- Bayern hit nine, Real Madrid and Liverpool win as new Champions League kicks off
- Author John Grisham joins bid to save Texas death row inmate
- Venezuela arrests fourth American over alleged 'plot' against Maduro
- 'Happy' Mbappe strikes on Madrid Champions League debut win over Stuttgart
- Man Utd hit Barnsley for seven in League Cup rout
- Dolphins quarterback Tagovailoa facing concussion layoff
- Stylish Liverpool strut past Milan in confident Champions league opener
- Kane scores four as Bayern put nine past Zagreb in the Champions League
- Mbappe strikes on Madrid Champions League debut win over Stuttgart
- More than 3,600 food packaging chemicals found in human bodies
- Harris calls Trump as assassination scare sparks tensions
- Dow edges down from record as some eye a smaller Fed rate cut
- Sommer vows Inter will 'defend with all we have' to stop Haaland
- Report links meatpacking companies to 'war on nature' in Brazil
- Bolivian ex-leader Morales, backers set out on weeklong protest march
- Smith grateful to McCullum for launching his England career
- Arizona to ask court to rule on voting rights
- Villa make perfect start on Champions League return after 41-year absence
- Israeli supply chain infiltration likely behind Hezbollah pager blasts: analysts
- Rodgers backs Celtic to be 'really competitive' in Champions League
- Spacewalk an 'emotional experience' for private astronauts
- Storm Boris toll rises to 22 in central Europe
- Nine dead, 2,800 wounded as Lebanon's Hezbollah hit by pager blasts
- Boeing, union resume talks as strike empties Seattle plants
- Over 3,600 food packaging chemicals found in human bodies
- Australia's Zampa accepts Ashes chances remote as 100th ODI looms
- UN General Assembly debates call for end to Israeli occupation
- Marseille complete signing of French international Rabiot
- Easterby to fill in as Ireland coach while Farrell is with the Lions
- Hezbollah in Lebanon hit by wave of deadly pager blasts
- Postecoglou taken aback by criticism of his second season success claim
- US, European stocks rise on retail sales, rate cut expectations
- Fendi sees Roaring 20s at Milan Fashion Week in challenging times
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr part ways with coach Castro
- Scottish government backs Glasgow to stage troubled 2026 Commonwealth Games
- Storm Boris toll rises to 21 in central Europe
- Instagram, under pressure, tightens protection for teens
- Inflation slows again in Canada to 2%
- US, European stocks rise on eve of Fed rate decision
- EU bans Algerian spread toasted on social media
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs charged with racketeering, sex trafficking
- Trump returns to campaign trail after assassination scare
- Activist urges repatriation of Native Americans dead in Paris 'human zoo'
- US retail sales see slight rise, beating expectations
- US Fed begins two-day meeting set to end with rate cut
- Exploding Hezbollah pagers wound hundreds across Lebanon
- Runners-up Yokohama thrashed 7-3 in AFC Champions League goal fest
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs to plead not guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking
- Jihadist group claims rare attack on Mali capital
- 'I am a rapist,' Frenchman tells trial over mass rape of wife
Twin crises: experts say nature and climate can't be siloed
Experts and activists were hoping UN climate talks would end last week with a prominent mention of biodiversity in the final text. They walked away disappointed.
Some say delegates at the COP27 summit missed a key opportunity to acknowledge the connection between the twin climate and nature crises, which many believe have been treated separately for too long.
Failing to address both could mean not only further decimating Earth's life support systems, but also missing the key climate target of limiting warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, they warn.
"We're doomed if we don't solve climate, and we're doomed if we don't solve biodiversity," Basile van Havre, co-chair of the UN biodiversity negotiations, told AFP.
At the COP15 UN biodiversity talks next month, dozens of countries will meet to hammer out a new framework to protect animals and plants from destruction by humans.
The meeting comes as scientists warn that climate change and biodiversity damage could cause the world's sixth mass extinction event.
Such destruction of nature also risks worsening climate change.
The oceans have absorbed most of the excess heat created by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions and, along with forests, are important carbon sinks.
"(Nature) is up to a third of the climate solution. And it is a proven technology," Brian O'Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, told AFP.
He said oceans in particular are unsung "superheroes", which have absorbed carbon and heat, at the cost of acidification and coral-killing heatwaves.
As the world warms, species and ecosystems can also play a crucial role in building resilience. Mangroves, for example, can protect against coastal erosion caused by rising seas linked to a warming planet.
- 'Missed opportunity' -
Perhaps the most attention on the natural world at COP27 came during a visit by Brazil's president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will take office in January.
He has vowed to halt the rampant deforestation of the Amazon seen under incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and announced during the climate talks plans to create a ministry for indigenous people, custodians of the rainforest.
The crucial "30 by 30" biodiversity target also got a boost when a bloc of West African nations vowed to adhere to the goal of protecting 30 percent of the natural world by 2030.
Biodiversity received a nod in the final COP27 text, including in a paragraph calling for "the urgent need to address, in a comprehensive and synergetic manner, the interlinked global crises of climate change and biodiversity loss".
But the upcoming COP15 meeting in Montreal -- tasked with setting out an ambitious plan for humanity's relationship with nature for the coming decades -- did not get the encouragement many were hoping for.
"It is a missed opportunity that COP15, taking place just in two weeks' time, did not get a highlight by COP27," Li Shuo, senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, told AFP.
But he cautioned it "should not be a deal-breaker, this should not be the end of the world".
For Zoe Quiroz Cullen, head of climate and nature linkages at Fauna & Flora International, it was "deeply concerning" that the text "fails to recognise the crucial linkage to COP27's sister convention on nature," the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
"The twin climate and biodiversity crises are at risk from being considered and treated in silos," she told AFP.
- 'Subcategory' -
While energy policy has dominated the climate talks, and plastic and pesticide pollution are more the preserve of the biodiversity talks, other issues -- food production, indigenous land rights, protections of oceans and forests -- are entwined with both.
The United Nations has traditionally treated the climate and biodiversity crises distinctly, each getting their own COP meetings (Conference of the Parties), and each managed by its own institution: climate by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and biodiversity by the CBD.
Most experts say the two crises are serious enough to warrant this separate treatment. But some complain that biodiversity has been seen as "just a subcategory of climate", as O'Donnell put it.
"Decades of approaching these things in isolation still continues, unfortunately, too much to this day."
In the long term, neglecting nature could mean the unabated destruction of ecosystems and species -- and missing the Paris Agreement climate goals.
"We cannot meet the 1.5 degree target for climate without bold action on nature," O'Donnell said.
"We need to solve them both if we want to have a liveable planet for future generations."
Y.Kobayashi--AMWN