Environment

COP15: ‘Super Reefs’ Offer Hope for Ocean Recovery Ahead of Biodiversity Summit

By Enric Sala
Delegates from more than 190 countries are donning thick coats and winter boots to attend the long-delayed UN biodiversity summit in Montreal, Canada—the land of caribou, beluga whales and wolverines.

The Climate Crisis Disrupts the Education of 40 Million Children Every Year

The United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) issued a ground-breaking Position Paper today that draws clear linkages between the climate crisis and global education crisis.

Energy Efficiency Is Law in Chile but Concrete Progress Is Slow in Coming

By Orlando Milesi
The Energy Efficiency Law began to gradually be implemented in Chile after the approval of its regulations, but more efforts and institutions are still lacking before it can produce results.

We Indigenous Peoples are Rights-Holders, not Stakeholders

By Jennifer Tauli Corpuz and Stanley Kimaren Ole Riamit
After four failed rainy seasons, the land of the Maasai has withered. The worst drought in 40 years is a slow-motion storm of devastation in the Greater Horn of Africa, ruining the livestock, the communities, the Maasai way of life. Their cattle have been their greatest source of wealth and nutrition, but with grazing lands shriveled from the dry heat and their livestock emaciated, the entire region is in peril.

Europe and the Refugee Crisis: It’s all About Tackling Racism & Discrimination

By Sania Farooqui
In 2019, when the President-elect of the European Union (EU) Ursula von der Leyen had presented a list for her soon-to-be European Commission, and on that list was a portfolio called “Protecting the European way of life”, a lot of noise was made questioning what that meant. “Protection” was later changed to the “Promotion” of the European Way of Life. It’s been over three years since this very controversial, much debated and widely criticised portfolio as many continue to question what uniquely is the ‘European way of life’?

COP15: Shift in Societal Values Needed to Address Biodiversity Loss

By Juliet Morrison
Policymakers were encouraged to look at the economic and social aspects with the environmental elements of biodiversity losses to meet the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) targets.

COP15: We are Losing Nature – Biodiversity – at the Fastest Rate in Human History

By Amy Fraenkel and Marco Lambertini
While climate change dominates the environmental headlines, quieter, startling changes are taking place in nature across the planet – whether in forests, oceans, deserts, rural landscapes, cities and other places where nature is found.

COP15: Biodiversity Conservation in the Face of Growing Economies

By Aiita Joshua Apamaku
Dating back to the 16th Century, the face of biodiversity conservation has taken several tolls and twists- evolving from an era of preservation to conservation- down to conservation and sustainable utilisation of natural resources.

Iconic Atlantic Bluefin Tuna in Less Troubled Waters

By Joyce Chimbi
The Atlantic bluefin tuna is among the largest, fastest, and most beautifully colored of all the world’s fish species. They can measure more than 10 feet in length, weigh over 700 kilograms, and can live longer than 30 years. With their metallic blue coloring on top and shimmering silver-white on the bottom, the giant bony fish is a sight to behold.

Rich Nations Doubly Responsible for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

By Hezri A Adnan and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Natural flows do not respect national boundaries. The atmosphere and oceans cross international borders with little difficulty, as greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other fluids, including pollutants, easily traverse frontiers.

An Ineffective Mexico, in the Face of Maritime Pollution

By Emilio Godoy
Mexico has more than 11,000 square kilometers of continental coastline and intense maritime traffic. This Latin American country received 12 045 vessels as of July, compared to 11 971 on that date in 2021.

Working Together for an Inclusive World

By Yasmine Sherif
ECW works together with governments, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector for an inclusive world where all children with disabilities are able to go to school in safe and accessible learning environments. We work together for an inclusive world where the complex challenges of today offer up the transformative solutions of tomorrow.

Global Risks in 2022: The Year of Colliding Consequences

By Jens Orback
As 2022 draws to a close, we are confronted with an unprecedented collision of global risks, interacting and reinforcing each other in dangerous new ways.

This Planet Is Drying Up. And these Are the Consequences

By Baher Kamal
Drought is one of the ‘most destructive’ natural disasters in terms of the loss of life, arising from impacts, such as wide-scale crop failure, wildfires and water stress.

Egypt Racing to Supply Wind, Solar Energy to Greece, EU via Submarine Cables

By Hisham Allam
As Europe braces for an unusual winter due to a global energy crisis, Greece is embarking on one of Europe's most ambitious energy projects by connecting its electricity grid to Egypt's.

COP 27: A Global COP-Out

By Robert Sandford
Last year's climate COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, was billed as the most important conference in the history of humanity. But it failed to deliver. If anything, that failure added urgency for global climate action at COP 27 in Egypt last month.

Africa’s Processing Industry Holds Promise for Broader Economic Growth

By Chakib Jenane
As a central pillar of African diets for thousands of years, millet has a prized position as one of the continent’s most important crops. And with the onset of climate change, millet offers valuable security to the continent’s smallholder farmers due to the crop’s tolerance for dry soils.

Putting Nature on a Quantifiable, Ambitious Path to Recovery

By Joyce Chimbi
Up to 1 million species are threatened with extinction – many within decades – this includes nearly one-third of reef-forming corals, shark relatives, and marine mammals. Half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests, and 85% of wetlands that were present at the beginning of the 18th century had been lost by the year 2000, with the loss of wetlands considered to be happening three times faster, in percentage terms, than forest loss.

Can Asia and the Pacific Get on Track to Net Zero?

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
The recent climate talks in Egypt have left us with a sobering reality: The window for maintaining global warming to 1.5 degrees is closing fast and what is on the table currently is insufficient to avert some of the worst potential effects of climate change. The Nationally Determined Contribution targets of Asian and Pacific countries will result in a 16 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from the 2010 levels.

UN Assessed Contributions Needed to Generate Core Funding for Climate Loss & Damage

By Inge Kaul
For decades, there have been non-conclusive deliberations regarding how the international community could support poor and vulnerable countries in their efforts to cope with and recover from the havoc wreaked on their territory by the ill-effects of global warming such as severe droughts, floods, storms, or rising sea levels.

AGRA Gets Make-Up, Not Make-Over

By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.
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