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Indicators proposed for nutrient and pesticide pollution in the current text of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are inadequate for tracking progress and informing policy. We highlight a set of more relevant pollution indicators that would strengthen the monitoring framework of the GBF and discuss conditions for their successful implementation.
Capitalizing on developments in genome sequencing technology, the Biodiversity Cell Atlas is a multinational project that uses single-cell transcriptomics to map cell types of whole organisms across the tree of life.
Chemical pollution research should be better integrated with other drivers of biodiversity loss and the assessment of human impacts on ecosystems, to more effectively guide management strategies for biodiversity loss mitigation.
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures is a key initiative that seeks to convince companies and financial institutions to manage nature-related risks. Its inherent structures — market-led, voluntary and corporate-governed — present challenges that should be addressed during the final development and initial implementation of the framework.
Research codes and contracts have been developed to protect Indigenous and marginalized peoples from exploitation and to promote inclusion, so that research will become more beneficial to them. We highlight three important but often overlooked challenges for such instruments, drawing on examples from the San of southern Africa.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework envisages an increasing reliance on large-scale private finance to fund biodiversity targets. We warn that this may pose contradictions in delivering conservation outcomes and propose a critical ongoing role for direct public funding of conservation and public oversight of private nature-related financial mechanisms.
Plastic pollution has rapidly risen to the top of public and policy discourse on the environment. For World Environment Day on 5 June and World Oceans Day on 8 June, we reflect on its intersection with other ocean threats from biodiversity loss and climate change.
Global biodiversity loss has been disproportionately driven by consumption of people in rich nations. The concept of ‘loss and damage’ — familiar from international agreements on climate change — should be considered for the effects of biodiversity loss in countries of the Global South.
SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating in animal reservoirs may broaden the evolutionary potential of the virus and increase the risk of novel variants emerging. There is an urgent need for more-comprehensive surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in nonhuman hosts.