The crossover of food and fashion is becoming increasingly common, with bio-based textiles gaining entrée into the new realm of sustainable fa
Seaweed Is In Style
|
C4C Makes Waves in Naples at "COP of the Mediterranean"
On December 2-5, Naples, Italy will host the “COP of the Mediterranean,” an international climate event focused on safeguarding the environmental richness of the Mediterrean Sea. This conference of the parties to the Barcelona Convention will bring together climate leaders from across the region for a much-needed discussion of how best to preserve the Sea’s bountiful resources and diverse wildlife.
Italy’s Minister of the Environment, Land and Sea Sergio Costa has noted that “in addition to being the sea with the most consistent trade in the world,” the Mediterranean “is also a hotbed of important biodiversity.” Costa especially looks forward to engaging the youth of Naples—a city that has for centuries thrived on the Sea’s banks—with events tied to the conference. A firm believer in the power of youth to make a difference, Costa refers to them as “the educators of the adults.”
Connect4Climate is proud to be attending the conference and supporting the outreach around it through several key events including a beach cleanup workshop and showcases of environmental music and art. Our team can’t wait to connect with climate-conscious youth and get them involved in the push for a sustainable future!
For a full rundown of the exciting activities we’ve got planned, check out the program below. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram and join the conversation online with the hashtags #COP21Napoli, #BarcelonaConvention, #SaveTheMediterranean, #WeAreAction, and #IoSonoAmbiente!
Images courtesy of the COP21-Naples offical website.
C4C Events Program
Monday 2 December, 9.00 am-1.00 pm
Morning beach cleanup workshop and restoration of the coastal area of San Giovanni a Teduccio in collaboration with local NGO ‘Let's Do It! Italy.’
About 150 students from local schools will be trained in advance and will work together to clean the beach. This activity will be accompanied by the installation of new benches and by the repair of beachside showers.
The restoration of the area will include the creative recycling of beach trash into musical instruments. Led by Maurizio Capone of the eco-minded band Capone & BungtBangt, youngsters will learn to fashion instruments from the rubbish and make music with them, transforming something ugly into something beautiful.
Tuesday 3 December, 7.00 pm-11.00 pm
Music for the sea: An eventful evening of music and climate positivity.
Subsonica singer-songwriter and Italian X Factor judge Samuel Umberto Romano, known for his commitment to protecting the natural world, will join forces with the artists of Napoli Segreta to DJ a night of music that will empower fans to take meaningful climate action. Topical videos will be screened throughout the event, including the premiere of the footage captured at the beach cleanup in San Giovanni a Teduccio as well as video profiles of Neapolitan youth activists and a selection of other content on the importance of safeguarding the Mediterranean.
Throughout the event, participants will be able to create personalized t-shirts with screen-printed images inspired by the theme of the sea. Equipped with a mobile printing unit, a small booth will be set up for the sustainable printing of the shirts. Guests will have the opportunity to choose a color scheme and one of two available graphics for their organic cotton shirts and print them in real time with the guidance of onsite staff.
Wednesday 4 December, 5.30 pm-7.30 pm
Climate engagement through theatre: In Naples’s eastern suburbs, an abandoned space became a theater for the community: the NEST. On the evening of December 4th, the NEST’s stage will be animated by a performance of “Fuoco Fatuo”—a story filled with music, dance and magic and rich with environmental symbolism— followed by a theatrical monologue from actor Adriano Papaleo.
Photographs by SubScatti will be presented by Fondali Campania in an installation outside the theater, and throughout the event, young talents from the Metropolitan Poetry Association will recite topical poems for the public.
[video:https://youtu.be/UypAIZqj5G8]
Banner image courtesy of Pixabay.
Riding the Wave of Sustainability Into the G7 Summit
Timezone:
Each year, the G7 summit brings international leaders together to discuss world affairs and identify potential solutions to pressing global issues.
|
The Marshall Islands and Other Climate-Vulnerable Nations Rally for Concerted Action
Women leaders take center stage in a sweeping virtual conference
For many countries around the world, the benchmarks put in place in the Paris Agreement—intended to keep net global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and certainly below 2 degrees—have fallen by the wayside in the years since, kicked under the rug amid the continual thrum of politics and bureaucracy. For the Marshall Islands and other low-lying nations, however, sidelining the Paris commitments is simply not an option: achieving them could be the difference between life and death.
