Over the next five years, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation will be committing US$480 million to an initiative dedicated to ocean conservation.
The foundation made the announcement on April 17 during the closing ceremony of the ninth Our Ocean Conference, held in Athens, Greece.
“Ocean science and conservation are core to the Packard Foundation’s DNA,” wrote Meg Caldwell, interim vice president of environment and science, in an email. “The next phase of the Packard Foundation’s commitment to ocean health, the 10-year (2023-33) Ocean Initiative, aims to protect and restore ocean ecosystems for people and nature, now and in the future.”
The support from the funding will be focused in four countries, Chile, China, the U.S., and Indonesia, which were selected because of their “biological significance, human dependence on ocean ecosystems, and opportunities to affect positive changes,” Caldwell says.
The foundation’s ocean initiative will specifically address three primary threats: climate change, unsustainable overfishing, and habitat loss. These issues not only harm ocean ecosystems, but also the countless people who rely on the ocean for “their livelihoods, nutrition, and cultural heritage, disproportionately impacting Indigenous peoples and coastal communities,” Caldwell says.
Caldwell emphasises the need to include these groups of people in the conversations and actions regarding ocean conservation.
“Weak governance and seafood supply chains that put profit ahead of people compound these threats, allowing human rights abuses and inequities to persist,” she says.
The foundation plans to address these threats by funding work within three systems: civil society, to strengthen “the engagement of ocean-reliant communities” to create more inclusive solutions; seafood supply chains, to end illegal fishing, overfishing, and human rights abuses; and governance, to enact reform that will protect both the ocean and the reliant communities.
The Packard Foundation is also a part of the Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance, which is a philanthropic initiative working to address the climate crisis and its damage to the ocean. ORCA’s mission is “to provide a surge of more than US$250 million dollars in grants over four years to catalyze work across a handful of immediate ocean-climate priorities,” according to their website.
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The bank posted unaudited cash earnings for the quarter of A$1.7 billion, down 2% on the average of its prior two quarters
National Australia Bank said that higher credit impairments against business loans contributed to a small fall in its unaudited December quarter cash earnings.
NAB , which is Australia’s second-largest bank by market capitalization, on Wednesday posted unaudited cash earnings for its fiscal first quarter of 1.74 billion Australian dollars, equivalent to about US$1.11 billion.
That was down 2% on the average of its prior two fiscal quarters. NAB did not give a year-earlier comparison.
The lender said that revenue grew by 3% compared with the average of its prior two fiscal quarters. Underlying profit growth of 4% over the same period was offset by higher credit impairment charges and income tax expenses, it added.
NAB, which posted an unaudited quarterly statutory profit of A$1.70 billion, said the A$267 million credit impairment charge included A$152 million of individually assessed charges. Those were mainly against Australian businesses and unsecured retail portfolios, it said.
The individual charges were up by 54% compared with a year earlier. NAB said that it had not altered its economic assumptions and scenario weightings.
“The economic outlook is improving but cost of living and interest rate challenges persisted,” Chief Executive Andrew Irvine said. “While most customers are proving resilient, we have maintained prudent balance sheet settings.”
NAB said it had seen a small decline in net interest margin due to funding costs, lending competition and deposits, partially offset by the benefit of higher interest rates.
On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia cut the country’s cash rate for the first time since 2020 but warned against expecting subsequent near-term cuts.
NAB is still targeting full fiscal-year productivity savings of more than A$400 million, and for operating expenses to grow by less than 4.5%, Irvine said.
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