The year 2016 made history, with a record global temperature, exceptionally low sea ice, and unabated sea level rise and ocean heat, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Extreme weather and climate conditions have continued into 2017.

WMO issued its annual statement on the State of the Global Climate ahead of World Meteorological Day on 23 March. It is based on multiple international datasets maintained independently by global climate analysis centres and information submitted by dozens of WMO Members National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and Research Institutes and is an authoritative source of reference. Because the social and economic impacts of climate change have become so important, WMO partnered with other United Nations organizations for the first time this year to include information on these impacts.

“This report confirms that the year 2016 was the warmest on record – a remarkable 1.1 °C above the pre-industrial period, which is 0.06 °C above the previous record set in 2015. This increase in global temperature is consistent with other changes occurring in the climate system,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“Globally averaged sea surface temperatures were also the warmest on record, global sea levels continued to rise, and Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average for most of the year,” he said.

“With levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere consistently breaking new records, the influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident,” said Mr Taalas.

The increased power of computing tools and the availability of long term climate data have made it possible today, through attribution studies, to demonstrate clearly the existence of links between man-made climate change and many cases of high impact extreme events in particular heatwaves, he said

Each of the 16 years since 2001 has been at least 0.4 °C above the long-term average for the 1961-1990 base period, used by WMO as a reference for climate change monitoring. Global temperatures continue to be consistent with a warming trend of 0.1 °C to 0.2 °C per decade, according to the WMO report.

“Globally averaged sea surface temperatures were also the warmest on record, global sea levels continued to rise, and Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average for most of the year,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. Photo Credits: Paula Alves Silva/Connect4Climate

The powerful 2015/2016 El Niño event boosted warming in 2016, on top of  long-term climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Temperatures in strong El Niño years, such as 1973, 1983 and 1998, are typically 0.1 °C to 0.2 °C warmer than background levels, and 2016’s temperatures are consistent with that pattern.

Global sea levels rose very strongly during the El Niño event, with the early 2016 values reaching new record highs.  Global sea ice extent dropped more than 4 million square kilometres below average in November, an unprecedented anomaly for that month.

The very warm ocean temperatures contributed to significant coral bleaching and mortality was reported in many tropical waters, with important impacts on marine food chains, ecosystems and fisheries.

Coral Reef in Indonesia. Photo: Carl Gustav/World Bank

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached the symbolic benchmark of 400 parts per millions in 2015 – the latest year for which WMO global figures are available – and will not fall below that level for many generations to come because of the long-lasting nature of CO2.

Noteworthy extreme events in 2016 included severe droughts that brought food insecurity to millions in southern and eastern Africa and Central America. Hurricane Matthew caused widespread suffering in Haiti as the first category 4 storm to make landfall since 1963, and inflicted significant economic losses in the United States of America, while heavy rains and floods affected eastern and southern Asia.

WMO has issued annual climate reports for more than 20 years and submits them  to the Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. The annual statements complement the assessments reports that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces every six to seven years.

It will be presented to UN member states and climate experts at a high-level action event on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Agenda  in New York on 23 March (World Meteorological Day) hosted by the President of the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson.

“The entry into force of the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 4 November 2016 represents a historic landmark. It is vital that its implementation becomes a reality and that the Agreement guides the global community in addressing climate change by curbing greenhouse gases, fostering climate resilience and mainstreaming climate adaptation into national development policies,” said Mr Taalas.

“Continued investment in climate research and observations is vital if our scientific knowledge is to keep pace with the rapid rate of climate change,” said Mr Taalas.

The World Bank Group is back again with its Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on climate change - ‘From Climate Science to Action’, starting from May 8^th, 2017.

The new course presents the most recent scientific evidence on climate change. It explores different strategies for low emission and climate resilient development and provides an overview to the Paris Agreement ratification with some reflections on COP22 outcomes. Through interactive video talks, complimented with curated readings, resources, and quizzes, renowned scientists and policy makers from the field will lead you through the course. An active discussion forum on the course would further enhance learning where participants get to exchange knowledge with peers from across the globe. As the course concludes, you will be invited to reflect on what you can do at the national, local, community, and individual level to limit global warming below 2°C and adapt the impacts already occurring.

This MOOC on climate change is taught by:

Alan S. Miller, Principal Climate Change Specialist, World Bank Group

Claudia Barrera, Senior Carbon Finance Specialist, World Bank Group

Get the latest information on climate change and find out what you can do about it. Spread the word through #learnclimate

Enroll now

In 2013, an estimated one million Filipinos were plunged into poverty after Typhoon Haiyan sapped $12.9 billion from the national economy and destroyed over a million homes.

No sooner had the 2010 Cyclone Aila devastated coastal areas of Bangladesh than unemployment and poverty levels surged 49 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

Economic strains facing Guatemala after Hurricane Stan in 2005 forced 7.3 percent of affected families to send children to work instead of school. 

Whenever disaster strikes, it leaves more than just a trail of devastation—it also leaves communities further in the grip of poverty.

