|
Human Consumption of Earth's Natural Resources Has Tripled in 40 Years
Humans' appetite for gnawing away at the fabric of the Earth itself is growing prodigiously. According to a new UN report, the amount of the planet's natural resources extracted for human use has tripled in 40 years.
A report produced by the International Resource Panel (IRP), part of the UN Environment Programme, says rising consumption driven by a growing middle class has seen resources extraction increase from 22 billion tons in 1970 to 70 billon tons in 2010.
It refers to natural resources as primary materials and includes under this heading biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals.
The increase in their use, the report warns, will ultimately deplete the availability of natural resources—causing serious shortages of critical materials and risking conflict.
Growing primary material consumption will affect climate change mainly because of the large amounts of energy involved in extraction, use, transport and disposal.
Irreversibly Depleted
"The alarming rate at which materials are now being extracted is already having a severe impact on human health and people's quality of life," said the IRP's co-chair, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra.
"We urgently need to address this problem before we have irreversibly depleted the resources that power our economies and lift people out of poverty. This deeply complex problem, one of humanity's biggest tests yet, calls for a rethink of the governance of natural resource extraction."
The IRP says the information contained in the new report supports the monitoring of the progress countries are making towards achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. It also shows the uneven way in which the materials exploited are shared.
The richest countries consume on average 10 times as much of the available resources as the poorest and twice as much as the world average.
This total—almost three times today's amount—will probably increase the acidification of the world's waters, the eutrophication of its soils and waters, worsen soil erosion and lead to greater amounts of waste and pollution.
The report also ranks countries by the size of their per capita material footprints—the amount of material required in a country, an indicator that sheds light on its true impact on the global natural resource base. It is also a good way to judge a country's material standard of living.
Europe and North America, which had annual per capita material footprints of 20 and 25 tons in 2010, are at the top of the table. China's footprint was 14 tons and Brazil's 13. The annual per-capita material footprint for Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and West Asia was 9-10 tons, and Africa's was below 3 tons.
Unprecedented Amounts
Global material use has rapidly accelerated since 2000, the report says, as emerging economies such as China undergo industrial and urban transformation that requires unprecedented amounts of iron, steel, cement, energy and building materials.
Compounding the problems, there has been little improvement in global material efficiency since 1990. The global economy now needs more material per unit of GDP than it did at the turn of the century, the IRP says, because production has moved from material-efficient economies such as Japan, South Korea and Europe to far less materially-efficient countries such as China, India and some in south-east Asia.
The report says uncoupling the increasing material use from economic growth is the "imperative of modern environmental policy and essential for the prosperity of human society and a healthy natural environment."
This will require investment in research and development, combined with better public policy and financing, creating opportunities for sustained economic growth and job creation.
The IRP also recommends putting a price on primary materials at extraction to reflect the social and environmental costs of resource extraction and use, while reducing consumption. The extra funds generated, it says, could then be invested in R&D in resource-intensive sectors of the economy.
It is concerned that the expanding demand for materials that low-income countries are likely to experience could contribute to local conflicts such as those seen in areas where mining competes with agriculture and urban development.
This article was originally posted on EcoWatch.
|
5 ways to help the Arctic as the planet warms
The Arctic—home to diverse wildlife and many cultures—is changing faster than any other part of the planet in the face of climate change. Melting sea ice is already contributing to rising ocean levels worldwide and opening up new areas of the ocean for risky oil drilling. And polar bears, which depend on that ice to hunt seals, rest, and breed, are now more vulnerable than ever.
The Columbia Climate Center, in partnership with WWF and Arctic 21, published a new report that asks experts to consider the effects on the Arctic in light of an international agreement that aims to limit climate change to between 1.5° and less than 2° s C. Unfortunately for the Arctic, even that limited increase could mean a change of roughly 4°C and even up to 5°C.
Already, the changes are impacting not only Arctic residents, but billions of people living in other parts of the world.
But there’s still time left to help the Arctic and the impacts of climate change. Ultimately, experts agreed on five important ways we can take action:
1. We need to fund research to help us all better understand what the Arctic might look like in the near future. That research should prepare us for multiple scenarios.
2. We need to develop technology to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Once we find out what works, that technology should be put to work immediately and on a large-scale.
3. We need to immediately help people who live in the Arctic to adapt, which may include relocating communities. Right now there’s little policy and infrastructure to help these people adapt so they’re going it alone.
