Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
November 6, 2019
A group of 27 countries met in Paris this month to raise $9.8 billion for the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program that routes money from wealthier countries to poorer ones to combat climate change.
But climate activists said it was a disappointing haul for a program critical to meeting the goals of the Paris climate accord — where countries agreed to limit warming this century to less than 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
November 5, 2019
he vast majority of national commitments in the 2015 Paris Agreement are inadequate to prevent the worst effects of global warming, scientists said on Tuesday, naming the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitting countries as among those that must ratchet up their efforts.
November 5, 2019
Scientists are trying to better predict how biodiversity loss will affect ecosystems—how well they function and perform services we all need—especially in the face of climate change stress. Pioneering research at the Natural Resources Research Institute found a better way to understand biodiversity impacts.
November 5, 2019
Nature is essential to both global economic prosperity and individual business success. We cannot have a sustainable future for people and economies if we do not address nature, climate and people in an integrated way.
November 4, 2019
By the end of the century plants could consume substantially more water, leaving less for people across North America, Europe, and Central Asia—even if it rains and snows more, a new study reports today in the journal Nature Geoscience.
November 1, 2019
Developed nations have together pledged US$9.8 billion to replenish a United Nations fund that helps low-income countries to reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
November 1, 2019
Madrid will host the Cop25 UN climate talks, stepping in after Chile withdrew amid social unrest.
The Spanish government offered to hold the UN’s annual circus of thousands of diplomats, politicians, campaigners, journalists and business leaders in its capital on Thursday, following Chile’s announcement it could no longer be the venue.
October 31, 2019
Brazil contains the largest expanse of tropical ecosystems within protected areas, but a significant proportion of these reserves may be vulnerable to the effects of ongoing global climate change, according to a study published in the journal Conservation Biology.
October 31, 2019
[…] how we view our relationship with land and sea could be make-or-break for our civilisation and also help determine the fate of every other creature on Earth. The world is suffering massive ecosystem degradation, unprecedented wildlife decline and extinctions—all of this in the face of possible runaway climate change.
Governments and businesses now have an opportunity to take a critical, collective step to arrest this decline: to agree to protect at least 30 percent of the world on land and sea.
October 31, 2019
China will step up efforts to establish and optimize the system for natural protected areas, said a forestry official.
The system would include a series of policies and mechanisms, such as ecological compensation and transfer payments, said Li Chunliang, deputy head of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration at the first World Forum on Nature Conservation.
October 30, 2019
President Sebastián Piñera said the decision had caused him "pain" but his government needed "to prioritise re-establishing public order".
The COP25 climate summit was scheduled for 2 to 13 December, while the Apec trade forum was next month.
The UN said it was now looking at alternative venues.
October 29, 2019
Expanding the planet’s protected natural areas to safeguard vanishing forests and other ecosystems, and the species they protect, is unlikely to be effective on its own as human encroachment into reserves grows, scientists warned Tuesday.
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Both chronic underfunding of efforts to protect the land, and a lack of engagement with local communities that live there are hurting conservation efforts, they found.
October 29, 2019
Governors from eight Amazonian states in Brazil and Peru meeting at the Vatican agreed that the Amazon is threatened and called for a "green economy" that would allow people to generate income without destroying the forest.
October 28, 2019
For marine biodiversity, some regions of the ocean are more important than others. In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists compiled the findings of multiple studies to identify all of the most important marine areas.
The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, showed several important marine areas remain unprotected.
October 27, 2019
According to results published in Nature Climate Change, researchers said new approaches in agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy could feasibly contribute about a third of the Paris Accord mitigation target by 2050– equivalent to 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year.