And yet, when we hear of natural disasters today, their financial cost—that is, the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production—is what catches the headlines. New research, however, suggests that reducing natural disasters to their monetary impact does not paint the whole picture. In fact, it distorts it.

That’s because a simple price tag represents only the losses suffered by people wealthy enough to have something to lose in the first place. It fails to account for the crushing impact of disasters on the world’s poor, who suffer much more in relative terms than wealthier people.

Through this lens, a new report released by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), warns that natural disasters are a greater impediment to ending global poverty than previously understood. Launched this week at COP22, the report, Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters underscores the urgency for climate-smart policies that better protect the world’s most vulnerable. 

  Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President

Compared to their wealthier counterparts, poor people are more likely to live in fragile housing in disaster-prone areas, and work in sectors dangerously susceptible to extreme weather events, like farming and agriculture. They also receive much less government and community support for recovery. The result: the impact of a storm, flood, drought or earthquake is more than twice as significant for poor people than anyone else.

For example, when unprecedented floods affected Mumbai in 2005, poor people lost 60 percent more than their richer neighbors—and when poor people lose the little they have, there are immediate and sometimes irreversible consequences for their health. In Ecuador, poor children exposed in utero to El Niño flooding in 1997-1998 were found to have relatively lower birthweights, shorter statures, and impaired cognitive abilities.

Proposing a new measure for assessing disaster-related damages—one that factors in the unequal burden on the poor—Unbreakable shows that natural disasters currently cost the global economy $520 billion (60 percent more than is usually reported) and force some 26 million people into poverty every year.

But there is hope. Governments can prevent millions of people from falling into extreme poverty by enacting measures that better protect the poor from natural disasters.

The report proposes a “resilience policy” package that would help poor people cope with the consequences of adverse weather and other extreme natural events. This includes early warning systems, improved access to personal banking, insurance policies, and social protection systems (like cash transfers and public works programs) that could help people better respond to and recover from shocks. Unbreakable also calls on governments to make critical investments in infrastructure, dikes, and other means of controlling water levels, and develop appropriate land-use policies and building regulations. These efforts must be specifically targeted to protect the poorest and most vulnerable citizens, not just those with higher-value assets.

The report assesses the expected benefits from these policies in 117 countries. If Angola, for example, were to introduce scalable safety nets to cover its poorest citizens, the government would see gains equaling $160 million a year. Globally, these measures combined would help countries and communities save $100 billion a year and reduce the overall impact of disasters on well-being by 20 percent.

“Countries are enduring a growing number of unexpected shocks as a result of climate change,” said Stephane Hallegatte, a GFDRR lead economist and lead author of the report. “Poor people need social and financial protection from disasters that cannot be avoided. With risk policies in place that we know to be effective, we have the opportunity to prevent millions of people from falling into poverty.”

Efforts to build poor people’s resilience are already gaining ground, the report shows. Only last month, thanks to an innovative insurance program, Haiti, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines received a payout of $29 million in support of recovery efforts after suffering the effects of Hurricane Matthew.

Unbreakable is a roadmap to help countries better adapt to climate change, and boost the resilience and prosperity of their most vulnerable citizens. By equipping the most vulnerable with the means to cope, rebuild and rebound we can increase the chance for millions to stay out of extreme poverty. 

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.

In a lead up to the forthcoming International Day of Peace, youth organisation Green Hope conducted an epoch conference cum workshop on “Peace and Sustainabilty.". It was attended by scores of students from different schools and universities, as well representatives from corporates. The day began with a tree planting session, during which Green Hope members planted over 80 saplings.

The conference stressed on the overriding importance of peace in achieving sustainability. SDG #16 ( The United Nationals Sustainable development goal # 16) specifically focuses on “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”. Yet peace runs like a thread through all 17 of the Goals. Every year on the International Day of Peace, the United Nations calls on the peoples of the world to remember their common humanity and join together to build a future free of strife.

This year’s theme – the Sustainable Development Goals: Building Blocks for Peace – highlights how ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring broadly shared prosperity all contribute to global harmony.  Green Hope founder/president , 16 year old Kehkashan Basu said “We the youth are the Future Generations and we must take the initiative of breaking these shackles of hatred and bring forth a new order . This is the objective behind our event today , to bring together a diverse section of civil society so that we discuss the ways and means of achieving peace and its profound impact on sustainability. “

The conference, hosted by the Apple International School,  began with a Peace song composed and performed by the Green Hope team after which there were interactive presentations to highlight the critical inter-linkages between peace and the sustainable development goals. The conference attendees were hugely motivated to receive a  video message from  Mr Max T Edkins, the Climate Change Expert at World Bank’s Connect4Climate initiative . In his message, Max emphasized climate change being the most fundamental challenge facing the current generation and its intricate linkage with all the sustainable development goals. The audience also received a video message on the conference theme from Mr Jan-Gustav Strandenaes , Senior Advisor on Governance at the Stakeholder Forum.