4. We need to give scientists the tools to help us effectively understand and adapt to a changing Arctic. We should support an emerging pan-Arctic observing system, along with early warning components and development of Arctic system models to track Arctic change.
5. We need to create a unified voice for Arctic action with continued global talks and decision-making, especially when that work is forward-looking.
When the White House hosted the first ever Arctic Science Ministerial, leaders from around the world agreed to work collaboratively. Keeping that commitment will be important. The Arctic needs the best in science to create the most effective policy, and no one is going to be able to do it alone.
This blog post was originally posted here.
|
Young People Hold the Key to Mobilizing Climate Action
At age 13, I participated in civil rights marches and other activities. A few years later I was also active in anti-war marches and events. By the time I was 16, I helped lead a protest at my high school, which ended with a ceremonial tree-planting on the first Earth Day in 1970. I was fortunate because my family supported and encouraged my activism, as they have throughout my career.
As I look toward our planet’s future, I reflect on numerous examples from our past, in which young generations not only helped lead, but also provided the main spark that forced older decision-makers to push through change. The 1960s and ’70s in the U.S. are one big example. The Berliners tearing down the wall in 1989 is another. The Arab Spring in 2010/11 changed that corner of the world forever. And more recently, the rise of 350.org and its mass mobilization of young people, which included the People’s Climate March in New York in 2014, is a big new force in the fight to address climate change.
It’s clear that if we want change, we need to not only watch and listen to young people, but also embrace and support them to help create the change our planet needs. If the leaders at COP21 in Paris don’t get this message, they are simply missing the boat.
That’s why Global Greengrants Fund is partnering with 350.org to provide grants and assistance to international youth groups that are working to fight and address the impacts of climate change in their communities. In addition to Global Greengrants Fund’s normal granting—which has provided$45 million to grassroots and indigenous groups in 165 countries over the last 20 years—we are now in the process of granting out $475,000 specifically to grassroots and frontline youth groups so they can mobilize the climate movement in the lead-up to Paris. This grantmaking strategy is being directed by the youth climate organizers who make up our Next Generation Climate Boardand 350.org's global network of campaigners.
Young grantees are often from marginalized or indigenous communities that are already being impacted by climate change and stand to be devastated as the chaos worsens. They need to be given more opportunities to tell their stories and lead. Developing and empowering their voices isn’t just a good idea—it’s a necessity.
When we started searching around the world to find youth leaders and groups to fund with our grants, we were amazed at the work that was already moving forward that we were able to support. Young people from Peru to Malawi already had structures in place to address the impacts of climate change in their communities. Here’s the “#YouthOnClimate” campaign that Global Greengrants and 350.org have put together:
- We’re making grants to groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America and beyond.
- We’ve put together a series of videos to help amplify emblematic young voices in Kenya, the Philippines and Ecuador.
[video: https://youtu.be/RoiMU1C2u6U]
- Our Call2Action focuses on mobilizing youth around COP21 to engage in civil action in their local communities.
- We will have a contingent of youth voices at events in Paris for COP21.
- We and others are moving “Through Paris,” not “To Paris,” to make sure these young people have the tools and resources needed to take the movement beyond Paris and back into their communities.
I’ve traveled around the world and met with dozens and dozens of local environmental groups and leaders. Young people, women, indigenous people and people from countries in the Global South hold a key to the solution of climate change. These groups bring a badly needed perspective, whether it is deep respect for the Earth, concern for the future or new ideas and tactics.
Climate change is imperiling our youth, and so we are empowering our youth to fight it.
This blog post was originally posted on Ecowatch.
|
Foster Climate-Smart Agriculture
A growing global population and changing diets are driving up the demand for food. Production is struggling to keep up as crop yields level off in many parts of the world, ocean health declines, and natural resources—including soils, water and biodiversity—are stretched dangerously thin. One in nine people suffers from chronic hunger and 12.9 percent of the population in developing countries is undernourished. The food security challenge will only become more difficult, as the world will need to produce about 70% more food by 2050 to feed an estimated 9 billion people.
The challenge is intensified by agriculture’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. Climate change’s negative impacts are already being felt, in the form of reduced yields and more frequent extreme weather events, affecting crops and livestock alike. Substantial investments in adaptation will be required to maintain current yields and to achieve the required production increases
Agriculture is also a major part of the climate problem. It currently generates 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, that percentage could rise substantially as other sectors reduce their emissions.
