Climate Action

Image credit: UN Convention on Biological Diversity

Conserving Biodiversity is Key to Mitigating Climate Change

By J C Suresh

TORONTO (IDN) – An area almost the size of Australia – up to 724 million hectares in all – will be required by 2050 for cultivating bioenergy, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Platform on Climate Change (IPCC) on limiting climate warming to 1.5C.

Models foresee that demand for bioenergy to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels could cause a 10- to 30-fold increase in green energy-related land use in years to come, adding crushing pressure on habitat for plants and animals and undermining the essential diversity of species on Earth.

: J C Suresh; UN INSIDER; 15 November 2018

Photo: Nukufetau coastal damages by cyclone in Tuvalu. © EU GCCA+ LoCAL-UNCDF. Photo Hendrik Visser 2016.

79 ACP Countries Get Ready for UN Climate Change Conference

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – The Intra-ACP GCCA Plus Programme, which has several success stories to tell, is supporting 79 members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) in preparing for the UN Climate Change conference in December in Katowice, Poland.

The ACP Secretariat and the Programme hosted a Joint Policy Dialogue (JPD) at the ACP House in Brussels on November 5, 2018. The JPD showcased the findings of a draft ACP report analysing the implementation status of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of ACP countries.

: Robert Johnson; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 13 November 2018

Photo: This field visit provided a learning opportunity into two of MLife’s distribution models, micro-entrepreneurs and enterprise associations. Mlife has been in partnership with the Zambia Federation of Associations of Women in Business (ZFAWIB) to provide low-cost funeral insurance services since 2016. Credit: Munich Re Foundation

Insurance Essential for Sustainable Development – But Billions Still Losing Out

By Kwame Buist

LUSAKA, Zambia (IDN) – Billions of uninsured individuals, families and small businesses are exposed to risks which can result in catastrophic losses, delegates to the 14th International Microinsurance Conference (IMC) on ‘Inclusive Insurance for Emerging Markets’ in Lusaka were told.

Despite encouraging signs of increased insurance cover uptake in some markets, climate change and extreme weather events are exposing the poorest and most vulnerable to risk as never before.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Africa; 07 November 2018

Inclusive Insurance for a Sustainable Future

By Katharine Pulvermacher*

The author is Executive Director of Microinsurance Network.

LUXEMBOURG (IDN) – Life is hard enough for small-scale farmers, businesses, families and communities who live with the daily threat of losing everything to natural disasters, extreme weather or other catastrophes. Even if you are insured, it can be tough to start again after drought has taken your cattle, pests have destroyed your crop or the main breadwinner has died in an accident. But for the four billion people around the world who have no access to financial services, insurance remains a distant dream.

: Phil Harris; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 31 October 2018

Photo credit: Pixabay.com. Source: Eyewitness News.

South Africa Needs Tackling Air Pollution Hot Spots Urgently

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – The world’s largest air pollution hotspot is not where you might think. No, it’s not in New Jersey. But if you said South Africa you’d be right, according to a newly-released study by the environmental group Greenpeace.

With coal and transport as the two principal sources of air pollution, Eastern Mpumalanga province in South Africa has the most polluting cluster of coal-fired power stations in the world, producing record levels of nitrogen dioxide, according to the Greenpeace report.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 30 October 2018

Photo: People at a borehole, one of the groundwater sources people have turned to in Zimbabwe's towns and cities as climate change impacts bite. Credit: Construction Review Online.

Southern Africa Turns to Groundwater to Counter Climate Change

By Jeffrey Moyo

CHIMOIO, Mozambique (IDN) – As the blazing heat of the sun beats down on her, 25-year-old Maria Sinorita from Chimoio, a Mozambican town lying approximately 100 km east of the country’s border with Zimbabwe, struggles to draw water from the well in her yard.

For Sinorita, even the water she is drawing from the well is running out and, because she has no option as climate change impacts hit her and many other Mozambicans, she has to dig deeper and deeper for the precious liquid.

: Jeffrey Moyo; THE WORLD; Africa; 26 October 2018

Photo: The US$1.4 billion Port City project in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Credit: China Dialogue | Shehan Gunasekara

China Suspected of Going Green by Dumping Brown Through BRI

Viewpoint by Dokku Nagamalleswara Rao & Atmaja Gohain Baruah

Dokku Nagamalleswara Rao and Atmaja Gohain Baruah are research scholars at the Center for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi India. This article first appeared in East-West Forum on 25 September 2018. – The Editor.

NEW DELHI (IDN-INPS) – The environmental impact of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been fraught with contradictions. While there are efforts to finance and promote green development through some BRI projects, other projects are raising serious environmental concerns.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 04 October 2018

Photo credit: Rafael Murillo, Courtesy Congress SEE

Costa Rica Set to Achieve Carbon Neutrality by 2021

By Fabiola Ortiz

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (IDN) – It has been twenty two years since Costa Rica embarked on its national program of payment for environmental services (PES), the first in the world to start a nationwide scheme for compensating landowners for keeping the forests standing for people and the planet.

Now that the world struggles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the global temperature rise by the end of the century, this Central American nation of five million people has served as an example of public policies addressing the taxation of fossil fuels in favour of the protection of nature. The country pledges to become carbon neutral by 2021.

: Fabiola Ortiz; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 03 October 2018

Africa Gets Ready for Biodiversity and Climate Change Summits

By Justus Wanzala

NAIROBI (IDN) – African governments have been availing of two conferences at the UN Environment Headquarters in the Kenyan capital in September to gear up for the Biological Diversity Summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and the Climate Summit in Katowice, Poland.

The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) from September 17 to 19 provided an opportunity to prepare for the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-COP14) from November 17 to 29, 2018 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

: Justus Wanzala; THE WORLD; Africa; 03 October 2018

Photo: The Agadez pilot project: Restoring degraded lands to create jobs for migrant reintegration in West Africa. Source: UNCCD

Global Compact Pays Heed to Migrants Fleeing Degrading Lands

Viewpoint by Mariam Traore Chazalnoël

The writer is a specialist in environmental and climate migration at the International Organization for Migration (IOM)'s Office to the United Nations in New York. She has been working since 2013 on the global governance of environmental migration and regularly publishes on the topic. This article first appeared in UNCCD Science to Policy Weblog on 17 August 2018. – The Editor

NEW YORK (IDN) – The plight of people migrating in the context of environmental degradation, climate change impacts and natural disasters and the potential governance responses to such challenges have received a lot of attention in recent years.