[video: https://vimeo.com/181270389]

This was followed by an interactive panel discussion , comprising of an  eminent panel of experts which included Dr. Federica Busa – Director Theme Development Dubai Expo2020, Mr. Stephen King -  Professor at Middlesex University Dubai, Ms Ellen Vroonhof – Program Manager at Netherlands based Kidsrights Foundation, Dr Masumeh Kazmi from the Iranian Salman Farsi school and Ms Panjala Dutta –Principal Apple International School.

The highlight of the conference was a painting competition, wherein the participants used art to convey the theme of Peace and Sustainability. Green Hope believes that peace building begins with conflict resolution and these must  be resolved using a bottom-up approach. Grassroots organizations, as well as local authorities and civil-society representatives, should be the main actors in the conflict resolution process. Thus this conference sought to bring together various stakeholders to determine the pathway to a peaceful and sustainable future.

Daily more video are being submitted from around the world

Already the Flim4Climate Global Video Competition has more than 250 entries from 100 countries and counting. Each video is telling a story of how skyrocketing carbon emissions and the activities that feed those emissions are having impacts across the globe.

[video: https://youtu.be/DlYo4sq34Ew]

Each story is its own. Some films focus on the individual, others focus on groups, a few focus on countries as a whole, and others don’t focus on humans at all -instead choosing to examine animals, plants or oceans. Individually, these films leave a viewer with a unique experience, but collectively these films combine to create a wonderful mosaic of some of the biggest issues related to climate change today.

We have two weeks left to the deadline for video submissions (enter your story by September 15th), and it is already clear that the stories told through Film4Climate hit the big issues, and draw light on the often untold implications of the climate crisis. Here are three takeaways.

Take 1: Consumption junctions

Rio de Janeiro. Photo Credit: Max Edkins

If you were to blindly click on the Film4Climate gallery where all the videos are displayed (vote for your favorite), there’s a good chance you would find a film addressing consumption habits. Perhaps this increased emphasis on the electricity we use, the food we eat and the water we require, is indicative of a “post-Paris” climate movement that is beyond merely making noise directed at heads of state and obscure United Nations committees, and is instead focused on actions that drive the transition away from fossil fuels.

Of course, meeting the targets agreed upon at Paris will require governments and heads of state to keep stepping up, but as seen in so many of the Film4Climate entries, it’s the individual who really holds the power, especially when it comes to consumption. The film entries relating to electricity usage and the consequences our diets have on the planet, talk as much about the food and electricity that we don’t use as much as the food and electricity we do use. And for good reason.

When it comes to electricity use, there are a few films that simply emphasize the difference in use by telling the stories of a few people. In the developed world there are huge differences when it comes to personal energy use. In the US and Canada, for example, the average person uses about 4,500 kWh each year while a person in the UK or Germany will come in way under that by using under 2,000 kWh each year.

But variations don’t just exist in the developed world, emerging economies show wide ranges in energy use. The average person in Brazil, Mexico and China uses about 500 kWh, but in Brazil residential use per person has been the same for almost 20 years, while in Mexico it is up 50% and in China it has increased 600%. There are film submissions from all these countries devoted to consumption habits.

Of course there are a number of positive stories of innovation that lead to smarter ways of consuming electricity and energy. Many of these films are incredibly inspiring and focus on very local solutions. When it comes to reducing pollution, being smarter about energy and rethinking our diets, there are a number of films highlighting champions that we can all learn from.

Beyond energy there is a major emphasis on food in the Film4Climate competition. Again, the films are complimented well by the facts on the ground. In the United States alone, approximately 40 percent of food goes to waste. Globally, about one third of the food produced for human consumption every year - approximately 1.3 billion tons - gets lost or wasted.

Unsurprisingly, much of the food-focused films in this contest so far are devoted to exposing the damage caused by the global meat industry. The World Resources Institute studied the impact of meat consumption on the planet and found that, “reducing heavy red meat consumption — primarily beef and lamb — would lead to a per capita food and land use-related greenhouse gas emissions reduction of between 15 and 35 percent by 2050.” According to that same World Resources Institute report, “Beef uses more land and freshwater and generates more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of protein than any other commonly consumed food.”

A growing global beef industry requires more land for grazing, and that has resulted in massive clear cutting of the world’s largest rainforest. Thus, the beef consumption issue is a deforestation issue. Which brings us to...

Congratulations Green Projects team, you are the #Photo4Climate Finalist of this week's theme - #forests. You do have a unique caption and a description that offers an understanding of a Climate Solution. 

Here is the original caption: 

#Bialowiezaforest is one of the oldest #forests in #Poland. It is home for thousands of species. Now it is at risk of being cut down due to the decision of the Polish Minister of the #Environment who sees this as a cure for a probable #climatechange caused invasion of a spurce bark beetle. The only hope to stop this massive fall is in @europeancommission and environmental organisations like @greenpeace_pl. This #forest will fight the beetle without axes and chain saws.
Photo Credit: Green Projects.