Producing More with Less
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing landscapes—cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries--that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change. CSA aims to simultaneously achieve three outcomes:
1. Increased productivity: Produce more food to improve food and nutrition security and boost the incomes of 75% of the world’s poor, many of whom rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
2. Enhanced resilience: Reduce vulnerability to drought, pests, disease and other shocks; and improve capacity to adapt and grow in the face of longer-term stresses like shortened seasons and erratic weather patterns.
3. Reduced emissions: Pursue lower emissions for each calorie or kilo of food produced, avoid deforestation from agriculture and identify ways to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.
While built on existing knowledge, technologies, and principles of sustainable agriculture, CSA is distinct in several ways. First, it has an explicit focus on addressing climate change. Second, CSA systematically considers the synergies and tradeoffs that exist between productivity, adaptation and mitigation, in order to capitalize on the benefits of integrated and interrelated results.
Find out more about CSA basics, planning, financing, investing and more in the online guide to CSA developed in collaboration with the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR): https://CSA.guide.
Climate-Smart Agriculture and the World Bank Group
The World Bank Group (WBG) is currently scaling up climate-smart agriculture and in its Climate Change Action Plan has committed to 100 percent of agricultural operations being climate-smart by 2019. The WBG portfolio will also increase its focus on impact at scale and be rebalanced to have a greater focus on adaptation and resilience. To enable these commitments, we are screening all IDA projects for climate risks, and will continue to develop and mainstream metrics and indicators to measure outcomes, and account for greenhouse gas emissions in our projects and operations. These actions will help our client countries implement their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the agriculture sector, and will contribute to progress on the Sustainable Development Goals for climate action, poverty, and the eradication of hunger.
The World Bank Group also backs research programs such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which develops climate smart technologies and management methods, early warning systems, risk insurance and other innovations that promote resilience and combat climate change.
For example, Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Country Profiles bridge a knowledge gap by providing clarity on CSA terminology, components, relevant issues, and how to contextualize it under different country conditions. The knowledge product is also a methodology for assessing a baseline on climate-smart agriculture at the country level (both national and sub-national) that can guide climate smart investments and development.
Working Toward Food and Nutrition Security, while Curbing GHG Emissions
The Bank’s support of CSA is making a difference across the globe:
In Uruguay, the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and Climate Change (DACC) project is supporting sustainable intensification through a number of initiatives including the establishment of an Agricultural Information and Decision Support System (SNIA) and the preparation of soil management plans.
The Morocco Inclusive Green Growth project supports the national green growth agenda by increasing the supply of agrometeorological information and facilitating the diffusion of new, resilience-building technologies such as direct seeders.
In Senegal, the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP) and its partners have developed seven new high-yielding, early-maturing, drought resistant varieties of sorghum and millet. Released in 2012, these varieties are being widely diffused to farmers and show positive yield result.
In Ethiopia, the Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project has helped restore 2,700 hectares of biodiverse native forest, which has boosted production of income-generating wood and tree products such as honey and fruit.
African farmers who have adopted evergreen agriculture are reaping impressive results without the use of costly fertilizers. Crop yields often increase by 30 percent and sometimes more. In Zambia, for example, maize yields tripled when grown under Faidherbia trees..
This blog post was originally posted here.
|
How can we better value water as global shortages start to threaten economies?
With water shortages exacerbating inequalities and causing damage to economies, making sure the commodity is properly valued by all is essential.
Water is essential for life, whether to irrigate crops, to manufacture goods, or for drinking, washing and cleaning. But the intensification of climate change, a growing population and increasing demands from cities, agriculture and industry – coupled with poor water governance – is driving acute water shortages around the world.
The World Bank predicts that by 2050 this scarcity will deliver a significant hit to the economies of Africa, central Asia and the Middle East, taking double digits off their GDP.
To address these challenges and ensure that every person, country and business has enough, it is essential to determine the true value of water throughout the supply chain. But how?
This was the question debated during a panel discussion, hosted by the Guardian and supported by SABMiller, at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden, which was organised in association with the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
Lack of awareness
The panel was unanimous that water is not valued in the way it should be. Lack of awareness was suggested as a likely cause.
