BBC
November 15, 2019
With homes under water in South Yorkshire, near record flooding in Venice, and burgeoning wildfires in Australia, many people are asking if and how climate change is connected to these extreme weather events.
Scientific American
November 14, 2019
Children born today will face a lifetime of climate change-related health problems, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journals warns in a report released yesterday.
The Lancet's "Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change" says the new era of climate change will "define the health of an entire generation" — unless there is significant intervention.
Phys.org
November 14, 2019
The ocean hosts an inconceivable wealth of marine life and diverse habitats, most of which remains unknown and unseen. International plans to mine minerals from the deep seafloor threaten this largely unexplored biodiversity hotspot. States are currently seeking to develop a legal framework for deep seabed mining. In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an international team of researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) has published a new study warning against a rush to exploit deep seafloor resources and calling for coordinated efforts to develop alternative approaches.
Mongabay
November 14, 2019
As the world races to meet the goal of protecting 17 percent of Earth’s land surface, a new study looks at how effective protected areas are at reducing human pressures — and finds that there is considerable room for improvement.
National Geographic
November 12, 2019
The headquarters at Zakouma National Park, in southeastern Chad, is a sand-colored structure with a crenellated parapet that gives it the look of an old desert fortress. Outside the door to the central control room on the second floor hangs an image of a Kalashnikov rifle, circled in red, with a slash: No weapons allowed inside. Kalashnikovs are ubiquitous in Zakouma. All the rangers carry them. So do the intruders who come to kill wildlife.
Phys.org
November 8, 2019
[…] More than 600 indigenous communities live in Canada's boreal forest, one of the last great swaths of intact wilderness on Earth. But every year, a million acres fall to logging to make timber and tissue products, including toilet paper sold in the U.S., according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. That's seven hockey rinks' worth of forest every minute.
Canada's First Nations, with help from groups such as the NRDC and Greenpeace, want to stanch the losses and protect the lands their ancestors have depended upon for centuries—or longer.
Climate Policy Initiative
November 8, 2019
Four years after world leaders negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement, now signed by 195 countries around the world and ratified by 187, national policies and market signals are starting to reflect the urgency both of increasing finance for mitigation of and adaptation to the effects of climate change, and of making all financial flows consistent with a pathway toward low-carbon and climate-resilient development. However, much more ambition will be needed to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, including a push at the national level for countries to meet and exceed their climate action plans.
UN Environment Programme
November 8, 2019
It is well known that peatlands matter for livelihoods, carbon storage, flood mitigation, and water quality, but a recent study has shown that peatlands also matter for human health.
The study suggests that thousands of deaths could be prevented over the next three decades across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore through improved land management to reduce the number and extent of peatland fires. The fires contribute to dangerous levels of particulate matter harmful to human health. Air quality near large population centres could improve significantly, saving lives, the study found.
Reuters
November 8, 2019
A top Federal Reserve policymaker on Friday signaled the U.S. central bank may join its international peers in incorporating climate change risk into its assessments of financial stability, and may even take it into account when setting monetary policy.
Project Syndicate —Op-Ed
November 7, 2019
The 2015 Paris climate agreement was made possible when countries realized it was in their own interest to commit to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. But a similar understanding of the need for stronger conservation policies has yet to take hold, putting the world's ecosystems increasingly at risk.
Euronews
November 6, 2019
France and China have reasserted their mutual support for the "irreversible" Paris climate agreement, just days after the US made its first formal step to withdraw from the accord.
Speaking at a joint press conference on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping also maintained their "strong commitment to improving international cooperation on climate change."
CNN
November 6, 2019
More than 11,000 researchers from around the world on Tuesday issued a grim warning of the "untold suffering" that will be caused by climate change if humanity doesn't change its ways.
The group said that as scientists, they have the "moral obligation to tell it like it is."
Phoebe Barnard, one of the lead authors of the report and the chief science and policy officer at the Conservation Biology Institute, a nonprofit science group, told CNN the report makes it clear "there's no more wiggle room" for policymakers.
Vox
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.
Reuters
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.
Phys.org
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.