Environment

Azerbaijan’s Climate Conference Brings a Mild Autumn for Armenians

By Karlos Zurutuza
On December 12, 2022, a group of Azerbaijani environmentalists blocked the only road connecting Armenia with the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. The news went largely unnoticed by mainstream media, perhaps because it was difficult to understand.

Navigating the Waves: Strengthening Tsunami Preparedness in a Changing Climate

By Sanjay Srivastava, Temily Baker and Nawarat Perawattanasaku
This year’s World Tsunami Awareness Day presents a moment of reflection 20 years on from the catastrophic Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. The tsunami resulted in 225,000 fatalities across 14 countries and emphasized the urgent need for effective tsunami preparedness, especially in the face of growing climate change challenges.

Is India Phasing Out Fossil Fuels Fast Enough To Achieve Its Emission Targets?

By Athar Parvaiz
While India continues to rely heavily on coal, the south Asian economic giant is also aggressively pushing renewable energy production, especially after the costs of renewable energy production have fallen drastically in recent years around the world.

COP16 Delivers on Indigenous Peoples, Digital Sequencing, But Fails on Finance

By Stella Paul
The curtains fell on the 16th Conference of the Parties of UN Biodiversity (COP16) on Sunday without any formal closing. In a voice message, David Ainsworth, the Communications Director of the UNCBD, confirmed that the COP was suspended due to a lack of quorum in the plenary and would be resumed sometime later. However, before being suspended, the parties managed to adopt a historic decision to open the door for Indigenous Peoples (IPS) and local communities (LCs) to influence the global plan to halt the destruction of biodiversity.

Transforming Africa with the Power of Education

By Yasmine Sherif
Africa has the youngest population in the world today. Around 40% of the population is 15 or younger. They have a non-negotiable right to an inclusive and continued quality education, just like young people everywhere across the globe.

Knife-Edge November: Teetering on the Climate Abyss

By Farhana Haque Rahman
Standing high on the vertiginous edge of the future and looking down into a volcanic seething of approaching doom, it is a totally understandable desire to want to close your eyes, walk away and turn on the sports channel. If you have one.

Defending Biodiversity in Armed Conflict: Can COP16 Meet the Expectations?

By Stella Paul
José Aruna, a forest defender from Sud Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), remembers the night in September 2019 when a group of heavily armed men barged into his house in the middle of the night. Aruna and his wife—6 months pregnant at the time—were in bed when he heard sounds of boots on the front yard and quickly knew something was about to happen.

Hurricane Oscar Threatens Humanitarian Crisis in Cuba

By Oritro Karim
Although classified as a compact tropical cyclone and considered one of the smallest in the North Atlantic, Hurricane Oscar has caused considerable damage in eastern Cuba since it made landfall on October 20, 2024. Cuban authorities have confirmed that the death toll has risen to seven, in additional to the damage in infrastructure. Communications and relief efforts were greatly impeded by a nationwide power grid blackout, which continues on in much of Cuba at the time of publication.

Tanzanian Students Drive Climate Action Through Tree Planting

By Kizito Makoye
At Gabimori primary school, located at Nyamagaro ward in Tanzania’s northern Rorya district, a 15-year-old  Florence Sadiki kneels among polyethylene bags, carefully examining the seedlings she and her classmates  have nurtured from tiny sprouts “We’ve planted many trees to make our school look better and to help fight climate change,” she says.

A Triple Planetary Crisis Scarring Africa’s Landscapes

By Rose Mwebaza
Some of the creeping impacts of this triple crisis are possibly the most debilitating: Africa is the most severely impacted region by desertification and land degradation, with approximately 45% of its land area affected. In the Horn of Africa and the Sahel alone, it imposes food shortages on more than 23 million people. Just last month, more than 700,000 people were affected by floods in Central and West Africa, and tens of millions in southern Africa are facing drought.

