UN Refugee Agency contemplates rights for climate migrants
1/8/2021: Evidence has emerged that the UN Refugee Agency is considering whether international refugee law might apply to climate migrants. Such a shift would open the door to unprecedented legal protections for people uprooted from their home countries due to climate change.
Source: PassBlue
How protected are protected areas?
6/7/2021: The UN biodiversity conference in Kunming this October will consider a new 2030 target to designate 30% of the planet's land and marine areas as protected. But a series of reports have questioned the capacity of many countries to deliver standards that fulfil protected status.
Source: China Dialogue
Billions risk being without access to clean water by 2030
1/7/2021: Latest global data from the World Health Organization and UN Children’s Fund reveals that access to safely managed drinking water at home increased only from 70 to 74 per cent between 2016 and 2020. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of universal coverage by 2030 will require a quadrupling of the current rate of progress.
Source: UN News
Palm oil: What’s the big deal?
16/6/2021: Palm oil has become an ingredient in so many of our daily staples. But more than 90% of palm oil is produced in the regions of Borneo, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, where the land being cleared is tropical rainforests. Is this as bad as we are led to believe?
Source: DW
Scientists warn of looming groundwater crisis
29/4/2021: Nearly half of the human population depends on grounwater for daily needs and for agriculture. But up to a fifth of wells worldwide that tap into these reserves are at risk of running dry, according to a recent study.
Source: Mongabay
Has water as a human right moved from a resolution to reality?
28/7/2020: Ten years on since the UN General Assembly officially recognized the human right to water and sanitation, 1 in 10 people — 785 million in all — still lack access to clean water close to home. One in 4 people, or 2 billion in total, do not have a decent toilet of their own.
Source: Devex
Water-related violence rises globally in past decade
31/12/2019: Recorded incidents of water-related violence have more than doubled in the past 10 years, as water shortages and extreme weather create tension, especially in Middle East and India.
Source: The Guardian
Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis
26/7/2020: Rising consumption by the affluent has a far greater environmental impact than the birth rate in poorer nations, says George Monbiot.
Source: The Guardian
Declaring a double emergency
2/1/2021: We are in the middle of a biodiversity and climate change emergency – and the two are inextricably linked. Climate change is driving nature’s decline, and the loss of wildlife and wild places leaves us ill equipped to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to change.
Source: Centre for Alternative Technology
Arctic seed vault gets new crops
25/2/2020: A “Noah’s Ark” vault in the Norwegian Arctic, designed to safeguard the world’s crops, expects to restore the collection back to more than a million varieties.
Source: Climate Home News