Environment

IPS – Year End Video, 2024


 
The world’s troubles deepened in 2024. Civilians bore the brunt of war. Violence in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Haiti, and more displaced over 100 million people worldwide.

This Year’s Three UN Summits Set the Stage for COP30 to Transform Food Systems

By Aditi Mukherji and Cargele Masso
This year has been a landmark one for climate and environment policy. Starting with the UN’s COP16 biodiversity talks in October, followed by the COP29 climate talks in November, and closing with the desertification COP16 in December, few years have offered such critical moments back-to-back.

Civil Society Trends for 2025: Nine Global Challenges, One Reason for Hope

By Andrew Firmin and Inés M. Pousadela
It's been a tumultuous year, and a tough one for struggles for human rights. Civil society’s work to seek social justice and hold the powerful to account has been tested at every turn. Civil society has kept holding the line, resisting power grabs and regressive legislation, calling out injustice and claiming some victories, often at great cost. And things aren’t about to get any easier, as key challenges identified in 2024 are likely to intensify in 2025.

Innovative Financing to Unlock Africa’s Blue Economy

By Jean-Paul Adam
Securing new financing for global good has become more challenging than ever. Negotiations at the recently-concluded COP16 on Nature and Biodiversity failed to reach an agreement on establishing a fund to support the implementation of the Framework for Nature agreed in 2022 under the Montreal-Kunming agreement.

U.S. Wins Controversial Ruling in GM Corn Dispute with Mexico

By Timothy A. Wise
A tribunal of trade arbitrators has ruled in favor of the United States in its complaint that Mexico’s restrictions on genetically modified corn violate the terms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA). The long-awaited ruling in the 16-month trade dispute is unlikely to settle the questions raised by Mexico about the safety of consuming GM corn and its associated herbicide.

Trapped on a Runaway Train: Looking Back on 2024

By Farhana Haque Rahman
Do you sometimes feel like a hamster on its wheel, or perhaps stuck on a runaway train hurtling towards the abyss? Whatever metaphor one might choose for our world looking back on 2024, rainbows don’t easily spring to mind.

Targeting Transformative Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia-Pacific Subregions

By Madhurima Sarkar-Swaisgood and Sanjay Srivastava
In December 2024, Vanuatu experienced yet another harrowing reminder of its vulnerability to disasters—a powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the Pacific nation’s capital, Port Vila, leaving 14 dead, over 200 injured, and thousands more affected.

Japanese Bank Criticized for Financing Mozambique LNG Project Blamed for Displacement

By Maina Waruru
Climate and environmental activists from Japan have criticized the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) for financing the controversial Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project to the tune of USD 3 billion in a loan signed in July.

2024 Is The Hottest Year Ever Recorded

By Oritro Karim
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns that 2024 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, surpassing 2023. This can be attributed to heightened reliance on fossil fuels and the reluctance of industries worldwide to pivot to green energy practices. The rapid acceleration of global temperatures has alarmed scientists, with many expressing concern over the environmental, economic, and social implications of the worsening climate crisis.

Power Arrives but the River Dries Up for Brazil’s Amazonian Dwellers

By Mario Osava
The flow of the igarapé always dropped for three months every year, but now it has been dry for two years in a row, complains Maria Aparecida dos Anjos, looking at the trickle of water that when flooded reaches the stilts of her wooden house, 50 metres away and on a slope of more than 10 metres high.

Expansion of Mexico’s Largest Port Causes Alarm Over Environmental Damage

By Emilio Godoy
The expansion of the port of Manzanillo, Mexico's most important port in terms of cargo movement and located on the central Pacific coast, has major environmental impacts, as well as presenting climatic risks.

Transformative Change Will Save a Planet in Peril—IPBES

By Busani Bafana
Nature is at a tipping point. With human activity having pushed up to 1 million plant and animal species close to extinction, securing sustainable development and halting global biodiversity collapse is no longer just an option but a requisite for human wellbeing.

The Climate Crisis as a Diplomatic Battlefield

By Richmond Acheampong
The climate crisis, a defining challenge of the 21st century, is not just an environmental issue; it is increasingly a critical arena for international diplomacy. From intense negotiations at COP summits to the politics of energy transitions and resource control, climate change is shaping the geopolitical landscape.

A Most Heinous -Yet Unprosecuted- Crime: Inequality

By Baher Kamal
Planet Earth is drying up, relentlessly. Over three-quarters of all lands have become permanently drier in the last three decades. This is not jut a statistic but a stark scientific fact. But while such an ‘existential crisis’ affects nearly every region, guess where -and who- are the most hit? 

Interlinked Solutions Key to Tackling Biodiversity, Water, Food, Health and Climate Change, says IPBES

By Busani Bafana
Biological diversity is on the decline worldwide, and current approaches to address its loss have been piecemeal and ineffective in tackling the crisis facing nature—this is despite estimates that over half of global GDP (USD 58 trillion of economic activity in 2023) is generated in sectors that are moderately to highly dependent on nature, a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds.

America’s Climate Carousel

By Kamo Sende and Idasemiebi Idaminabo
The rhythmic swing of American climate policy has taken another dramatic turn. With Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency in mid-January next year, the international climate community will find itself bracing for what many fear will be another American exodus from the Paris Agreement.

UNCCD COP16 Spotlights Drought But Fails to Agree on a Legally Binding Protocol

By Stella Paul
The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 16) concluded early hours of Saturday with a renewed focus on building drought resilience globally. However, the COP also failed to agree on bringing a legally binding drought protocol. Like the biodiversity and climate change COPs held earlier in the year, COP16 also failed to finish in time and ended by postponing several key decisions to COP17 scheduled to be held in 2026.

How an African Bioeconomy Can Strengthen Agrifood Systems in the Context of a Changing Climate

By Ousmane Badiane
From increased pests and diseases to lower crop yields and extreme weather events, the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa cannot be overstated.

Small Island States Put Faith in International Court’s ‘Wayfinding’ Advisory Opinion

By Umar Manzoor Shah
The “crazy, weird and at some point (what seemed like) insurmountable” plan to ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the obligations of UN member states regarding climate change was a success, Vishal Prasad, a representative for the. Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) said at a post-hearing press conference today (December 13).

‘We Will Not Go Quietly Into the Rising Sea,’ Tuvalu Tells International Court of Justice

By Tanka Dhakal
Rising sea level caused by greenhouse gas emission-fueled climate change is threatening existence in coastal communities and island nations. At the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on Thursday, December 12, 2024, small island states, including Tuvalu and a Pacific-based fisheries agency detailed their ongoing existential threats caused by the climate change-induced sea level rise and impacts on fishery-based livelihood.

COP29: Advancing work for Climate Finance and for Climate-Adapted Agri-Food Systems

By David Nabarro
Frustrations over the pace of climate action and the size of the finance target agreed in Baku are valid from the perspective of low-income countries, especially Small-Island Developing States (SIDS). It is also important to recognize that there has been real progress in some countries at the agri-food-nutrition-climate-water-nature-livelihoods intersection, and this seems to be particularly the case in some countries in the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF).
« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*