Glasgow/New York, November 5 – Thousands of young climate activists, so far the largest crowd of protesters in the Scottish city of Glasgow, took to the streets to demand actions against climate change. Headed by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, the young activists called the UN global climate summit “a failure” and brandished signs calling for an end of deforestation and for saving the planet from climate dangers.
But Glasgow is expecting a much larger protest Saturday November 6 as tens of thousands of climate activists are prepared to demonstrate as part of the “Global Day for Climate Justice” organized by Cop26 Coalition. The demonstrations demand that the 197 governments that are holding the 26th UN global climate summit work out effective and just measures against climate change.
More than 25,000 people have registered to attend the climate summit, which the UN considered its most important one as global warming is threatening the earth with more climate disasters such as flooding, severe draught and wildfires. The organizers said over 200 simultaneous events are set to take place around the world, with over 100 in the United Kingdom alone.
With such large crowds in Glasgow, COP26 Coalition has provided guidelines to all participants to take measures against Covid-19 including testing, wearing facial masks and social distancing. “Public health and safety during the ongoing pandemic is our primary concern,” the guidelines said. “We have planned all activities over COP26 to minimise the risk of spreading Covid-19. We are fighting for climate justice at COP against the backdrop of global vaccine inequality and a need to keep everyone in our communities – both in Glasgow and abroad – safe.”
The Global Day for Climate Justice organization said in its website, which provided also details for the demonstrations, said:
“The Era of Injustice is Over: Our Time is Now”
“Justice won’t be handed to us by world leaders or delivered by corporations. So far, governments have done too little too late: colluding with corporations and hiding behind green washed ‘solutions’ that actually don’t exist yet, that don’t address the scale of the problem, and in many cases rely on more exploitation of people and the planet.
“The transformative solutions that we need to survive and build a more just and fair world can only be brought about through collective action, solidarity and coordination, from our local communities and international levels. We are bringing together movements from across the world to build power for system change – indigenous movements, frontline communities, trade unions, racial justice groups, youth strikers, land workers, peasants, NGOs, grassroots community campaigns, feminist movements, faith groups.”
“Wherever you are in the world, now is the time to join the fight for climate justice. We need all hands on deck: in workplaces, communities, schools, hospitals and across national borders.”
Asad Rehman, a spokesperson for the COP Coalition, told the 350.org, a climate organization present in Glasgow that civil society groups had little access to the climate summit.
“We are taking to the streets across the world this weekend to push governments from climate inaction to climate justice,” Rehman said. “This has been the least accessible climate summit ever – with so many people sidelined at the talks or not able to make it in the first place. Today those people are having their voices heard.”
“The climate crisis has resulted from our broken, unequal societies and economies. We must transform our global economies into ones that protect both people and our planet instead of profit for a few.”
Brianna Fruean, a Samoan member of the Pacific Climate Warriors delegation and a speaker at the rally on Saturday, said:
“As someone from one of the regions most threatened by climate breakdown I know just how important this climate summit is, and how crucial it is that voices are heard on the streets as well as the corridors of power. For a decade now, the storms in the Pacific have been getting more violent, the droughts have been longer and the floods deeper. Fishers cannot feed their families. Family-owned shops that are flattened in a cyclone are rebuilt, only to be destroyed by rising water.”
“That’s why I’m marching today – with people right across the world – because it can’t go on like this. We refuse to be just victims to this crisis. We are not drowning, we are fighting and on Saturday the world will hear us.”
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Following is a news release from the World Food Program:
Antananarivo, Madagascar, November 2 – As climate talks get underway in Glasgow, families in Southern Madagascar, where climate is driving famine-like conditions, brace themselves for yet another harsh year ahead as the ongoing drought shows no signs of abating, signaling deteriorating hunger.
Severe hunger has touched over 1.1 million people with 14,000 of them one step away from famine. The situation, already alarming, is set to worsen by the end of year with the number of people in famine-like conditions expected to double.
“The changing climate has meant that many families who were able to live off the land 15 years ago have now fallen into severe hunger. Families are scavenging for survival and many are living only on the food assistance they receive,” said Menghestab Haile, WFP Regional Director, Southern Africa.”I recently met a mother who told me that she had lost her 8-month-old to seeds from cactus fruit that had accumulated in his stomach. The face of hunger in Southern Madagascar is horrific.”
The drought has led to the complete disappearance of food sources leaving families visibly famished and resorting to survival measures such as eating locusts, wild leaves and cactus leaves which are usually fed to cattle. Vulnerable children are bearing the brunt of the crisis with malnutrition in under-fives expected to quadruple, crossing the half million mark by April 2022.