Watch LIVE: www.virtualclimatesummit.org
The people and government of the Marshall Islands have become known for their unflinching 1.5 to Stay Alive climate campaign, which stresses that if temperature change surpasses 1.5 degrees, let alone 2, rising sea levels would submerge much of their ancestral and current homeland and render their beautiful nation uninhabitable. Given the Marshalls’ cultural emphasis on home, legacy, and the bounties of nature, this loss would be especially dire.
The Marshall Islands sit at the helm of a group of similarly threatened countries known collectively as the Climate Vulnerable Forum, or CVF, which aims to unite disparate voices from smaller countries and amplify their concerns for the rest of the world to hear. The group is proactive its own right too, intent on leading by example on the world stage through pioneering sustainability campaigns. Today and tomorrow, the CVF is conducting an ambitious web-based conference called the Virtual Climate Summit in a push to raise awareness of the severity of warming trends and brainstorm next steps in the ongoing battle against climate change.
Participants in the discussion will include other imperiled island nations such as Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, and Papua New Guinea as well as mainland countries confronting deadly changes in weather patterns, e.g., Nepal, Vietnam, Sudan, Senegal, and Yemen. Under the leadership of president Hilda Heine, the Marshall Islands have taken special care to include female voices in this dialogue, which will be catalyzed by a volunteer panel of all-female Summit Champions.
This collective of climate change Champions comprises European Climate Foundation CEO Laurence Tubiana, Sustainable Energy for All CEO Rachel Kyte, World Bank Sustainable Development VP Laura Tuck, Global Environment Facility CEO Naoko Ishii, former Irish president Mary Robinson, current Philippine senator Loren Legarda, Oxfam International director Winnie Byanyima, and Greenpeace director Jennifer Morgan. Hailing from all corners of the world, the members of the team will aim to ensure women’s perspective on climate change is at the heart of the conference deliberations—where it belongs.
The threats of global warming weigh heaviest on the minds of women, who make up 70% of the world’s poor—a group disproportionately threatened by unchecked climate change. Yet women in many countries also have a unique power to make a positive impact, being as they are invaluable contributors to the cultivation and preparation of food and frequent providers of shelter, warmth, water, and clothes within their families.
The Summit hopes to rekindle a sense of urgency around global warming and to empower the world’s women to defy recent torpor on the world stage and harness their unsuppressed voices to make a real difference.
|
Small grants, big impacts: a community-led initiative is saving Viet Nam’s land crabs
Conserving the global commons can mean grappling with complex issues, studying the science underlying them, and making far-reaching commitments. But it can also involve measuring crabs in a hot village square.
At the end of June, delegates to the Sixth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly in Da Nang, Viet Nam, did both. After two days of intensive meetings, involving heads of government, ministers, and top scientists and businessmen, a group of them headed off to the nearby Cham Islands to witness conservation, literally, at ground level.
[video:https://vimeo.com/278605558]
The islands are home to a community-led initiative which has succeeded in saving their remarkable land crabs (Gecarcoidea Ialandii), a species that lives in caves in the islands' damp forests and only goes to the coast to lay its eggs in hollows in the rocks filled with seawater.
The initiative was made possible by the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. So far it has provided over $580 million to more than 21,500 projects around the world in grants of just $50,000 or less.
Taken together, the grants - which are given directly to community-based organizations and civil society organizations - have so far supported 8.41 million hectares of protected areas, conserved 1,803 significant species, brought 900,000 hectares of land under practices that counter its degradation, and placed 32,000 hectares of marine and coastal areas under sustainable management.
Yoko Watanabe, Global Manager of the programme, says “it provides finance as well as technical expertise and really empowers local communities to be agents of change in addressing environment and livelihood issues. Small grants, but big impacts – that's what we are!”