“In places where farmers have been hit by drought to the point that it’s impacted their livelihoods, water has become a valued resource,” said Paul Reig, senior associate of the Water Programme and Business Centre at the World Resources Institute. “It is places that haven’t suffered this kind of impact that lack awareness.”
Reig has been working with Valuing Nature, a sustainability consultancy, to understand the value of water in terms of the cost of delivering it in socially, environmentally and economically beneficial ways. “We think that by understanding the total cost, it could inform the level of investment needed to reach those conditions, as well as the largest impacts that are impeding their achievement,” he said.
Thirsty agriculture
The panel agreed that the agriculture sector has a long way to go before it adequately values water. “Agriculture is the largest consumer and the largest polluter of water,” said Reig. “Despite this, it’s difficult to ask farmers to pay for water when they struggle to make a living.”
John Vidal, the Guardian’s Environment editor who chaired the debate, asked whether farmers need to think differently about how they grow and irrigate crops, if they are unwilling or unable to pay for water.
“I think it’s already happening,” said Anton Earle, director of SIWI’s African Regional Centre. The government of Botswana is looking at ways to introduce a water charge for farmers and the farmers SIWI speaks to there say they are already using efficient techniques for irrigation to reduce the cost of powering pumps, he said.
Speaking companies’ language
It is not only in agriculture, however, where operations and processes need to be more water efficient.
SIWI has been working with Swedish textile companies to encourage their production plants in countries such as Bangladesh, China and Ethiopia to place greater value on water. “We talk to these factories and say: ‘You’re using and polluting many of the water resources in the local area – you should change your practices’, but factory owners would rather sell to a business that is less pushy,” said Earle.
Instead, the key was to find the right language businesses could respond to. “We asked them about their major costs and they consistently pointed to energy and the chemicals used to dye textiles. We told them we could introduce processes that would reduce those costs,” said Earle. “So instead of dyeing fabric three or four times and releasing the water, they do it once, capture the chemicals and reuse them. Improving water use is a side effect but the entry point had to be something that the corporates could really relate to.”
But individual corporate action does not necessarily mean water is being better valued overall. André Fourie, head of water security and environmental value at SABMiller, described the company’s work with barley farmers in India, where he says agriculture accounts for 80% of water consumption. “By having better irrigation – drip irrigation [where water is directed at the plant’s root], for example – they save water. But we’ve also seen that the water they save is used by someone else, so we haven’t actually solved the problem.”
One of the most effective ways for companies to determine the value of water, says Fourie, is to develop a better understanding of what it costs throughout different parts of the business. “By having one price [for water] in our thinking it makes our decisions quite blunt. Take a brewery: the water that comes into it has one price, but if the brewery treats it the water is worth more.”
Should we pay more for water?
One of the key challenges in securing a long-term supply of water is finding sustainable streams of finance and working out who should bear the cost.
“In many cases, there is a cultural issue around making profit from water, even in countries where the private sector has played a strong role in different parts of the economy,” said Earle.
When it was suggested to the National Treasury of South Africa that the country’s wastewater treatment could be handled by the private sector on the condition that the business could sell off the treated water, the idea, said Earle, was not met with open arms.
In some areas, however, many of the poorest people have to buy water from vendors, tankers and other informal providers, and spend as much as 10 times more than someone who has a reliable connection in the home. While this situation reveals deep inequalities, it also shows that there is a willingness to pay.
Monika Freyman, director of Investor Water Initiatives at non-profit Ceres, agreed that asking domestic users to pay for water could be a way of increasing the value placed on it, as well as leveraging the money needed to secure supply.
“Many investors, when they look at private solutions or public-private partnerships, are beginning to ask: ‘How can we ensure that those at the bottom of the pyramid can afford and have access to water?’ I think privatisation can work but you have to have pretty strong policies and stewardship from the regulators to go with it.”
Freyman believes that the corporate and investment community can value water better by understanding the risks of inefficient water management. “Many companies are beginning to assess the money they’re leaving on the table by not getting water management right,” she said. “In the past, the investment community was obsessed with the volumes of water they were using, but I think the bigger question now is: what are the lost opportunities around not understanding and managing water well?”
This article was originally posted on the Guardian.
|
The importance of urban forests: why money really does grow on trees
Mature trees clean air, lower stress, boost happiness, reduce flood risk – and even save municipal money. So why are they cut down when cities develop – and how should the UN’s new urban agenda protect them?
