Efforts to advance biodiversity conservation in China is generally not well understood in the West. But with China set to host the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) this October, China’s conservation initiatives are likely to receive more attention.
One of the most established NGOs in China’s conservation sector is the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), which was founded in 1985 and now operates several programs ranging from public interest litigation to community conservation areas to environmental education.
As secretary general of CBCGDF, Jinfeng Zhou has played a central role in CBCGDF’s work around the CBD and beyond. Zhou says that China has been doing “an impressive amount of work” on conservation domestically in recent years.
Intimidation of Brazil’s enviro scientists, academics, officials on upswing
Increasingly, Brazilian environmental researchers, academics and officials appear to be coming under fire for their scientific work or views, sometimes from the Jair Bolsonaro government, but also from anonymous Bolsonaro supporters.
Researchers and academics have come under attack for their scientific work on agrochemicals, deforestation and other topics, as well as for their socio-environmental views. Attacks have taken the form of anonymous insults and death threats, gag orders, equipment thefts, and even attempted kidnapping.
A range of intimidation is being experienced by officials, including firings and threats of retaliation for institutional criticism at IBAMA, Brazil’s environment agency, ICMBio, the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation overseeing Brazil’s national parks, and FUNAI, the Indigenous affairs agency.
âDisincentiveâ: State sabotages koala protection with rates bill
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The NSW government is undermining a key platform of its koala protection policy by removing financial incentives for conservation on private properties as part of a bill to help harmonise council rates.
Debate in the upper house has stalled over the legislative amendments, which include stripping rates exemptions from landholders who receive government funding through environmental offset agreements, one of the tools to protect koala habitats on private land.
Koala protection policy has been a major battleground within the NSW Coalition.
As Brazil’s military pulls out of the Amazon, its legacy is in question
On April 30, the Brazilian government will officially end Operation Green Brazil, a military-led campaign that started in August 2019 to combat the peak of illegal fires in the Amazon.
In that time, the military has gained increasing power in environmental policies implemented in the Amazon, even undercutting federal environmental agencies in their enforcement work and filling key positions in the agencies.
Experts have criticized the operation’s high costs five times higher than the budget for the environmental protection agency which has gone mainly into enforcement in already demarcated or registered areas while ignoring disputed lands, which are more susceptible to illegal exploitation.
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