Ethiopia expands Renaissance Dam production
11/8/2022: Ethiopia has activated the second turbine of the Grand Renaissance Dam, even as Egypt protested that dispute resolutions relating to the dam remain pending. The dam on the Blue Nile should improve access to electricity in Ethiopia which is currently just under 45 percent.
Source: The East African
Rich countries fall $17bn short of 2020 climate finance goal
29/7/2022: Rich nations mobilised $83.3 billion of climate finance in 2020, a 4% increase on the previous year but short of their $100bn target. The bulk of the funding was in the form of loans rather than grants and went to Asian and middle income countries.
Source: Climate Home News
Are we inured to weather crises?
16/7/2022: We are so distracted by politics and crime that extreme climate events are passing us by with barely a whimper in the media. With each successive disaster in India, people lose their ability to cope and have no alternative but to migrate.
Source: Down to Earth
50,000 wild species meet needs of billions worldwide
8/7/2022: Billions of people benefit daily from the use of wild species for food, energy, materials, medicine, recreation and inspiration. A new UN report finds that the accelerating global biodiversity crisis, with a million species of plants and animals facing extinction, threatens these contributions to well-being.
Source: IPBES
UN Ocean Conference ends with promises
1/7/2022: The UN Oceans Conference has concluded discussions focused on achieving Sustainable Development Goal 14. While participants made hundreds of conservation commitments, experts say that there is still a lot of work to be done to provide a legal framework for protecting 30% of international waters.
Source: Mongabay
Greenpeace protest at failure of UN Ocean Conference
30/6/2022: Final negotiations for a Global Ocean Treaty to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 will take place in August 2022. Greenpeace activists have protested at the lack of progress at the preparatory Lisbon conference recently concluded.
Source: Greenpeace International
Campaigners call on Guterres to rescue biodiversity agenda
27/6/2022: The last preparatory meeting before the December UN biodiversity conference has ended with virtually no progress being made. Eight conservation groups have urged UN chief António Guterres to convene political leaders to intervene.
Source: Climate Home News
China’s population is about to shrink
29/5/2022: After four extraordinary decades in which China’s population has swelled from 660 million to 1.4 billion, its population is on track to turn down this year, for the first time since the great famine of 1959-1961.
Source: The Conversation
Satellite data brings new insights on Amazon forest loss
30/5/2022: Satellite data can now tell the difference between forest fires and other forms of forest loss. Nevertheless, 2021 was the fourth consecutive year of rising deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
Source: Mongabay
Weather-related hazards trigger record global displacement
19/5/2022: Disasters continued to trigger most internal displacements globally, with 23.7 million recorded in 2021. Weather-related hazards accounted for 94 per cent of this total, many of which were evacuations in the face of cyclones and floods that struck densely populated areas of Asia and the Pacific region.
Source: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre