.

 

Unsustainable harvesting and poaching have emerged as threats to abalone, which are used as seafood, IUCN said. Twenty of the 54 abalone species in the world are threatened with extinction according to the red list’s first global assessment of the species.

 

Threats to the abalone are compounded by climate change, diseases and pollution, the organization said.

 

“This red list update brings to light new evidence of the multiple interacting threats to declining life in the sea,” said Jon Paul Rodríguez, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— Negotiators are meeting in Geneva this week to thrash out a pandemic treaty aimed at ensuring the flaws that turned Covid-19 into a global crisis could never happen again.

 

As the third anniversary of the virus emerging rolls around, negotiators are raking over an early concept draft of what might eventually make it into an international agreement on how to handle future pandemics.

 

“The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the negotiating panel at the start of three days of talks, which conclude on Wednesday.

 

An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way towards a global agreement that would regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats.

 

They are huddled in Geneva for their third meeting, refining and going over their ideas so far.

 

A progress report will be put before WHO member states next year, with the final outcome presented for their consideration in May 2024.

 

The dense, 32-page early draft “is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros.

 

The so-called conceptual zero draft contains various notions, some of which will have to be developed and others thrown out as negotiators hone down the text ahead of the next meeting in February.

 

The trick will ultimately be finding the balance between something bold and with teeth, and something all countries can agree to.

 

“There’s a lot of material currently that probably doesn’t belong in there,” said Pamela Hamamoto, the lead US negotiator.

 

“There’s a lot that needs to change before we’re going to sign onto it. That is the same for a lot of member states — probably most,” she told reporters.

 

Hamamoto said Washington wanted to see transparency fixed into the accord, along with better surveillance and rapid response, plus swift and comprehensive data sharing.

 

The United States also wants to see more equitable access to medical countermeasures, possibly through regional manufacturing.

 

“A pretty broadly-held view is that we need to make sure that the process is set up right so… we basically don’t blow this opportunity to put together an accord that is going to be meaningful and implementable,” Hamamoto said.

 

The Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, an independent coalition of statespeople and health leaders, said the conceptual draft did not go far enough, despite its bright spots.

 

The panel said more should be done to establish accountability and clear timelines for alert and response to avoid damaging consequences when an outbreak emerges.

 

Three years in, the pandemic still has power to disrupt lives and societies — as seen in the recent unrest in China over lockdowns.

 

Countries have reported 6.6 million deaths to the WHO, while around 640 million confirmed cases have been registered.

 

But the UN health agency says this will be a massive undercount.

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

BRUSSELS— An auction house in Belgium has rendered an apology after it received backlash for trying to sell three skulls of Africans who were killed when the Democratic Republic of Congo was a colony. Vanderkindere auction house also canceled the auctioning of the skulls in question.

 

The individuals whose skulls the auction house was trying to sell were reportedly killed between January 1893 and May 1894. Vanderkindere’s attempt to sell the body parts was condemned by the human rights group, Collectif Mémoire Coloniale et Lutte contre les Discriminations (CMCLD).

 

The group also called for a demonstration in Brussels to protest the sale of the skulls and to also call on the Belgian government to seize and conserve them “in an appropriate way and with dignity.”

 

The skulls were part of a private colonial collection that Vanderkindere had planned to put on public sale on Dec 14. “The Vanderkindere auction house sincerely apologizes for having offered at auction a lot comprising three human skulls linked to the Belgian colonial past, and this is why they are imperatively withdrawn from the sale,” the auction house said.

 

“We in no way condone the suffering and humiliation suffered by the people who are victims of these colonial acts. We once again offer our deepest regrets to anyone who has been hurt and hurt by the sale of this lot.”

 

The news of the skulls being put up for sale sparked outrage in the European nation as well as on social media. Human rights organizations labeled the decision as “dehumanizing and racist.”

 

Between 1908 and 1960, Belgium colonized the Central African territory formerly known as the Belgian Congo. Reports state that millions of Congolese nationals were killed under Belgian rule. Some also died due to famine and disease.

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK