Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
December 9, 2019
[…] Climate change will affect the size and shape of glaciers in the high mountains, as well as the amount and type of precipitation that falls. In many cases, the total amount of liquid falling from the sky might actually increase—but not necessarily enough to offset the loss from melting glaciers.
And at the same time, the downstream demands and conflicts are projected to increase in almost every water tower in the world.
December 9, 2019
‘Nature-based solutions’ to climate change – the definition of which is quite self-evident – have long been lifted up in science and certain development circles as an overlooked solution which can help us to reverse planetary damage and limit global warming. Nature-based solutions could provide a full third of the mitigation needed to keep temperatures from rising above what scientists have set as the safe threshold.
December 7, 2019
The loss of oxygen from the world’s ocean is increasingly threatening fish species and disrupting ecosystems, a new IUCN report warns. Ocean oxygen loss, driven by climate change and nutrient pollution, is a growing menace to fisheries and species such as tuna, marlin and sharks, according to the report released today at the UN Climate Change conference in Madrid.
December 6, 2019
If humanity wants to reverse the widespread destruction of the natural world, biodiversity needs legal protection like the Paris agreement on climate change, members of the European parliament have said.
December 6, 2019
On the day young climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived at the UN summit in Madrid and cornered much of the attention, the world’s scientists put together a “super summary” of the many climate reports that have been published recently, and concluded, “2019 is a bad year for the climate system, a bad year for humanity,” in the words of Johan Rockstrom of Future Earth.
December 5, 2019
Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold discusses climate change and his role with the Campaign for Nature on CNN. (Segment begins at mark 13:18)
December 4, 2019
As world leaders gather at the 25th UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid this month, they will discuss concrete steps for meeting and increasing national emissions reduction targets. But, equally important, COP25 offers an opportunity to elevate one of the most powerful tools we have to address climate change: Nature.
December 3, 2019
Every year the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP) is a hugely significant moment—two weeks in history upon which future generations will reflect, and judge, whether we succeeded in ensuring a climate-safe planet.
And the stakes in 2019 are higher than ever. We exist in a changed world compared to just one year ago, as the impacts of climate change continue to bite ever-more intensively.
December 1, 2019
The UN Secretary-General has outlined the “increased ambition and commitment” that the world needs from governments during the coming days of the COP25 UN climate change conference which opens in Madrid on Monday, calling for “accountability, responsibility and leadership” to end the global climate crisis.
December 2, 2019
Although most countries have acknowledged the threat posed by climate change and established targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the international community still has not made the same level of commitment to environmental conservation. Yet it is our natural ecosystems that will save us from catastrophe – if we let them.
December 2, 2019
Protecting and restoring natural areas in Latin America, home to fifty percent of the planet’s biodiversity and over a quarter of its forests, is critical if the world is to avert a biodiversity and climate disaster.
November 27, 2019
[…] Ours is a bioclimatic world in which every organism, from bacterium to blue whale, inseparably contributes to the climate and surface conditions of Earth. This tapestry, of which we are a part, is unraveling, with its delicate patterns and motifs denigrated to near invisibility, disappearing at a rate and magnitude that rivals that of the great mass extinction events of the past. This fading to nonexistence is making us unfortunate witnesses to the accumulated consequences of human actions over the past 10,000 years. Happily, though, we are now increasingly empowered by science and can act to abate ongoing trends and protect planetary resources before the essential threads of life’s coherence become completely eroded.
November 27, 2019
The Arhuaco invite National Geographic to the upper reaches of their Colombian homeland to reveal threats we all face—and remind us of our roots in nature.
[…] Breaking with their rigidly isolationist past, they invited photographer Stephen Ferry and me to join them on a spiritual journey from the base of the massif all the way up to a sacred lake called Naboba, fed by glacial melt at nearly 16,000 feet. They want us to be their megaphone to the wider world about the threats to the Sierra Nevada, to their way of life—and to humanity.
November 27, 2019
Efforts to catalog the fast-declining biodiversity of tropical rainforests just got a $10 million boost via a new competition from XPRIZE, an organization that has more than a dozen competitions on topics ranging from spaceflight to oil cleanup over the past 25 years.
Last week, XPRIZE formally unveiled the $10 million Rainforest XPRIZE to catalyze development of “technology capable of identifying and cataloging rainforest biodiversity” that can underpin the emergence of new bioeconomy based on the value of standing forests as heathy and productive ecosystems.
November 26, 2019
The world's countries have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions well beyond current pledges to make up for lost time - or face catastrophic climate changes, says a United Nations report released on Tuesday.