“The number of malnourished children coming to health centres in Southern Madagascar has doubled compared to this time last year. Many of them are too weak to laugh or cry, let alone play and learn,” said Anna Horner, WFP’s Chief of Nutrition Innovative Financing, who recently visited Southern Madagascar. “The physical and mental damage to children due to malnutrition can be irreversible. It is heart-wrenching to see so many young minds and bodies unnecessarily suffering from hunger and malnutrition.”
Amidst the hottest decade on record, Madagascar has suffered from exceptionally warm temperatures, deficits in rainfall and unexpected sandstorms that have covered fields, left crops wilted and harvests well below average. By April 2021, 70 per cent of the Grand Sud was in drought with food production only a third of the last five-year average. The forecasted dry start to the upcoming planting season means families will not be able to sow their fields immediately and their access to food and an income hangs in the balance. Adding to an already dire situation, a recent upsurge of locusts is expected to affect an estimated 400,000 hectares of land.
WFP has been reaching around 700,000 people monthly with emergency life-saving food as well as supplementary nutrition products for pregnant and nursing women and children. Moving beyond emergency support, WFP together with the government, is implementing long-term resilience building activities that help communities adapt to the changing climate. These include access to water, reforestation, sand dune stabilization and economic support like access to microinsurance schemes in case of crop failure.
In September, 3,500 households received a payout of US$100 each to recover losses from the failed maize crop. The payout helped families sustain themselves despite a lost harvest.
WFP aims to scale up its response in Southern Madagascar and urgently needs US$69 million over the next six months to do so. WFP is increasingly concerned about the situation in Madagascar and has been ringing the alarm bells over the climate-induced hunger crisis, one of the potentially many in the world.
The United Nations World Food Program is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
Glasgow/New York, November 2 – The United States and the European Union are calling for a global pact to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent and have received backing from dozens of governments, a move that would help the climate summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow to move forward as it badly needs a breakthrough in climate action to revert global warming.
Methane is one of greenhouse gases that cause global warming and its impact is over 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period. Scientists and environmentalists said cutting methane emissions could help the goal of slowing down global warming.
The US Environmental Protection Agency planned to issue strict rules limiting methane emissions from oil and natural gas production in the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s climate initiatives, it was announced in Washington.
Governments attending the climate summit have begun signing the Global Methane Pledge, which aims at cutting methane emissions to keep global temperature within 1.5 degrees Celsius. The pledge says participating countries agree to take “voluntary actions to contribute to a collective effort to reduce global methane emissions at least 30 per cent from 2020 levels to 2030, which could eliminate over 0.2 degree C warming by 2050.”
The UN Environment Program, with support from the European Union, launched on October 31 an International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) at the G20 summit in Rome for the purpose of driving action on reducing methane emissions. UNEP said methane emissions are responsible for at least a quarter of the current climate warming.
It said IMEO will “improve the reporting accuracy and public transparency of human-caused methane emissions. IMEO will initially focus on methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector, and then expand to other major emitting sectors like agriculture and waste.”
“As highlighted by IPCC, if the world is serious about avoiding the worst effects of climate change, we need to cut methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry. But this is not a get-out-of-jail free card: methane reductions must go hand in hand with actions to decarbonize the energy system to limit warming to 1.5°C, as called for in the Paris Agreement,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.
Glasgow/New York, November 1 – In his address opening the climate summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the 197 countries that signed UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to prevent a climate catastrophe. “We face a stark choice: Either we stop it — or it stops us,” he said.
The United Nations’ 26th climate conference, considered the biggest and most important for planet earth, opened negotiations that could last two weeks faced with negative views that it may not succeed in efforts to revert global warming as wealthy nations remain divided about measures to phase out coal and other energy sources responsible for global warming.
“It’s time to say: enough,” he said. “Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet.
Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.”
Guterres said the planet is changing “from the ocean depths to mountain tops, from melting glaciers to relentless extreme weather events.
Sea-level rise is double the rate it was 30 years ago.”
The UN chief called recent statements that the world is still on tract to fight climate change an “illusion.” He said published report of Nationally Determined Contributions, which are pledges by countries to implement measures cutting emissions, would still increase global temperature to 2.7 degrees Celsius this century instead of 1.5 degrees as demanded in the Paris climate agreement in 2015.
“So, as we open this much anticipated climate conference, we are still heading for climate disaster,” he said. “Young people know it. Every country sees it.”
Frustration built up after the group of 20 major economies (G20) remained divided about how to implement the Paris 2015 climate agreement, which aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 by removing enough greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in order to match any new emissions.