Food Security Is Key To Making ‘Peace with Nature’

By Susana Muhamad and Kaveh Zahedi
As countries are meeting in Cali, Colombia, for the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP 16), the fate of biodiversity hangs in the balance, and with it, the sustainability of our food systems.

Scientific Research Can Play a Key Role in Unlocking Climate Finance

By Margaret López
Climate finance will be at the epicenter of the discussion at the UN Climate Change Conference 2024 (COP29). The focus will be on strengthening the fund and defining the conditions under which the countries of the Global South will be able to access this money. However, little is said about the scientific research that is required to gather the evidence and data to prove the loss and damage caused by the impact of climate change in developing countries.

Chickens as Well as Cheetahs: Biodiversity Conservation Must Also Include Livestock

By Christian Tiambo
As the UN’s COP16 biodiversity conference continues, the temptation is to focus on the wild flora and fauna under threat. But there is another, less obvious yet just as critical biodiversity crisis unfolding around the world that also deserves attention.

Seeds of Resilience Despite Massive Destruction in Gaza

By Dawn Clancy
It was two weeks before October 7—when Hamas attacked Israel—that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood behind the rostrum in the United Nations General Assembly hall clutching a crude map of what he called the "new Middle East," a visual that erased the land of Palestine.

Sudanese Civil War Exacerbates Economies in Neighbouring Countries

By Oritro Karim
Critical levels of nationwide hunger in Sudan has only increased to critical levels since the start of the Sudanese civil war in April 2023. Escalated hostilities between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have led to limited mobility and repeated blockages of humanitarian aid. This, coupled with the volatile floods and droughts, have decimated crop fields which has only exacerbated famine levels greatly. All of these factors have left nearly 25 million people in Sudan in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024.

By Choosing What We Eat, We Choose the World We Want To Live In

By Busani Bafana
“How we prepare and eat food should not be at the expense of our biodiversity,” says 3-Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco, who is on a mission to change our relationship with food and what we choose to eat. Colagreco, the owner of Mirazur, an award-winning restaurant in Menton, France, is a tribute to gastronomy. Among other world rankings, Mirazur's fine food and service have earned it first place in the World's 50 Best Restaurants. In the 2020 edition of the "100 Chefs" world ranking, Colagreco's peers named him the Best Chef in the World and Chef of the Year in 2019. 

At COP16, Biodiversity Credits Raising Hopes and Protests

By Stella Paul
At the end of the first week at the 16th Conference of Parties on Biodiversity (COP16), finance emerges as the biggest issue but also shrouded in controversies. On Saturday, as the COP moved closer to its most crucial phase of negotiations, resource mobilization—listed under Target 19 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF)—took centerstage, with most parties demanding faster action, greater transparency and the adoption of true solutions to halt biodiversity loss. 

IMF isn’t doing enough to support Africa: billions could be made available through special drawing rights

By Kevin P. Gallagher and Abebe Shimeles
At the 2021 UN Climate Summit, Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley called for more and better use of special drawing rights (SDRs), the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset.

The Impact of Media Literacy for Meat Production

By Oritro Karim
With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and social media, the dissemination of public information moves at a faster speed than ever before. Social media platforms have become an integral tool for users of younger generations to access the news. Although this shift has led to public news being more accessible to younger users, it has also led to an overall decline in media literacy.

Without Accelerated Action, We Will Miss the Chance to Limit Warming to 1.5°C, Says UNEP Chief Climate Advisor

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Anne Olhoff, Chief Climate Advisor at UNEP, underlined the urgent need for accelerated climate action ahead of COP29 in an exclusive interview with IPS. “The next six years are crucial—without accelerated action, we will miss the chance to limit warming to 1.5°C,” she warned.

UNEP’s 2024 Emissions Gap Report Warns: ‘No More Hot Air, Please’

By Umar Manzoor Shah
The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report 2024 delivered a stark reminder that the world is still far from meeting its climate commitments.
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