She calls the land crab project – on the eight small Cham Islands, totaling just 15 sq km – “a very innovative initiative by the local community.”
The islands are set in a rich marine reserve – host to 277 species of coral, 270 of fish, and 97 of mollusk – but less than a decade ago the large black-backed crabs were in sharp decline, overharvested as delicacies for visiting tourists.
Back in 2009, the authorities suspended catching and selling the crabs, but without success. They continued to be caught and sold illegally. So then - in cooperation with the help of the GEF SGP and the nearby mainland city of Hoi An - the local Tan Hiep Communal Association of Farmers devised a way of managing the crabs sustainably. This set up a community group, now with 43 members, to harvest the crabs. The group meets at the end of each month to monitor and review how things are going and decide how many can be caught in the following month. There is an annual maximum catch of 10,000 crabs.
Only mature crabs can be sold – the rest must be returned to the forest – which is how the delegates came to be helping to measure them. Any measuring less than 7cm across their shells have to be released back into the forest. The bigger ones are labeled with a highly adhesive sticker and go to the nearby market.
Studies at Vietnamese universities have shown that these community-imposed restrictions are conserving three-quarters of the islands' crabs each year, with the result that their population is now growing. Prices have more than quadrupled since the scheme was introduced, greatly increasing the harvester's incomes, and they, in turn, pay a fee of some US$1.75 per kilogram of crab to fund it.
The land crab is seen as a “bridge” species that connects the islands' forests with the ocean. It is a biological indicator of the health of both habitats, and its recovery has improved them. This, in turn, has increased ecotourism - and thus incomes and the islands' economy, since almost a third of the islands' households are directly involved in it
“On the one hand the land crabs are protected, on the other hand, local people still have livelihoods,” says Chu Manh Trinh, the representative of the marine reserve who guided the delegates round the project.
The GEF SGP project ended three years ago, but the sustainable management scheme has continued to flourish and has gained a national and international reputation, as the delegates' visit testified.
Stefan Schwager, who represents the Swiss government on the GEF Council said it was “refreshing” for Council members “to go to places where you see what's happening on the ground, meet and hear the people, and see it is beneficial for the environment and also at the same time for the local population”.
|
World Meteorological Day: Weather-ready, climate-smart
Weather-ready climate-smart is the theme of this year’s World Meteorological Day on 23 March. It highlights the need for informed planning for day-to-day weather and hazards like floods as well as for naturally occurring climate variability and long-term climate change.
The World Meteorological Organization selected the slogan because it underlines the central role of national meteorological services in decisions as diverse as when to carry an umbrella, whether to seek shelter or evacuate from a major storm, when to plant and harvest crops, and how to plan urban infrastructure and water management decades ahead.
“Now more than ever, we need to be weather-ready, climate-smart and water-wise. This is because the ever-growing global population faces a wide range of hazards such as tropical cyclone storm surges, heavy rains, heatwaves, droughts and many more. Long-term climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather and climate events and causing sea level rise and ocean acidification. Urbanization and the spread of megacities means that more of us are exposed and vulnerable."
Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General
Annual Statement on State of Global Climate
“The start of 2018 has continued where 2017 left off – with extreme weather, which has claimed lives and destroyed livelihoods. The Arctic experienced unusually high temperatures, whilst densely populated areas in the northern hemisphere were gripped by bitter cold and damaging winter storms. Parts of Australia and Argentina suffered extreme heatwaves, whilst drought continues in Somalia and the South African city of Cape Town struggles with acute water shortages,” said Mr Taalas.
The 2017 hurricane season was the costliest ever for the United States – and eradicated decades of developments gains in small islands in the Caribbean such as Dominica. Floods uprooted millions of people on the Asian subcontinent, whilst drought is exacerbating poverty and increasing migration pressures in the Horn of Africa, according to the Annual Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2017.
The statement confirmed that 2017 was one of the three warmest years on record, and was the warmest year without an El Niño. Because the societal and economic impacts of climate change have become so severe, WMO has partnered with other United Nations organizations to include information on how climate has affected migration patterns, food security, health and other sectors.
