While research into the unequal impacts of climate change on women is growing, more is needed to enable them to realize their rights to climate justice.
Researchers argue that women and girls have unequal access to food, water, health, education, and even income, thanks to climate change. This makes them more vulnerable.
With 20 percent of the global population and vast untapped natural resources, not forgetting its human capital, it is time Africa had its rightful seat at the global table, the United Nations Under Secretary and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Claver Gatete, has called.
The road to COP29 has begun in earnest in the backdrop of a global climate report indicating that not only was 2023 the warmest year in a 174-year climate record, it was the warmest by far. Record-breaking temperatures, combined with El Niño, pushed vulnerable and poor nations in the Global South to the frontlines of extreme and severe weather events.
Alpine skier, 28-year-old Muhammad Karim, has spent the winter with his eyes skyward, wishing and hoping for deep and abundant snow. “My bread and butter depend on the snow,” said the Olympian, who is also a ski trainer, at Naltar Ski Resort, in the valley by the same name nestled in the Gilgit-Baltistan’s Karakoram mountain range.
As a child on the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Yamide Dagnet dreamed of launching rockets into space.
She stuck to science, discovering her path in chemical engineering. She became a scientist focused on critical reactions to solving real-world problems like improving water quality in the United Kingdom.
Durga Das*, a 59-year-old farmer from the Indian state of Maharashtra, committed suicide last year by ingesting a poisonous substance. He was unable to repay the loan he had taken from the bank for the renovation of his single-story house.
This year, his 32-year-old son, Pradeep Das, a father of two children, is equally desperate. The family owns half an acre of cultivated land where they grow cotton. The harvest has been devastated due to intense heat waves, leaving farmers like Dass and his son Pradeep in dire straits. The loan the family had taken is yet to be paid, and the land they had mortgaged in the bank is about to be confiscated. This means no crops, no cultivation, no business, and no food.
Five years ago, farmer Sehlisiwe Sibanda would walk into a nearby forested area to fill a scotch cart with huge wood logs for cooking and heating; a pile of firewood would last her a week during the summer.
But now she does not need a cartful of huge logs. Small branches and twigs are enough to last for more than a month.
Buoyed by USD 800 million in pledges to the Loss and Damage Fund and an unprecedented agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, but grounded in the reality of the work ahead to meet key climate targets, the Caribbean will need to maintain its focus on sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and climate resilience.
While the outcomes of COP28 are being hotly debated in both the scientific and social justice arenas, the climate conference has taken an unprecedented step forward toward a just transition, says Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations.
It was an extraordinary COP Summit in a year characterized by record-breaking temperatures combined with El Niño, producing a climatic carnage in Africa—deaths from fatal floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Libya, where floods wiped out a quarter of a city.
Deadly cyclones in Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; a severe drought in Kenya, Niger, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mauritania, and Djibouti; and a months-long winter heatwave in southern African countries—the need for COP28 to deliver the highest ambition on all items.
One of the most heated debates at the annual climate summit coming to a conclusion in this United Arab Emirates city revolved around the phrasing of the final declaration, regarding the "phase-out" or "phase-down" of fossil fuels within a given time frame.
The United State's contribution to the Loss and Damage Fund equals nine minutes of Pentagon spending, says Jeffrey D. Sachs, a world-renowned economist, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development.
On November 30, the first day of COP28, the much-awaited Loss and Damage Fund—a landmark decision to compensate the world’s most climate-affected and climate-vulnerable people—was declared operational. Announcing the decision, COP28 President Dr Sultan Al Jaber said, ‘the fact that we have been able to achieve such a significant milestone on the first day of this COP is unprecedented. This is historic.”
During his childhood, Joshua Amponsem spent a lot of time in his dry rural community collecting water from the streams. “It was normal,” the co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund says in an interview on the sidelines of COP28. “We didn’t talk about climate change.”
African scientists and researchers are concerned that the data shows that the continent is being cornered by the spiraling effects of climate change, that the real impact of climate devastation is yet to unfold, and that the region is on the cusp of more severe and catastrophic consequences.
Wealthier nations must deliver the finances so developing countries can adapt—the time for excuses is over, says Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Bangladesh's Special Envoy for Climate Change in the Prime Minister's Office.
In the absence of sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is becoming too hot to farm in Africa. Confronted by extreme, intense, and frequent climate events such as record-breaking prolonged dry spells, current agriculture and farming systems are ill equipped to adapt to or alleviate climate change.
It is a global catastrophe of astounding proportions that millions of children are on the run today, forcibly displaced from their homes. As conflict and climate change increasingly become the most pressing challenges facing the world now, the number of displaced children has doubled in the last decade alone, reaching a record high of 43.3 million children.
One of the world's largest solar power plants, the Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum Park, captures solar rays in the south of this United Arab Emirates city, with an installed capacity of 1,527 megawatts (Mw) to supply electricity to some 300,000 homes in the Arab nation's economic capital.
An award-winning international development expert and a climate justice expert have called for a rethink of the global financial system that would bring reparatory justice to small, climate-vulnerable nations while offering concessionary development financing to the countries most in need of assistance.
Hannah Ryder, the Chief Executive Officer of international development consultancy Development Reimagined, and Yamide Dagnet, Director of Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations, for a side event on the margins of the Dubai Climate Talks on December 7.
A record-breaking drought is unfolding in the Horn of Africa, where millions of people are trapped in the world’s worst acute food insecurity emergency. Food insecurity and malnutrition in West and Central Africa are on track to reach a 10-year high as coastal countries edge even closer to the debilitating effects of climate change.