The two-week climate summit opened on October 31 in Glasgow with an ambitious but difficult program of setting up new regulations to implement targets of phasing out fossil fuels burning that are heating up the planet. Known as COP26, which means the 26th annual Conference of the Parties to the UNFCC signed by 197 countries. About 100 heads of state and government and more than 25,000 participants from the UN, non-governmental organizations and civil societies and activists have registered to attend in person. US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, European Union leaders, Guterres and other government leaders were to address the summit.
A main goal of fighting climate change was set at the climate conference in Paris in 2015, which demanded that countries implement climate mitigating measures and adapt to climate technology to prevent the average global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius. But studies showed that global warming will continue with deadly heat waves, flooding, wildfire, drought and the collapse of the ecosystems.
Climate action requires also that wealthy countries allocate $100 billion a year to developing and vulnerable countries so they can adapt to green technology and cope with climate disasters that they are not responsible for. But wealthy countries have not yet met the needed financial goal.
The UN Environment Program said in a new Emissions Gap Report before the Glasgow conference that new and updated commitments to mitigate climate change were a positive step forward. But it said however that the world remains on track for a dangerous global temperature rise of at least 2.7 degrees Celsius this century even if climate action is implemented.
The report said the efforts remained insufficient and the world needs a 55 per cent reduction to limit global temperature increase below 1.5°C, the capstone defined by scientists as the less risky scenery for our planet and humanity’s future.
The report showed that updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are pledges by each country to reduce national emissions, as well as other commitments made for 2030 but not yet officially submitted – would only lead to an additional 7.5 per cent reduction in annual greenhouse emissions in 2030, compared to previous commitments.
The UN Development Program and the University of Oxford issued also a new survey called the G20 Peoples’ Climate Vote that showed the crucial importance of how young people support climate action in the G20, which is a group of the world’s wealthiest nations. Climate action by the G20 would have a huge impact on mitigating climate change because the group accounts for 80 per cent of the global economy and 75 per cent of global emissions.
“This new Peoples’ Climate Vote shows that, on average, 70 per cent of young people in G20 countries believe that we are in a global climate emergency,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.
“Given that they are about to inherit this climate emergency, young people are sending a message to global leaders that is loud and clear: they want climate action now. The world is now watching – hoping that countries will come together at COP26 in Glasgow to make bold, historic decisions that will literally change the future.”
The most popular climate policies among under-18s in the G20 countries surveyed were conservation of forests and land (59%), using solar, wind and renewable power and using climate friendly farming techniques (both 57%). Support for these policies was stronger among young people by three percentage points for the first two policies, and by four percentage points for climate-friendly farming.
The survey polled over 689,000 people, including over 300,000 under 18 years old. Youths at are particularly aware of climate dangers as they are entering the workforce and becoming voters, which put them in positions of greater influence.
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Rome, October 31 – The UN Environment Program, with support from the European Union, has launched a new observatory to drive action on reducing methane emissions – a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for at least a quarter of the current climate warming.
The International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) was launched at the G20 Summit, on the eve of the latest round of climate talks, known as COP26 in Glasgow.
IMEO will improve the reporting accuracy and public transparency of human-caused methane emissions. IMEO will initially focus on methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector, and then expand to other major emitting sectors like agriculture and waste.
The recently published UNEP-CCAC Global Methane Assessment states that zero or low net-cost reductions could almost halve anthropogenic methane emissions and proven measures could shave 0.28 degrees Celsius from the forecasted rise in the planet’s average temperature by 2050.
IMEO will provide the means to prioritize actions and monitor commitments made by state actors in the Global Methane Pledge – a US- and EU-led effort by over two dozen countries to slash methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
To stay on track to reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting climate change to 1.5°C, the world needs to almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that if the world is to achieve the 1.5°C temperature target, deep methane emissions reductions must be achieved over this time.
“As highlighted by IPCC, if the world is serious about avoiding the worst effects of climate change, we need to cut methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry. But this is not a get-out-of-jail free card: methane reductions must go hand in hand with actions to decarbonize the energy system to limit warming to 1.5°C, as called for in the Paris Agreement,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.
Methane released directly into the atmosphere is more than 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time horizon. However, as methane’s atmospheric lifespan is relatively short – 10 to 12 years – actions to cut methane emissions can yield the most immediate reduction in the rate of warming, while also delivering air quality benefits.
EU Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson said: “Methane has accounted for roughly 30 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times, and today its emissions are increasing faster than at any other time since record keeping began in the 1980s.”