Multi-Hazard Early Warnings
One of the top priorities of WMO and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) is to protect lives, livelihoods and property from the risks related to weather, climate and water events.
The dramatic reduction in the lives lost due to severe weather events in the last thirty years has been largely attributed to the significant increase in accuracy of weather forecasting and warnings and improved coordination with disaster management authorities. Thanks to developments in numerical weather prediction, a 5-day forecast today is as good as a 2-day forecast twenty years ago.
“But forecasts of what the weather will BE are no longer enough and increasingly the focus is on what the weather will DO. WMO is therefore working to establish a global and standardized multi-hazard alert system in collaboration with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services worldwide", said Mr Taalas.
In addition, WMO worked with a wide range of partners to draw up a multi-hazard early warning systems checklist. Published on World Meteorological Day, the checklist is an important, practical tool to boost resilience.
To be effective, early warning systems need to actively involve the people and communities at risk from a range of hazards, facilitate public education and awareness of risks, effectively disseminate messages and warnings and ensure there is a constant state of preparedness and that early action is enabled.
The Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems Checklist is structured around these four key elements of early warning systems. It aims to be a simple list of the main components and actions to which national governments, community organizations and partners within and across all sectors can refer when developing or evaluating early warning systems.
Through the lens of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, it incorporates the acknowledged benefits of multi-hazard early warnings systems, disaster risk information and enhanced risk assessments. It is anticipated that this Checklist will be updated as technologies, advances in multihazard early warning systems and feedback from the users is received.
The publication was prepared by the partners of the International Network for Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems and is a key outcome of the first Multi-Hazard Early Warning Conference that took place in Cancún, Mexico in May 2017.
World Meteorological Day takes place on 23 March to commemorate the entry into force, on that date in 1950, of the convention creating the WMO.
|
State of Climate in 2017 – Extreme weather and high impacts
The very active North Atlantic hurricane season, major monsoon floods in the Indian subcontinent, and continuing severe drought in parts of east Africa contributed to 2017 being the most expensive year on record for severe weather and climate events.
The high impact of extreme weather on economic development, food security, health and migration was highlighted in the WMO Statement on State of the Global Climate in 2017. Compiled by the World Meteorological Organization with input from national meteorological services and United Nations partners, the report provides detailed information to support the international agenda on disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and climate change.
The Statement, now in its 25th year, was published for World Meteorological Day on 23 March. It confirmed that 2017 was one of the three warmest years on record and the warmest not influenced by an El Niño event. It also examined other long-term indicators of climate change such as increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, sea level rise, shrinking sea ice, ocean heat and ocean acidification.
Global mean temperatures in 2017 were about 1.1 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. The five-year average 2013–2017 global temperature is the highest five-year average on record. The world’s nine warmest years have all occurred since 2005, and the five warmest since 2010.
"The start of 2018 has continued where 2017 left off – with extreme weather claiming lives and destroying livelihoods. The Arctic experienced unusually high temperatures, whilst densely populated areas in the northern hemisphere were gripped by bitter cold and damaging winter storms. Australia and Argentina suffered extreme heatwaves, whilst drought continued in Kenya and Somalia, and the South African city of Cape Town struggled with acute water shortages."
Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General
“Since the inaugural Statement on the State of the Global Climate, in 1993, scientific understanding of our complex climate system has progressed rapidly. This includes our ability to document the occurrence of extreme weather and climate events, the degree to which they can be attributed to human influences, and the correlation of climate change with epidemics and vector-borne diseases,” said Mr Taalas.
“In the past quarter of a century, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from 360 parts per million to more than 400 ppm. They will remain above that level for generations to come, committing our planet to a warmer future, with more weather, climate and water extremes,” said Mr Taalas.
Direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 over the past 800 000 years showed natural variations between 180 and 280 ppm. “This demonstrates that today’s CO2 concentration of 400 ppm exceeds the natural variability seen over hundreds of thousands of years,“ said the Statement.