The skyline along Manhattan’s Upper Fifth Avenue, where it flanks Central Park, is dominated by vast, verdant clouds of American elm trees. Their high-arched branches and luminous green canopies form – as historian Jill Jones puts it – “a beautiful cathedral of shade”. When she started researching her new book, Urban Forests, she’d have struggled to identify the species – but now, she says, “when I see one, I say ‘Oh my goodness, this is a rare survivor,’ and deeply appreciate the fact that it’s there.”
The American elm was once America’s most beloved and abundant city tree. It liked urban soil, and its branches spread out a safe distance above traffic, to provide the dappled shade that cities depended on before air conditioning.
Now, however, most of the big, old elms have been wiped out by Dutch elm disease. Many of them were replaced by ash, which have in turn been killed by another imported pest: the emerald ash borer. By the 1970s, writes Jones, much of America’s urban tree cover had fallen victim to “disease, development and shrinking municipal budgets”.
Thousands of miles away, in Bangkok, the main threat is construction work. After a group of residents tried in vain to save several mature trees on their lane, which were felled to make way for a car park, they formed a tree advocacy group, the Big Trees Project.
Within weeks, membership swelled to 16,000. Forestry officer at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Simone Borelli tells me of similar tree advocacy groups in Malaysia, India and Central African Republic, where the capital, Bangui, has “grown out of the forest and is eating it up”.
This month will see representatives from the world’s cities convene in Quito, Ecuador, for the United Nations conference on sustainable urban development,Habitat III. An agreement called the New Urban Agenda will be launched, to address the challenges facing a growing global urban population that already accounts for over 50% of us.
The document is littered with references to green spaces being essential for mental and physical health, community building and performing urgent ecological tasks. Research has turned up fascinating evidence as to why town councils, planners and developers – in whose hands the fate of urban trees lies – should take heed.
Until recently, says Jones, city officials saw trees as “expensive ornaments”. But what is now known about the ecological services that trees provide is staggering.
Trees can cool cities by between 2C and 8C. When planted near buildings, trees can cut air conditioning use by 30%, and, according to the UN Urban Forestry office, reduce heating energy use by a further 20-50%. One large tree can absorb 150kg of carbon dioxide a year, as well as filter some of the airborne pollutants, including fine particulates.
It’s hard to put a price on how an avenue of plane trees can muffle the roar of a main road, although trees do on average increase the value of property by 20%. Perhaps money does grow on them after all.
When the New York City park department measured the economic impact of its trees, the benefits added up to $120m a year. (Compare that to the $22m annual parks department expenditure.) There were $28m worth of energy savings, $5m worth of air quality improvements and $36m of costs avoided in mitigating storm water flooding. If you look at a big tree, says Jones, “it’s intercepting 1,432 gallons of water in the course of a year.”
Use of the open source software, i-Tree, has spread all over the world (from China to the UK, via Brazil and Taiwan) to assess canopy size – ideally, cities should have 40% coverage – and calculate its economic worth. “To be able to monetise those benefits is really useful,” says Jones. “Trees are economic drivers. Everyone knows, if you look at fancy neighbourhoods, they are the ones with the most trees.” By the same token, she observes that underprivileged neighbourhoods are often also undercanopied.
Humans are drawn to trees by more than aesthetics. It can bring down cortisol levels in walkers, which means less stress. The effect on our brains is a subject that fascinates UK-based GP and public health expert William Bird.
“The parts of our brain we use change when we connect with nature,” he says. Even in lab-based studies, MRI scanning shows that when viewing urban scenes, blood flow to the amygdala – the “fight-or-flight” part of the brain – increases. Our brains view cities as hostile environments. Natural scenes, by contrast, light up the anterior cingulate and the insula, where empathy and altruism happen.
“In areas with more trees,” says Bird, “people get out more, they know their neighbours more, they have less anxiety and depression.” (Here in the UK, the annual mental health bill is around £70bn.) “Being less stressed,” he continues, “gives them more energy to be active”. But you can’t fob people off with an empty playing field, he says. “People won’t want to go there. We are still programmed as hunter gatherers who look for trees, biodiversity, water and safety.”
Research suggests people are less violent when they live near trees. One of the oft-cited examples is a study that looked at women in a Chicago housing estate. Those who lived near the trees reported less mental fatigue and less violent tendencies than those in barren areas of the same estate.
