Environment

Leveraging Africa’s Renewable Energy Potential: A Call for Global Partnership

By Philippe Benoit and David Sandalow
Africa is caught in the crosshairs of climate change. Despite contributing just 3-5% of global carbon dioxide emissions, the continent will endure climate change’s destructive impact, including more severe storms, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall in the years ahead that threaten the well-being of hundreds of millions of people.

New Research Seeks Breakthrough in Understanding Global Warming and the Ocean

By Catherine Wilson
The Canada-based Ocean Frontier Institute is very clear about the significance of a new collaborative ground-breaking ocean research program. Global warming cannot be effectively tackled, and human life cannot survive on Earth without the ocean.

Climate Justice – Is Litigation a Good Way Forward?

By Kwan Soo-Chen and David McCoy
For years, the concept of climate justice has been built on the understanding that countries and communities contributing the least to global warming are disproportionately bearing the impacts of climate change.

Seizing the Moment for a More Resilient Asia & the Pacific

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
The world faces a disaster emergency, yet nowhere is the threat more immediate than in Asia and the Pacific. Ours is a region where climate change-induced disasters are becoming more frequent and intense. Since 1970, two million people have lost their lives to disasters.

Drought-Displaced Afghan Peasants Yearn for Their Rural Life

Baba Jan, 60, a farmer in Badghis Province in Afghanistan has been forced to leave his home, not because of the war but due to the worst drought he has ever experienced. It is the second time this year he has been forced to leave his cherished home and life in the rural area for capital city, Kabul.

‘Passion Seeds’ Fertilize Brazil’s Semiarid Northeast

By Mario Osava
Zé Pequeno cried when he learned that the heirloom seeds he had inherited from his father were contaminated by the transgenic corn his neighbor had brought from the south. Fortunately, he was able to salvage the native seeds because he had shared them with other neighbors.

Impatience as a Virtue

By Yasmine Sherif
We all know and agree that patience is a virtue. It is indeed. With one exception. In the face of a child’s suffering, impatience is the highest virtue. Or as we say in the spirit of Education Cannot Wait: “We must be unapologetically impatient” in our collective goal to reach 224 million crisis-affected children and adolescents with quality education.

What a World 1.5 degrees Hotter Would Look Like

By Michael Davies-Venn
The dangerous state of global climate has reached a new low as a World Metrological Organisation (WMO) analysis reveals. It confirms a known obvious: human activities continue to worsen conditions that have changed our planet’s climate.

Women Recyclers in Bolivia Build Hope, Demand Recognition

By Franz Chávez
They haul many kilos of recyclable materials on their backs but receive little in return. These Bolivian women who help clean up the environment from dawn to dusk are fighting for recognition of their work and social and labor rights.

Invisible Women in Energy: Millions of Household Biomass Producers

By Alexandra Peek and Philippe Benoit
An estimated 2.4 billion people currently lack access to clean cooking fuels, with the majority relying on biomass (firewood, charcoal, dung) to meet household cooking needs. This is only a slight decrease from 2017, when 2.5 billion people lacked access to clean cooking fuels.

Can Carbon Trading Stop Global Heating?

By Sarah Razak and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
As our planet continues to heat up at an alarming rate, carbon credits, markets and trading have been promoted as effective measures to combat global warming. While there is an urgent need to curb planetary heating, growing reliance on this innovation is problematic, to say the least.

Water – a Weapon of War or a Tool for Peace?

By Maria Skold and Martina Klimes
The role of water in conflicts is changing, with more attacks against environmental and civilian infrastructure. Dr Martina Klimes of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) recently held a lecture describing the shifting security landscape and how water can be both a weapon and a victim of war – and sometimes a tool for peace.

Extremist Ideology in Europe: ‘Leave Everyone Behind’ (Except Us)

By Baher Kamal
A quick glance at the current European political map would clearly show how far the extremist ideology has been installed in European countries –those who still wave the French Revolution’s flag of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”

Grey Market Charcoal East Africa — Why Prohibitionist Interventions Are Failing

By Wambi Michael
At Kampala’s Nakawa market, Lovisa Nabisubi scoops charcoal from a bag and packs it into tins ready for customers. Her bare hands, feet, and clothes are stained black from hours of dealing in this popular household fuel which some equate to “black gold” not just in Uganda but in most of East Africa.

Shielding the Vulnerable: The Potential Role of Insurance in Protecting the Most Vulnerable

By Jamie Cummings
Small Island Developing States (or SIDS) have been talking about loss and damage in an insurance context since the creation of the UNFCCC. The original 1990s outline of the UNFCCC included the proposal for an international insurance fund that would compensate low-lying countries for losses from rising sea levels in the future, however, this fund was never adopted in the final text.

The Dark Side of Wind and Solar Farms as Sustainable Energy in Brazil

By Mario Osava
"Anxiety, insomnia and depression have become widespread. We don't sleep well, I wake up three, four times a night," complained Brazilian farmer Roselma de Melo Oliveira, 35, who has lived 160 meters from a wind turbine for eight years.

UN Weather Agency calls for Robust Early Warning Systems as Latin America and the Caribbean Brace for More Extreme Weather Events

By Alison Kentish
The World Meteorological Organization says adaptation efforts and the switch to renewable energy must increase for regions like Latin America and the Caribbean to face the challenges of a changing climate.

Wood Smoke Continues to Make Women Sick in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
Using a few dry sticks as fuel, Margarita Ramos of El Salvador lit the fire in her wood stove and set about frying two fish, occasionally fanning the flame, aware that the smoke she inhaled could affect her health.

Transformative Change of our Relationship with Nature: Key to Saving Global Biodiversity

By Arun Agrawal, Lucas Garibaldi, and Karen O'Brien
To most people, ‘transformative change’ is an abstract academic catchphrase. But transformative change is far more than that. It is the foundational response necessary to address the global crisis of biodiversity loss that threatens the wellbeing of every person in every community – and every species in every region.

Climate Change and Development

By Palitha Kohona
There is little doubt that human activity is accelerating climate change. Our activities are causing global warming and potentially disastrous climate change.

Water Harvesting Boosts Agriculture in Brazil’s Semiarid Northeast

By Mario Osava
"The rainwater tanks are the best invention in the world for us," said Maria de Lourdes Feitosa, 46, who recalls the deadly droughts of the past in Brazil's semiarid Northeast region.
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