“Existing systems do not allow us to determine precisely enough where emissions happen across the global and in what volumes. Once better data is available, countries can take swift and well-targeted action.”
“In the EU, we will already propose pioneering legislation to cut methane emissions this year. This includes mandatory leak detection and repair and limiting venting and flaring.”
The fossil fuel industry is responsible for one-third of anthropogenic emissions and is the sector with the highest potential for reductions. The wasted methane, the main component in natural gas, is a valuable source of energy that could be used to fuel power plants or homes.
IMEO: an independent and trusted entity
The Observatory will produce a global public dataset of empirically verified methane emissions – starting with the fossil fuel sector – at an increasing level of granularity and accuracy by integrating data principally from four streams:
* reporting from the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP 2.0),
* direct measurement data from scientific studies,
* remote sensing data, and
* national inventories.
This will allow IMEO to engage companies and governments around the world to utilize this data to target strategic mitigation actions and support science-based policy options.
Critical to this effort are data collected through OGMP 2.0, launched in November 2020 in the framework of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. OGMP 2.0 is the only comprehensive, measurement-based reporting framework for the oil and gas sector, and its 74 member companies represent many of the world’s largest operators across the entire value chain, with assets that account for over 30 per cent of all oil and gas production.
IMEO: First Annual Report
In a report released to coincide with the launch, IMEO laid out its Theory of Change, at the heart of which is the need for an independent and trusted entity to integrate these multiple sources of heterogenous data into a coherent and policy-relevant dataset.
The report also includes the analysis of the first reports submitted by the company members of the OGMP 2.0. During this first year, most companies put significant effort into reporting and outlined ambitious 2025 reduction targets. Out of the 55 companies that set targets, 30 meet or exceed the recommended targets of 45% reduction or near-zero methane intensity, and 51 have submitted plans that provide confidence the accuracy of their data will improve in the next 3-5 years.
Hosted by UNEP, IMEO is budgeted at EUR 100 million over five years. To maintain its independence and credibility, it will receive no industry funding. Instead, IMEO will be entirely funded by governments and philanthropies, with core resources provided by the European Commission as a founding member.
Contact:
Terry Collins & Assoc. | tca.tc | LinkedIn.com/in/terrycollins, Toronto, ON M6R1L8 Canada
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Glasgow/New York, October 30 – The United Nations climate conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow faced negative views that it may not be able to succeed in efforts to revert global warming as wealthy nations remain divided about measures to phase out coal, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during meetings October 29-30 in Rome of the G20 that there is a “serious risk” that the Glasgow conference “will not deliver,” as reported by UN News. G20 is the group of the world’s wealthiest nations that account for 80 per cent of the global economy and 75 per cent of global emissions.
“Even if recent pledges were clear and credible, and there are serious questions about some of them, we are still careening towards climate catastrophe,” he said.
“If we want real success…we need more ambition and more action. The most important objective of this G20 Summit must be to re-establish trust – by tackling the main sources of mistrust – rooted in injustices, inequalities and geo-political divides,” he said.
“On all our climate goals, we have miles to go. And we must pick up the pace. Scientists are clear on the facts. Leaders must be as clear in their actions,” he stated, adding that the climate summit can be “a turning point towards a safer, greener world. It is not too late. But we must act now”.
The two-week climate summit was to open on October 31 in Glasgow with an ambitious but difficult program of setting up new regulations to implement targets of phasing out fossil fuels burning that are heating up the planet. Known as COP26, which means the 26th annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change signed by 197 countries.
About 100 heads of state and government and thousands of representatives from the UN, non-governmental organizations and civil societies have registered to attend in person. US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, European Union leaders and Guterres will address the summit.
A main goal of fighting climate change was set at the climate conference in Paris in 2015, which demanded that countries implement climate mitigating measures and adapt to climate technology to prevent the average global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius. But studies showed that global warming will continue with deadly heat waves, flooding, wildfire, drought and the collapse of the ecosystems.
Climate action requires also that wealthy countries allocate $100 billion a year to developing and vulnerable countries so they can adapt to green technology and cope with climate disasters that they are not responsible for. But wealthy countries have not yet met the needed financial goal.
The UN Environment Program said in a new Emissions Gap Report before the Glasgow conference that new and updated commitments to mitigate climate change were a positive step forward. But it said however that the world remains on track for a dangerous global temperature rise of at least 2.7 degrees Celsius this century even if climate action is implemented.
The report said the efforts remained insufficient and the world needs a 55 per cent reduction to limit global temperature increase below 1.5°C, the capstone defined by scientists as the less risky scenery for our planet and humanity’s future.
