In 2020, more than a dozen science news releases and scores of opinion articles were authored or co-authored and distributed for clients in Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton, Canada; Stockholm, Bonn, New York, Paris, and Kuala Lumpur. Some warned of emerging problems, others celebrated breakthroughs; all included new insights and hopeful ways forward.
Dominant themes this year were biodiversity, COVID-19, climate, energy, wastewater, electronic waste, and DNA (in the oceans and in art). Articles based on the releases below, published at thousands of online news sites around the world, generated a potential 29 billion impressions, with many more people reached via newspapers, radio and TV
With thanks to the researchers and collaborators behind these stories, and to the many journalists who covered them, the following releases were the most noted this year.
Biodiversity
Humanity at a crossroads, UN warns in new Global Biodiversity Outlook report
15-Sep-2020
Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 report outlines 8 major transitions needed to slow, then halt nature’s accelerating decline
Final report card on Aichi Biodiversity Targets, set in 2010: 6 of world’s 20 goals “partially achieved” by 2020 deadline.
Towards a landmark new global post-2020 biodiversity framework: GBO-5 synthesizes scientific basis for urgent action.
Bright spots include: extinctions prevented by conservation, more land and oceans protected, fish stocks bounce back in well-managed fisheries.
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Biodiversity and pandemics
Escaping the ‘Era of Pandemics’: experts warn worse crises to come; offer options to reduce risk
10-29-2020
Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases, warns a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics by 22 leading experts from around the world.
Convened by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for an urgent virtual workshop about the links between degradation of nature and increasing pandemic risks, the experts agree that escaping the era of pandemics is possible, but that this will require a seismic shift in approach from reaction to prevention.
COVID-19 is at least the sixth global health pandemic since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, and although it has its origins in microbes carried by animals, like all pandemics its emergence has been entirely driven by human activities, says the report released on Thursday. It is estimated that another 1.7 million currently 'undiscovered' viruses exist in mammals and birds - of which up to 850,000 could have the ability to infect people.
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Innovation and COVID-19
Global health innovators mobilize to help developing countries combat COVID-19
4-27-2020
Novel, affordable ways to acquire medical oxygen, ventilators, masks and other critically-needed COVID-19 supplies and services are among 20 Grand Challenges Canada innovations mobilizing to assist developing countries through the global pandemic.
In the past decade, the innovations received GCC support in several forms, including over $19 million provided by the Government of Canada, based on the criteria of “bold ideas with big impact” in global health. These project now offer critical resources, ideas and solutions for low-resource countries struggling to meet an acute need for affordable, locally-sourced products and services, most urgently: Medical oxygen, ventilators and related training; Local manufacturing of personal protective equipment for health care workers; and Life-saving information for hard-to-reach populations
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Energy and climate
Buildings-related CO2 emissions hit record high
12-16-2020
Emissions from the operation of buildings hit their highest-ever level in 2019, moving the sector further away from fulfilling its huge potential to slow climate change and contribute significantly to the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a new report.
However, pandemic recovery packages provide an opportunity to push deep building renovation and performance standards for newly constructed buildings, and rapidly cut emissions. The forthcoming updating of climate pledges under the Paris Agreement - known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs - also offer an opportunity to sharpen existing measures and include new commitments on the buildings and construction sector.
The 2020 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, from the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), found that while global building energy consumption remained steady year-on-year, energy-related CO2 emissions increased to 9.95 GtCO2 in 2019. This increase was due to a shift away from the direct use of coal, oil and traditional biomass towards electricity, which had a higher carbon content due to the high proportion of fossil fuels used in generation.
When adding emissions from the building construction industry on top of operational emissions, the sector accounted for 38 per cent of total global energy-related CO2 emissions.
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Energy and climate
Climate-friendly cooling could cut years of greenhouse gas emissions, save $trillions
7-17-2020
Coordinated international action on energy-efficient, climate-friendly cooling could avoid as much as 460 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – roughly equal to eight years of global emissions at 2018 levels – over the next four decades, according to the Cooling Emissions and Policy Synthesis Report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Reductions of between 210 and 460 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-(CO2) equivalent emissions can be delivered over the next four decades through actions to improve the cooling industry’s energy efficiency together with the transition to climate-friendly refrigerants, according to the report.
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Energy and climate
Oil & gas industry commits to new framework to monitor, report and reduce methane emissions
11-23-2020
In a move that will help tackle one of the biggest and most solvable contributors to the climate crisis, major players in the oil and gas industry agreed today to report methane emissions with a new, much higher level of transparency.
The Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) is a Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) initiative led by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the European Commission (EC), and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Already 62 companies (listed by headquarters country here), with assets on five continents representing 30 per cent of the world's oil and gas production, have joined the partnership. The new OGMP2.0 framework is the new gold standard reporting framework that will improve the reporting accuracy and transparency of anthropogenic methane emissions in the oil and gas sector.
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Renewable energy
Falling clean energy costs an opportunity to boost climate action during COVID-19 recovery: UN
06-20-2020
As COVID-19 hits the fossil fuel industry, a new report shows that renewable energy is more cost-effective than ever, providing an opportunity to prioritize clean energy in economic recovery packages and bring the world closer to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020 — from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and BloombergNEF (BNEF), and available from 10 June at http://www.fs-unep-centre.org — analyzes 2019 investment trends, and clean energy commitments made by countries and corporations for the next decade.
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Electronic waste
Global e-waste surging, up 21% in 5 years: UN
7-2-2020
A record 53.6 million metric tonnes (Mt) of electronic waste was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21 per cent in just five years, according to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2020.