Socio-economic impacts
2017 was a particularly severe year for disasters with high economic impacts. Munich Re assessed total disaster losses from weather and climate-related events in 2017 at US$ 320 billion, the largest annual total on record (after adjustment for inflation).
Fuelled by warm sea surface temperatures, the North Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest ever for the United States and eradicated decades of developments gains in small islands in the Caribbean such as Dominica. The National Centers for Environmental Information estimated total U.S. losses from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria at US$ 265 billion. The World Bank estimates Dominica’s total damages and losses from the hurricane at US$ 1.3 billion or 224% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Climate impacts hit vulnerable nations especially hard, as evidenced in a recent study by the International Monetary Fund, which warned that a 1 °C increase in temperature would cut significantly economic growth rates in many low-income countries.
The overall risk of heat-related illness or death has climbed steadily since 1980, with around 30% of the world’s population now living in climatic conditions that deliver potentially deadly temperatures at least 20 days a year, according to information from the World Health Organization quoted in the Statement. It also included a section on the relationship between climate and the Zika epidemic in the Americas in 2014–2016.
In 2016, weather-related disasters displaced 23.5 million people. Consistent with previous years, the majority of these internal displacements were associated with floods or storms and occurred in the Asia-Pacific region.
Massive internal displacement in the context of drought and food insecurity continues across Somalia. From November 2016 to December 2017, 892 000 drought-related displacements were recorded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In the Horn of Africa, the failure of the 2016 rainy season was followed by a harsh January–February 2017 dry season, and a poor March-to-May rainy season. In Somalia, as of June 2017, more than half of the cropland was affected by drought, and herds had reduced by 40–60% since December 2016 due to increased mortality and distress sales, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme.
Floods affected the agricultural sector, especially in Asian countries. Heavy rains in May 2017 triggered severe flooding and landslides in south-western areas of Sri Lanka. The negative impact of floods on crop production further aggravated the food security conditions in the country already stricken by drought, according to FAO and WFP.
The oceans
Global sea surface temperatures in 2017 were somewhat below the levels of 2015 and 2016, but still ranked as the third warmest on record. Ocean heat content, a measure of the heat in the oceans through their upper layers down to 2 000 meters, reached new record highs in 2017.
The Statement said that the magnitude of almost all of individual components of sea level rise has increased in recent years, in particular melting of the polar ice sheets, mostly in Greenland and to a lesser extent Antarctica.
For the second successive year, above-average sea surface temperatures off the east coast of Australia resulted in significant coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
The Climate Statement contained a special section on ocean acidification. Over the past 10 years, various studies have confirmed that ocean acidification is directly influencing the health or coral reefs, the success, quality and taste of aquaculture raised fish and seafood, and the survival and calcification of several key organisms. These alterations have cascading effects within the food web, which are expected to result in increasing impacts on coastal economies, according to UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
Cryosphere
Sea ice extent was well below the 1981–2010 average throughout 2017 in both the Arctic and Antarctic. The winter maximum of Arctic sea ice was the lowest winter maximum in the satellite record. The summer minimum was the 8th lowest on record, but a slow freeze-up saw sea ice extent once again near record lows for December.
Antarctic sea ice extent was at or near record low levels throughout the year.
The Greenland ice sheet mass balance change from September to December 2017 was close to average. Despite the gain in overall ice mass this year, it is only a small departure from the trend over the past two decades, with the Greenland ice sheet having lost approximately 3 600 billion tons of ice mass since 2002.
Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent was near or slightly above the 1981–2010 average for most of the year.
Information used in this report is sourced from a large number of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and associated institutions, as well as Regional Climate Centres, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) and Global Cryosphere Watch. Information has also been supplied by a number of other United Nations agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO).
WMO uses datasets (based on monthly climatological data from observing sites) from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the United Kingdom’s Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom.
It also uses reanalysis datasets from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts and its Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the Japan Meteorological Agency. This method combines millions of meteorological and marine observations, including from satellites, with models to produce a complete reanalysis of the atmosphere. The combination of observations with models makes it possible to estimate temperatures at any time and in any place across the globe, even in data-sparse areas such as the polar regions.