The report showed that updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are pledges by each country to reduce national emissions, as well as other commitments made for 2030 but not yet officially submitted – would only lead to an additional 7.5 per cent reduction in annual greenhouse emissions in 2030, compared to previous commitments.
The UN Development Program and the University of Oxford issued also a new survey called the G20 Peoples’ Climate Vote that showed the crucial importance of how young people support climate action in the G20, which is a group of the world’s wealthiest nations. Climate action by the G20 would have a huge impact on mitigating climate change because the group accounts for 80 per cent of the global economy and 75 per cent of global emissions.
“This new Peoples’ Climate Vote shows that, on average, 70 per cent of young people in G20 countries believe that we are in a global climate emergency,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.
“Given that they are about to inherit this climate emergency, young people are sending a message to global leaders that is loud and clear: they want climate action now. The world is now watching – hoping that countries will come together at COP26 in Glasgow to make bold, historic decisions that will literally change the future.”
The most popular climate policies among under-18s in the G20 countries surveyed were conservation of forests and land (59%), using solar, wind and renewable power and using climate friendly farming techniques (both 57%). Support for these policies was stronger among young people by three percentage points for the first two policies, and by four percentage points for climate-friendly farming.
The survey polled over 689,000 people, including over 300,000 under 18 years old. Youths at are particularly aware of climate dangers as they are entering the workforce and becoming voters, which put them in positions of greater influence.
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Beijing/New York, October 16 – Infrastructure has become a major international issue as its components are responsible for greenhouses gas emissions and adaptation costs, facts that can help accelerate the implementation of the Paris climate agreement that will be discussed at the Glasgow climate conference.
Thousands of experts, activists and business leaders from over 100 countries took part in the virtual Second UN Global Sustainable Transport Conference (October 14-16) in Beijing, the UN said in a press release at the close of the conference. It said participants called for accelerating progress towards achieving sustainable transport that would result in major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and in improving the lives of millions of people.
The transport conference was held before of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) taking place October 31-November 12 in Glasgow at which decision-makers will discuss ways to accelerate progress towards meeting the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals.
“Participants agreed that without a profound shift to sustainable mobility, achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals — already off-track — would be impossible,” the press release said.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message to the conference: “Covide-19 has pushed an estimated 120 million people into extreme poverty, 160 million into hunger, and set back education for around 100 million children. We are further from realizing the Sustainable Development Goals on climate, ocean, and biodiversity than we were when they were agreed six years ago.”
Guterres warned that the door on climate action was closing unless decarbonization of all means of transport is imposed in order to get to net-zero emissions by 2050 globally. He called also for phasing out the production of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 for leading manufacturing countries, and by 2040 for developing countries.
He called for zero emission ships to become the default choice, and commercially available for all by 2030 in order to achieve zero emissions in the shipping sector by 2050; and that companies start using sustainable aviation fuels now, in order to cut carbon emissions per passenger by 65 per cent by 2050.
“We have the opportunity now to capture the innovation and technology that can revolutionize transport,” said Conference Secretary-General Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “But these new technologies have to work for everyone. We have the solutions, and now we need the global cooperation to ensure that sustainable transport will be the engine that powers our efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the objectives of the Paris Agreement.”
The conference said progress made so far is insufficient and challenges remain to achieve the goal of keeping earth temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius as demanded by the Paris climate agreement.
The press release said remote rural communities and vulnerable groups in countries with special conditions “risk being left behind as the number of new and emerging transport-related technologies increase. More than $2 trillion of transport infrastructure investments will be needed each year until 2040 to fuel economic development. There is also a need for stronger policies on road safety measures and regulations on the import of new and used vehicles. “
A report prepared for the Beijing transport conference by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in close collaboration with 14 other UN agencies say key changes in transport would improve climate action.
The report said over 1 billion people worldwide still have no adequate access to all-weather roads, including some 450 million people in Africa. It said over 70 per cent of the total global rural population remain unconnected to transport infrastructure and systems, and car fuel emissions killed about 400,000 people.
“The lack of access to roads and transport contributes to deprivation in terms of access to timely health care, education, jobs and markets for agricultural produce,” the report said. “Rural isolation disproportionately harms the poor, older persons, persons with disabilities, children and women. Women and girls can face additional challenges when there are concerns about their physical safety.”
Oxford University, UN agencies: Radical changes needed in infrastructure design and management to achieve climate and development goals
Studies by experts from the UN Office for Project Services, the UN Environment Program and the University of Oxford have found that infrastructure is responsible for 79 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, and 88 per cent of all adaptation costs. A report issued by the experts called for radical changes are in infrastructure planning and management to achieve key climate and development targets.