“We still know very little about the mechanisms linking trees and health,” says Geoffrey Donovan, research forester with the US Forest Service. But there are theories. One is that nature is so mentally restorative that it gives our minds a rest from the forced, direct attention that modern life and urban environments increasingly call for. It relieves mental fatigue.
A tree psychology study that particularly tickles Jones was done in Toronto bypsychology professor Marc Berman, using data sets from the national health system. “He discovered that, if you have 10 more trees on a city block, it improves health perception as much as having £10,000 more in income, or feeling seven years younger,” she says.
Perhaps one of the most striking studies on urban trees is one that showed that they reduce health inequality. In 2008, Rich Mitchell, a public health professor at the University of Glasgow, compared income deprivation and green space exposure across England and his study found “health inequalities related to income deprivation in all-cause mortality and mortality from circulatory diseases were lower in populations living in the greenest areas”.
Back at the US Forest Service, Donovan refers to trees as “a matter of life and death”. “I looked at the impact of trees on birth outcomes and found that mothers with more trees within 50m of their homes are less likely to have underweight babies,” he says. For another study, he looked at mortality rates in areas which have lost millions of trees to emerald ash borer, and identified “a corresponding increase in human mortality”.
The value we place on trees and nature is informed by childhood experience. Children growing up dislocated from nature results in, say some researchers, an “extinction of experience”. These children will ultimately understand and value nature less. “This means,” writes Bird, “that each generation will pass on less experience of the natural environment – and as policymakers and future environmentalists they will have a poorer understanding of nature and so give it less value”.
Which would not bode well for the FAO Forestry Department’s vision of “greener, happier, healthier cities”. As Jones says, “being an amateur tree appreciator, as I now am, really does transform your enjoyment of being out and about”.
This article was originally posted on the Guardian.
|
13 SDG: Climate Action
In September 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development. If these Goals are completed, it would mean an end to extreme poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030.
Our governments have a plan to save our planet…it’s our job to make sure they stick to it.
The Global Goals are only going to work if we fight for them and you can’t fight for your rights if you don’t know what they are. We believe the Goals are only going to be completed if we can make them famous.
[video: https://youtu.be/Mdm49_rUMgo]
Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Climate change is now affecting every country on every continent. It is disrupting national economies and affecting lives, costing people, communities and countries dearly today and even more tomorrow.
"This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a liveable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation.", Leonardo DiCaprio
Targets
- Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries
- Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
- Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning
- Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible
- Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities
Know more about the 13 Global Goal for Sustainable Development.
|
It has been a really unprecedented year for global climate action
From the Paris agreement to a new deal on another kind of greenhouse gas, the world is doing a lot to slow climate change.
The past few months have seen a historic amount of global climate action, from the official entry into force of the Paris climate agreement to a landmark agreement to begin limiting emissions from the international aviation industry.
Now, mark another win for global climate action: On Saturday, representatives from almost 200 countries agreed to a new deal to reduce emissions from the world’s fastest growing greenhouse gas — hydrofluorocarbons.
Hydrofluorocarbons — or HFCs — are the gases currently used in refrigeration and air conditioning. And while they help keep certain items cool, they also threaten to heat up the world, with 1,000 times the heat trapping properties of carbon dioxide. According to scientists, continued use of HFCs in air-conditioners would be enough to raise global temperatures one full degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.
“This amendment to the Montreal Protocol is the single most important measure the global community could take to limit global warming in the short-term.”
In an effort to curb their use, members of the Montreal Protocol met in Rwanda last week to discuss how HFCs could be phased out without disproportionately impacting developing countries, like India, where air-conditioning is crucial to public health.
The countries settled on an amendment to the original Montreal Protocol called the Kigali Amendment, which relies on a tiered system to time the phase out of HFCs throughout the world. Developed nations stop using and producing HFCs within a few years, followed by developing countries like China and some island nations in 2024, and finally countries like India, Iran, and Iraq in 2028.
“This amendment to the Montreal Protocol is the single most important measure the global community could take to limit global warming in the short-term,” Andrew Light, senior fellow with the World Resources Institute, said in a statement. “Because HFCs are thousands of times more potent as a warming agent than carbon dioxide, a successful phase down can avoid up to a half a degree Celsius of global warming by the end of this century.”
