The science stories likely to make headlines in 2020

Science

January 2, 2020
Incessant political turmoil in the United Kingdom, United States, and other nations will likely last well into the new year, complicating many researchers’ work. The U.K. election last month made the country’s departure from the European Union a near-certainty, and its scientists now face losing EU science grants and scientific collaborators. In the United States, a presidential election in November will determine the role of scientists in future policy deliberations; many experts on climate change and other environmental issues assert that the Trump administration has ignored scientific evidence.

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UAE Nation Brand hits 10.6 million votes from 185 countries

Emirates News Agency

January 1, 2020
The UAE Nation Brand hit a record of 10.6 million votes from 185 countries as the campaign drew to a close to announce the logo that will represent the UAE and lead the country’s inspiring story towards the next 50 years.

Voters have contributed to planting 10 million trees to empower communities in areas affected by climate change in Nepal and Indonesia as the UAE had promised to plant a tree for every vote as part of the campaign.

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Biodiversity: hopes and fears for the next 10 years

The Guardian

December 31, 2019
At the end of a tumultuous decade for biodiversity, in which a report based on the most comprehensive study of life on Earth warned that “nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history”, we spoke to some of the world’s leading voices on the environment about their greatest fears for the next decade – and also their hopes. As the IPBES report’s authors noted: “It is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global.”

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biodiversity, extinctionGuest Userbiodiversity loss, extinction, IPBES
Greta Thunberg and mass protests defined the year in climate change

NBC News

December 30, 2019
Most climate scientists will be quick to say that 2019 was the year that Greta Thunberg truly became a force to be reckoned with. The 16-year-old Swedish activist staged solo “Fridays for Future” school strikes that triggered a global phenomenon drawing millions of people into the streets to protest climate inaction. The teen has since become the face of that newly energized climate movement and was recently named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

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Global consumer demands fuel the extinction crisis facing the world’s primates

Mongabay

December 29, 2019
A ceaselessly growing human population and an ever-expanding world economy based on the unsustainable demands of a few over-consuming nations, have already caused habitat degradation, forest fragmentation, and forest loss that are unprecedented in human history. Throughout the tropics, large tracts of forest have been converted to monocultures by industrial agriculture and degraded by the extraction of fossil fuels, metals, minerals, and other natural resources. This has resulted in significant declines in biodiversity.

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The natural technologies that could hold keys to climate resilience

Brisbane Times

December 29, 2019
Traveling back to Brisbane for family Christmas celebrations via a stopover in Sydney, Julia Watson was delivered directly into the NSW capital's weeks-long smoke haze.

The fires were a reminder that the impacts of a changing climate touched all corners of the globe, from cities to the remote regions the Brisbane-born landscape architect had spent much time in through her work on conservation and significant landscapes.

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2019 was the year of ‘climate emergency’ declarations

The Verge

December 27, 2019
A rapidly changing climate drove hundreds of governments around the world to declare states of emergency in 2019. While the declarations are largely symbolic gestures, they have in some cases become jumping-off points for real action. It’s the culmination of coordinated efforts by activists pushing governments to take action that is as dramatic as the threats posed by the climate crisis.

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