“The central question is not whether we need infrastructure, but how it can be provided in ways that are sustainable, resilient and compatible with a net zero future,” Jim Hall, professor of Climate and Environmental Risk at the University of Oxford, said. “There is no simple answer to the question of how to provide climate-compatible infrastructure. It requires a myriad of choices, from the moment an infrastructure project is first conceived, to the end of its life when it is decommissioned or repurposed.”
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said, “As we seek to bridge the infrastructure gap and improve the quality of life of people everywhere, it is critical that we invest in sustainable infrastructure that adapts to future uncertain climate conditions; contributes to the decarbonization of the economy; protects biodiversity and minimizes pollution. Sustainable infrastructure is the only way we can ensure that people, nature and the environment thrive together.”
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New York, September 20 – The United Kingdom, which will host the next conference on climate change in November, appealed to rich countries to donate a total of $100 billion a year starting from 2020 to help poor countries adapt to and mitigate climate change.
Known as COP26, for the 26th Conference of the Parties in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12. It is considered a critical test to consolidate cooperation between rich and poor countries to implement the Paris climate change agreement signed in 2015. It will bring together the 197 members to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to implement the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius degrees. To reach that goal, Paris agreement signers will have to adapt to a new era of climate impacts and financially support developing nations to build low-carbon and resilient economies.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson attended a close-door meeting at UN headquarters in New York convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to discuss climate issues with world leaders, some of whom through video conference.
The main issue is to mobilize $100 billion a year from 2020 to support developing countries cut carbon emissions, minimize the impact of climate change and adapt their economies to deal with its impact. Rich countries have pledged some $79 billion in 2019, but still short of the goal of $100 billion for 2020. The funds will go to the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which is set up to assist developing countries. Another program known as the Accelerating Coal Transition aims at accelerating the closure of coal-fired power plants, creating clean energy generation and creating green jobs.
“In coming together to agree the $100-billion pledge, the world’s richest countries made an historic commitment to the world’s poorest – we now owe it to them to deliver on that,” Johnson said in a statement. The UK prime minister is in New York to address the UN General Assembly session.
“Richer nations have reaped the benefits of untrammelled pollution for generations, often at the expense of developing countries. As those countries now try to grow their economies in a clean, green and sustainable way we have a duty to support them in doing so – with our technology, with our expertise and with the money we have promised,” he said.
Guterres told a news conference that the closed-door meeting was to instill a “sense of urgency” because of the dire state of the global climate before the Glasgow conference.
“Based on the present commitments of member states, the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7-degrees of heating,” he said.
“Science tells us that anything above 1.5 degrees would be a disaster. To limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, we need a 45 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 so we can reach carbon neutrality by mid-century. Instead, commitments by countries to date imply an increase of 16 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 compared to 2010 levels. This means that unless we collectively change course, there is a high risk of failure of COP26.”
Guterres especially called on the group of the world’s richest countries known as G20 to donate to the CIF.
“They represent 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “The bottom line is that we need decisive action now around net zero commitments from all countries and the private sector. I want to mention one specific challenge – energy.”
He warned that if the earth’s temperature will rise above 2 C degrees, “the Paris targets would go up in smoke.”
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Geneva/New York, August 9 – Planet earth is certain to get increasing life-threatening heat waves and water shortage that will affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations panel that studies the science of climate change, said in a report.
The report was published following negotiations between the panel’s scientists and 195 governments. It deals also with oceans and coral reefs that sustain fisheries that are threatened by the 1.5-degrees Celsius (or 2 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the earth atmosphere. The report said warmer temperatures would also kill animal and plant species.
IPCC has been providing scientific information to governments so they can develop policies to fight global warming.
IPCC said its Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis “addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, and global and regional climate simulations.”
IPCC said in a press release that the report “projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions. For 1.5°C of global warming, there will be increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. At 2°C of global warming, heat extremes would more often reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health.”
“But it is not just about temperature. Climate change is bringing multiple different changes in different regions – which will all increase with further warming. These include changes to wetness and dryness, to winds, snow and ice, coastal areas and oceans.”
The report was issued to coincide with Indigenous People’s Day (August 9) to support evidence that indigenous people hold the secret weapon for protecting forests and mitigating climate change. It was issued while the world is witnessing severe flooding in China, Germany and some Southeast Asian nations, intense heat waves and wildfires in California, Siberia and parts of Canada, Turkey and Greece.