The new report also predicts global e-waste — discarded products with a battery or plug — will reach 74 Mt by 2030, almost a doubling of e-waste in just 16 years. This makes e-waste the world’s fastest-growing domestic waste stream, fueled mainly by higher consumption rates of electric and electronic equipment, short life cycles, and few options for repair.
Only 17.4 per cent of 2019’s e-waste was collected and recycled. This means that gold, silver, copper, platinum and other high-value, recoverable materials conservatively valued at US $57 billion — a sum greater than the Gross Domestic Product of most countries – were mostly dumped or burned rather than being collected for treatment and reuse.
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Wastewater
Vast amounts of valuable energy, nutrients, water lost in world’s fast-rising wastewater streams
2-3-2020
Vast amounts of valuable energy, agricultural nutrients, and water could potentially be recovered from the world’s fast-rising volume of municipal wastewater, according to a new study by UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
Today, some 380 billion cubic meters (m3 = 1000 litres) of wastewater are produced annually worldwide – 5 times the amount of water passing over Niagara Falls annually – enough to fill Africa’s Lake Victoria in roughly seven years, Lake Ontario in four, and Lake Geneva in less than three months.
Furthermore, the paper says, wastewater volumes are increasing quickly, with a projected rise of roughly 24% by 2030, 51% by 2050. Today, the volume of wastewater roughly equals the annual discharge from the Ganges River in India. By the mid-2030s, it will roughly equal the annual volume flowing through the St. Lawrence River, which drains North America’s five Great Lakes.
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DNA and the oceans
1st release:
Study proves bits of DNA in seawater correlate to the weight of netted fish
12-03-2020
DNA bits in seawater samples drawn during New Jersey government fish trawls reveals relative abundance of fish with a 70% match between the two sampling methods. In addition to great concordance, study finds that each method yields information missed by the other.
Research advances novel, inexpensive way to census oceans from surface to seafloor, help monitor fisheries, assess shifts in marine life due to climate change, around coral reefs, aquaculture or wind farms, oil rigs, and more.
Message in a bottle: DNA in 1 litre of seawater = a trawl sweep of 66 million litres, enough to fill a sports stadium to top of goalposts.
Proposed "Great American Fish Count," involving citizen scientists collecting waters samples, could set stage for 2nd global Census of Marine Life during upcoming UN Oceans Decade.
Example coverage:
News release in full, click here; coverage summary, click here
2nd release:
DNA surprises surfacing in the Atlantic: Species far from their usual southern homes
12-06-2020
DNA scientists investigating new marine life migration patterns in the Atlantic Ocean surfaced the genetic traces of species far from their usual southern homes.
A species of ray — the Brazilian cownose ray, Rhinoptera brasiliensis, and the Gulf kingfish, Menticirrhus littoralis, have been turning up when the weather turns warm in New Jersey’s Barnegat Inlet, about a two hour drive south of New York City.
The ray has never before been recorded in the US north of the Gulf of Mexico; the perch-like Gulf kingfish has never before been recorded north of Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, about 250 miles (400 km) to the south.
Example coverage:
News release in full, click here
Biology and art
Genetic detectives ID microbes slowly ruining humanity’s treasures
6-18-2020
A new study of the microbial settlers on old paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art charts a potential path for preserving, restoring, and confirming the geographic origin of some of humanity’s greatest treasures.
Genetics scientists with the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), collaborating with the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project and supported by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, say identifying and managing communities of microbes on art may offer museums and collectors a new way to stem the deterioration of priceless possessions, and to unmask counterfeits in the $60 billion a year art market.
Measuring Leonardo da Vinci’s “quick eye” 500 years later.
Famous art historians and biographers such as Sir Kenneth Clark and Walter Isaacson have written about Leonardo da Vinci’s “quick eye” because of the way he accurately captured fleeting expressions, wings during bird flight, and patterns in swirling water. But until now no one had tried to put a number on this aspect of Leonardo’s extraordinary visual acuity.
David S. Thaler of the University of Basel, and a guest investigator in the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University, does, allowing comparison of Leonardo with modern measures. Leonardo fares quite well.
Thaler’s estimate hinges on Leonardo’s observation that the fore and hind wings of a dragonfly are out of phase — not verified until centuries later by slow motion photography
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Anthropocene
Story 1:
Humanity’s greatest risk: Cascading impacts of climate, biodiversity, food, water crises: scientists
2-06-2020
The greatest threat to humanity hides in the potential cascading of impacts of five highly-related, highly-likely risks — a collision that can amplify these effects catastrophically, according to a new survey of 222 leading scientists from 52 countries.
Conducted by Future Earth, the international sustainability research network, the survey identifies five global risks — failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation; extreme weather events; major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse; food crises; and water crises — as the most severe in terms of impact. Four of them — climate change, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and water crises — were also deemed by scientists as most likely to occur.
More than one-third (82) of the scientists, however, underlined the threat posed by the synergistic interplay and feedback loops between the top five– with global crises worsening one another “in ways that might cascade to create global systemic crisis.”
News release in full, click here
Example coverage
Full news release here; coverage summary here
Story 2
‘Digital disruption’ a game-changer for climate
3-3-2020
Youth on the streets are calling for “systems change, not climate change.” And, according to a new report by Future Earth, the digital transformations unfolding today could help answer this call.
Historically, the report says, climate and digital agendas have been approached as two independent issues but increasingly are recognized as intertwined. Humans are connected to each other through and dependent on both the digital and the natural worlds.
Global systemic risks are likely to emerge from both these worlds if we fail to act urgently and continue on our current trajectory. Yet within this link lies an opportunity to re-shape our everyday interactions with each other and the natural world, the way we conduct business, and how we govern our society, to meet the climate crisis.
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