Climate Action

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.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; OPINION; 22 September 2018

Photo: Flood waters rush around a house in Long Island, New York. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

When Climate Change Dishes Up a 'Toxic Stew'

By William S. Becker*

MILWAUKEE, USA (IDN) – It happened in July 2016. A flash flood roared through Ellicott City, Maryland, killed two people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages to the historic buildings along Main Street. The experts said it was one of those rare 1,000-year flood events. The city set about the job of rebuilding. It takes a long time – often years – for a community to recover from a devastating flood.

Then in May 2018, while Ellicott City was still getting over the 2016 disaster, it happened again, another one of those “extremely rare” 1,000-year floods.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 22 September 2018

Photo credit: James Gordon. Source: United Nations University.

Climate Change: The Devil Is in the Details

Neither Climate Change Deniers Nor Technology Enthusiasts Hold the Key to Addressing Global Warming

Viewpoint by Franz Baumann

The author is a visiting professor at New York University and a former UN assistant secretary-general, special adviser on environment and peace operations. Dr. Baumann joined the UN Development Program in 1980, began working in the UN Secretariat in 1985, and retired in 2015 after about a dozen assignments under five secretaries-general, in four duty stations and on three continents. – The Editor

NEW YORK (IDN) – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, on September 10^,2018 spoke eloquently and with urgency about the frightening prospect of a climate catastrophe. "Climate Change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment," he said. Everything in his powerful speech was backed by science and evidently correct. Yet, because Secretaries-General cannot say everything, it was incomplete.

: Franz Baumann; OPINION; 14 September 2018

Photo: Now Medina earns enough to feed her five children. Credit: Kizito Makoye | IDN-INPS

Building Climate Resilience through Women's Entrepreneurship in Ethiopia

By Kizito Makoye

BOYNA, Ethiopia (ACP-IDN) – A long spell of drought three years ago made life extremely challenging for 48-year-old Medina Igahle, a mother of five living in Boyna village in the Bubta Wodera region, when some of her goats, cattle and camels starved.

“When disaster hit, I had to bundle up what little I owned and together with my family head out to meet an uncertain future,” she says.

In many parts of Africa, changing weather patterns and environmental degradation are putting small-scale farmers at risk of extreme poverty, hunger and displacement.

: IDN-INPS Middle East & Africa Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 14 September 2018

Photo: A woman walks in the street of Roseau, capital of Dominica, which has struggled to overcome the severe impact of two category 5 hurricanes which tore through the region in September 2017. Credit: UNICEF/Moreno Gonzalez

Nine Foundations Pledge $459 Million to Forests, Indigenous Rights, and Lands to Combat Climate Change

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, nine of the world's leading philanthropic foundations have decided on the protection, restoration, and expansion of forests and lands worldwide and the recognition of indigenous peoples' and traditional communities' collective land rights and resource management.

For the purpose, they have announced their intent "to commit at least" $459 million for what they aver are "powerful and under-appreciated climate solutions and must be urgent global priorities to help avert the worst threats from a warmer world".

: J Nastranis; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 11 September 2018

Former UN Chief and Bill Gates on Board as the Netherlands Accelerates Climate Adaptation

By Reinhard Jacobsen

AMSTERDAM (IDN) – Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will oversee the Global Commission on Adaptation to climate change, which the Government of the Netherlands and the Global Center on Adaptation have decided to set up. It will be formally launched on October 16 in The Hague. Bill Gate, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva will support Ban.

The Global Center on Adaptation, an international organization hosted by the Netherlands, in partnership with World Resources Institute will co-host the Commission.

: Reinhard Jacobsen; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 11 September 2018

Photo: Bangkok Climate Change Conference. Credit: UN Climate Change

A Mountain to Climb Before December UN Climate Summit

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN (IDN) – Despite growing calls for urgent and strong climate change action, a crucial round of talks concluded in Bangkok on September 9 with what UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa has termed "uneven progress".

The Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, Gebru Jember Endalew of Ethiopia finds that "progress has been slow" in Bangkok, Thailand's capital city. Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid’s International Climate Lead feels relieved that "scuppering the ship" has been averted.

The meeting was the final gathering of countries before they meet to agree the implementation guidelines for the Paris Agreement at the UN Climate Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland this December.