IPCC issued its last climate report in 2013, which said human activities were the “dominant cause” for global warming since the 1950s. IPCC said only a handful of governments have adopted concrete measures to end burning of fossil fuels, oil and gas as source of energy, which is considered the main culprit for global warming. Failure to curb fossil-fuel emissions since the 1950s has increased earth warming that is now unstoppable in the next 30 years, IPCC said.
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the new IPPC report. “Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”
“The viability of our societies depends on leaders from government, business and civil society uniting behind policies, actions and investments that will limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. We owe this to the entire human family, especially the poorest and most vulnerable communities and nations that are the hardest hit despite being least responsible for today’s climate emergency.”
Guterres called on governments to take “immediate action on energy,” including no new coal plants built after 2021 and for OECD countries to phase out existing coal by 2030, with all other countries following suit by 2040.
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The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched on June 10, 2021, a peer-reviewed report based on a 4-day virtual workshop on addressing the biodiversity and climate crises together involving 50 jointly selected international experts.
IPBES/IPCC Workshop Report:
Tackling the Biodiversity and Climate Crises Together, and Their Combined Social Impacts
Global experts identify key options for solutions; First-ever collaboration between IPBES- and IPCC-selected scientists.
(Editor’s note: The media release from IPBES is published as is on this website to respect its integrity)
BONN, 10 June – Unprecedented changes in climate and biodiversity, driven by human activities, have combined and increasingly threaten nature, human lives, livelihoods and well-being around the world. Biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and mutually reinforce each other. Neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together.
This is the message of a workshop report, published today by 50 of the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts
The peer-reviewed workshop report (available for media preview here) is the product of a four-day virtual workshop between experts selected by a 12-person Scientific Steering Committee assembled by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the first-ever collaboration between these two intergovernmental bodies.
The report finds that previous policies have largely tackled biodiversity loss and climate change independently of each other, and that addressing the synergies between mitigating biodiversity loss and climate change, while considering their social impacts, offers the opportunity to maximize benefits and meet global development goals.
“Human-caused climate change is increasingly threatening nature and its contributions to people, including its ability to help mitigate climate change. The warmer the world gets, the less food, drinking water and other key contributions nature can make to our lives, in many regions” said Prof. Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee
“Changes in biodiversity, in turn, affect climate, especially through impacts on nitrogen, carbon and water cycles,” he said. “The evidence is clear: a sustainable global future for people and nature is still achievable, but it requires transformative change with rapid and far-reaching actions of a type never before attempted, building on ambitious emissions reductions. Solving some of the strong and apparently unavoidable trade-offs between climate and biodiversity will entail a profound collective shift of individual and shared values concerning nature – such as moving away from the conception of economic progress based solely on GDP growth, to one that balances human development with multiple values of nature for a good quality of life, while not overshooting biophysical and social limits.”
The authors also warn that narrowly focused actions to combat climate change can directly and indirectly harm nature and vice-versa, but many measures exist that can make significant positive contributions in both areas.
Among the most important available actions identified in the report are:
* Stopping the loss and degradation of carbon- and species-rich ecosystems on land and in the ocean, especially forests, wetlands, peatlands, grasslands and savannahs; coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, kelp forests and seagrass meadows; as well as deep water and polar blue carbon habitats. The report highlights that reducing deforestation and forest degradation can contribute to lowering human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, by a wide range from 0.4-5.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year.
* Restoring carbon- and species-rich ecosystems. The authors point to evidence that restoration is among the cheapest and quickest nature-based climate mitigation measures to implement – offering much-needed habitat for plants and animals, thus enhancing resilience of biodiversity in the face of climate change, with many other benefits such as flood regulation, coastal protection, enhanced water quality, reduced soil erosion and ensuring pollination. Ecosystem restoration can also create jobs and income, especially when taking into consideration the needs and access rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.
* Increasing sustainable agricultural and forestry practices to improve the capacity to adapt to climate change, enhance biodiversity, increase carbon storage and reduce emissions. These include measures such as diversification of planted crop and forest species, agroforestry and agroecology. Improved management of cropland and grazing systems, such as soil conservation and the reduction of fertilizer use, is jointly estimated by the report to offer annual climate change mitigation potential of 3-6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
* Enhancing and better-targeting conservation actions, coordinated with and supported by strong climate adaptation and innovation. Protected areas currently represent about 15% of land and 7.5% of the ocean. Positive outcomes are expected from substantially increasing intact and effectively protected areas. Global estimates of exact requirements for effectively protected and conserved areas to ensure a habitable climate, self-sustaining biodiversity and a good quality of life are not yet well established but range from 30 to 50 percent of all ocean and land surface areas. Options to improve the positive impacts of protected areas include greater resourcing, better management and enforcement, and improved distribution with increased inter-connectivity between these areas. Conservation measures beyond protected areas are also spotlighted – including migration corridors and planning for shifting climates, as well as better integration of people with nature to assure equity of access and use of nature’s contributions to people.
