Image mastersky Hiding The True Intent Lynn Johnson 17 December, 2020 A new report by Swiss Re, the world's second-largest re-insurer, confirms a fifth of countries worldwide are at risk from ecosystem collapse, as biodiversity declines. Of the G20 countries, Australia is ranked in second (worst) place, after South Africa, for failing and fragile ecosystems. The Swiss Re report, and corresponding index, has been created to analyse Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) and the risks associated with BES collapse. It includes the ecosystem services necessary for food provision, water security and the regulation of air quality, all of which are considered vital to maintaining the health and [...]

Image jentakespictures War, Revolution or Taxes? Eliminate tax evasion and secrecy jurisdictions, invest in the natural world. Lynn Johnson,  7 November, 2020 In 2015 a small, but growing, number of the world’s billionaires got together to discuss how a tiny percentage, 0.1% of the 0.1%, of the world’s wealthy are raiding the world’s spoils. While they discussed that it was unfair and not sustainable, creeping under the surface of the conversations on philanthropy and corporate social responsibility was a shared understanding of the risk of the growing divide and overexploitation. One of the people who spoke was Paul Tudor-Jones, an American billionaire hedge fund manager, conservationist [...]

Image red-feniks The Magic Money Tree Really Does Exist. COVID-19 just proved it! Lynn Johnson 31 October, 2020 The global pandemic has once and for all destroyed the post-2008 narrative that ‘there is no magic money tree’ and that austerity is ‘required to balance the budget’.  In practically all Western countries, so wedded to austerity prior to the pandemic, money started flowing into supporting ‘the economy’ as soon as the first lockdowns were enacted. Different countries have taken different approaches, some putting funds directly into the pockets of citizens, while others have primarily (yet again) bailed out the big end of town, the fact remains that [...]

Image Gutzemberg NOT the Smartest Guys In The Room! Lynn Johnson 29 October, 2020 The business world likes to portray itself as the smart kid on the block, best placed to keep the global economy ticking, as long as governments and regulators don’t interfere with its activity. And because in the main they get what they want, modern-day industrialists buy into the delusion that they are the smartest guys in the room. COVID-19 is the best evidence yet showing just how much the business mindset is lacking. While in recent decades MBAs have taught future leaders to read profit and loss statements, they have haven’t [...]

Image Google Books Ngram Viewer Was Peak Conservation Caring in 1978? It would seem so. Lynn Johnson 29 October, 2020 Did we really reach peak interest in conservation in 1978? If we go by the published written word, it appears so. Firstly, the graph – what are you looking at? Google Ngram Viewer uses data from its ambitious book-digitizing project which started in 2002; to-date the project has digitized at least 30 million books from major university libraries. This means the frequency of keywords as displayed in the graph is slanted towards scientific and non-fiction books. In the case of wildlife and conservation this slant towards [...]

Image Backiris Introducing The Fly. It's Time To See Clearly. Lynn Johnson 28 October, 2020 As the Northern hemisphere braces itself for a second wave of COVID-19, has anything been learned about the trade in endangered wildlife which has brought the world to its knees? On the 4th February 2020, Nature Needs More sent the first of many emails to global mainstream media publications and journalists covering the emerging pandemic. The correspondence linked the zoonotic origin of the pandemic to the lack of regulation of the legal trade in exotic and endangered species. Eight months on, the legal trade in exotic and endangered wildlife as the [...]