The deal, according to some scientific estimates, could prevent .5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century — no small amount, given the goal of staying well below 1.5 degrees of warming set out in Paris.
If the Montreal Protocol sounds familiar, that’s because this same body had great success in the late 1980s and early 1990s to force the phase-out of chlorofluorcarbons, which both destroyed the ozone and contributed to global warming. HFCs were meant as a non-ozone-depleting replacement to CFCs, but ended up acting as powerful warming agents themselves.
The Montreal Protocol is one of the great environmental success stories in recent history — a coalition of countries coming together to recognize a problem (in this case, the hole in the ozone) and agree upon a solution. Phasing out CFCs really did help the ozone — today, it is finally starting to heal.
It’s fitting that the Montreal Protocol would reach another crucial global deal at a time when the global community seems to be embracing climate action like never before. In early October, the Paris climate agreement reached the threshold of representative countries and emissions needed to enter into force, and it’s expected to take effect in early November. That’s months beforeanyone thought the agreement would enter into force, spurred largely by the specter of an American president who would seek to cancel the agreement. Nations understand the critical nature of the climate change problem, and are acting quickly — and acting together — to help slow the crisis. Earlier in October, nations came together to help curb greenhouse gas emissions from airlines — a deal the International Air Transport Association (IATA) trade group called “historic.”
So even as the United States seems locked in a contentious presidential election that treats climate change more as an aside than a critical issue, the international community appears ready to move forward with climate action.
“In less than 12 months, American leadership has brought the world together to craft two historic agreements that represent a global turning point in our fight to tackle climate change,” Michael Brune, director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “While we have much more work to do, the significance of these diplomatic achievements cannot be overstated.”
Which is not to say that these agreements represent the culmination of global climate action — they are much more like the floor of what is necessary than the ceiling. A recent study, published before peer-review, by former NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen, argued that even with the Paris agreement, the world has already warmed by 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. And many of the countries individual pledges to the Paris agreement do not go far enough to help slow global warming.
Still, with a wave of international accomplishments preceding this year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held November 7 in Morocco, there are reasons to be optimistic that the international community could continue to press for increasingly ambitious climate action.
“The Kigali Amendment, just prior to the adoption of the Paris Agreement, brings concrete global action to fight catastrophic global warming,” Clare Perry, climate campaign leader with the Environmental Investigation Agency, said in a statement. “Still, with billions of tonnes of emissions still up for grabs, the ultimate success of the Kigali amendment will depend on accelerating the removal of these industrial climate-killers in upcoming meetings.”
This blog post was originally posted here.
|
WWF's Living Planet Report 2016
The future of our Planet is in our hands. WWF's Living Planet Report 2016 shows the scale of the challenge - and what we can do about it.
Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, putting the survival of other species and our own future at risk. The latest edition of WWF’s Living Planet Report brings home the enormity of the situation - and how we can start to put it right. The Living Planet Index reveals that global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles declined by 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012. We could witness a two-thirds decline in the half-century from 1970 to 2020 – unless we act now to reform our food and energy systems and meet global commitments on addressing climate change, protecting biodiversity and supporting sustainable development.
ENTERING A NEW ERA
Human activities are pushing our planet into uncharted territory. In fact, there’s strong evidence that we’ve entered a new geological epoch shaped by human actions: “the Anthropocene”. The planet’s inhabitants – Homo sapiens included – face an uncertain future.
The loss of biodiversity is just one of the warning signs of a planet in peril. The Ecological Footprint – which measures our use of goods and services generated by nature – indicates that we’re consuming as if we had 1.6 Earths at our disposal. In addition, research suggests that we’ve already crossed four of nine “Planetary Boundaries” – safe thresholds for critical Earth system processes that maintain life on the planet.
[video: https://youtu.be/VMsxHaeyzNs]
TOWARD A RESILIENT FUTURE
But if humans can change the planet so profoundly, then it’s also in our power to put things right. That will require new ways of thinking, smarter methods of producing, wiser consumption and new systems of finance and governance.
The Living Planet Report provides possible solutions – including the fundamental changes required in the global food, energy and finance systems to meet the needs of current and future generations.
INSPIRING STORIES
There are reasons for hope. All over the world there are examples of successful restoration of ecosystems, recovery of species and creation of resilient and hospitable places for wildlife and people.
Here we highlight several inspiring cases.