* Eliminating subsidies that support local and national activities harmful to biodiversity – such as deforestation, over-fertilization and over-fishing, can also support climate change mitigation and adaptation, together with changing individual consumption patterns, reducing loss and waste, and shifting diets, especially in rich countries, toward more plant-based options.
Some focused climate mitigation and adaptation measures identified by the report as harmful to biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people include:
* Planting bioenergy crops in monocultures over a very large share of land areas. Such crops are detrimental to ecosystems when deployed at very large scales, reducing nature’s contributions to people and impeding achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals. At small scales, alongside pronounced and rapid reductions in fossil-fuel emissions, dedicated bioenergy crops for electricity production or fuels may provide co-benefits for climate adaptation and biodiversity.
* Planting trees in ecosystems that have not historically been forests and reforestation with monocultures – especially with exotic tree species. This can contribute to climate change mitigation but is often damaging to biodiversity, food production and other nature’s contributions to people, has no clear benefits for climate adaptation, and may displace local people through competition for land.
* Increasing irrigation capacity. A common response to adapt agricultural systems to drought that often leads to water conflicts, dam building and long- term soil degradation from salinization.
* Any measures that focus too narrowly on climate change mitigation should be evaluated in terms of their overall benefits and risks, such as some renewable energies generating surges of mining activity or consuming large amounts of land. The same applies to some technical measures too narrowly focused on adaptation, such as building dams and sea walls. Although important options for mitigating and adapting to climate change exist, these can have large negative environmental and social impacts – such as interference with migratory species and habitat fragmentation. Such impacts can be minimized, for instance, by developing alternative batteries and long-lived products, efficient recycling systems for mineral resources, and approaches to mining that include strong considerations for environmental and social sustainability.
The report authors stress that while nature offers effective ways to help mitigate climate change, these solutions can only be effective if building on ambitious reductions in all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. “Land and ocean are already doing a lot – absorbing almost 50% of CO2 from human emissions – but nature cannot do everything,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “Transformative change in all parts of society and our economy is needed to stabilize our climate, stop biodiversity loss and chart a path to the sustainable future we want. This will also require us to address both crises together, in complementary ways.”
Highlighting the significance of the co-sponsored workshop, Dr. Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC, said: “Climate change and biodiversity loss combine to threaten society – often magnifying and accelerating each other. By focusing on synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation, this workshop advanced the debate on how to maximize benefits to people and the planet. It also represented an important step in collaboration between our two communities.”
“It may be impossible to achieve win-win synergies, or even manage the tradeoffs between climate and biodiversity actions in every single patch of a landscape or seascape,” said Prof. Pörtner, “But achieving sustainable outcomes becomes progressively easier when integrating a mix of actions at larger spatial scales, through cross-border collaboration and joint consultative spatial planning, which is why it is important to also address the lack of effective governance systems and mechanisms to improve integration between solutions for climate change and biodiversity.”
The Governments of the United Kingdom and of Norway co-hosted the virtual workshop. “This is an absolutely critical year for nature and climate,” said Lord Zac Goldsmith, UK Minister of State for Pacific and the Environment. “With the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, and the Glasgow Climate Change Conference in the UK, we have an opportunity and responsibility to put the world on a path to recovery. This hugely valuable report by the experts of IPBES and IPCC makes it clear that addressing biodiversity loss and climate change together offers our best chance of doing so.”
Sveinung Rotevatn, Norwegian Minister for Climate and Environment added: “Policies, efforts and actions to solve the global biodiversity and climate crises will only succeed if they are based on the best knowledge and evidence, which is why Norway welcomes this expert workshop report. It is clear that we cannot solve these threats in isolation – we either solve both or we solve neither.”
Paying tribute to the work of all the authors and expert reviewers, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, Dr. Anne Larigauderie, also recalled the recent and tragic passing of Prof. Robert Scholes, the other Co-Chair of the workshop’s Scientific Steering Committee, and his many contributions to both the IPCC and IPBES.
It is important to note that the workshop report has not been subjected to IPBES or IPCC review, and that IPBES and IPCC co-sponsorship of the workshop does not imply IPBES or IPCC endorsement or approval of the workshop or its conclusions.
