SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 2021 (IPS)* – Current climate mitigation plans will result in a catastrophic 2.7°C world temperature rise. US$1.6–3.8 trillion is needed annually to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5°C.
Creative accounting
Rich countries have long broken their 2009 Copenhagen COP16 pledge to mobilize “US$100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries”. The pandemic has worsened the situation, reducing available finance. Poor countries – many already caught in debt traps – struggle to cope.
Anis Chowdhury
While minuscule compared to the finance needed to adequately address climate change, it was considered a good start. The number includes both public and private finance, with sources – public/private, grants/loans, etc. – unspecified.
Such ambiguity has enabled double-counting, poor transparency and creative accounting, noted the UN Independent Expert Group on Climate Finance. Thus, the rich countries’ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported US$80bn in climate finance for developing countries in 2019.
1 November 2021 (UN News)* — As the World Leaders Summit opened on day two of COP26, UN chief António Guterres sent a stark message to the international community. “We are digging our own graves”, he said, referring to the addiction to fossil fuels which threatens to push humanity and the planet, to the brink, through unsustainable global heating.
UNFCCC/Kiara Worth | UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the opening of the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
It was a grey and windy morning, as dozens of world leaders arrived at the Scottish Event Campus, of the key United Nations climate conference, in the city of Glasgow.
Since 6.30am, long lines of people gathered at the gates to get their accreditations, and pass through tight security, which included presenting proof of negative COVID-19 tests.
Journalists from all over the world set to work side by side in the event halls, armed with a host of microphones, cameras, lights and recording equipment.
(UN News)* — Record greenhouse gas concentrations have pushed the planet into uncharted territory, with repercussions likely for current and future generations, warned the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) this Sunday [31 October 2021].
IMF/K. M. Asad | In Bangladesh, efforts are undertaken to improve coastal protection from flooding caused by storms and a rise in sea level due to climate change.
The past seven years are on track to be the seven warmest ever, according to the provisional WMO State of the Global Climate 2021 report, based on data for the first nine months of the year.
Released as climate policy negotiators begin their work at COP26, in Glasgow, the report says that a temporary cooling “La Niña” event early in the year, means that 2021 is expected to be “only” the fifth to seventh warmest year on record.
MADRID, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)* – Another Year Another Record! The emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, the land and sea temperatures are higher than ever since there are records, and the ecosystems could fail their role as vital sinks absorbing carbon dioxide and as a buffer against larger temperature increases.
The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Credit: Bigstock
MADRID, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)* – Can yet another dispendious world gathering find a way to halt the ongoing suicidal war on Nature, which is leading to the destruction of all sources of life?
More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. A sea of soy is seen near the city of Porto Nacional, on the right bank of the Tocantins River, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
The answer appears to be a bold “no” in view of the business-oriented practices, which deplete biodiversity, pollute the oceans, rise sea levels, cause record temperatures, provoke deadly droughts and floods, and push millions to flee their homes as climate refugees, in addition to more millions of conflict and poverty displaced humans.
(UN News)* — Vulnerable countries are stepping up and taking climate action, amid a slow response from some of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, said the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday [28 October 2021].
UNDP Timor-Leste | Communities in Timor-Leste are helping to restore mangrove forests.
In a new analysis, released ahead of the COP26 climate negotiations, the agency said that 93 per cent of least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing States (SIDS) have submitted enhanced national climate plans (NDCs), or plan to do so.
(UN News)* — Forests in at least 10 World Heritage sites have become net sources of carbon, due to pressure from human activity and climate change, according to a new report released on Thursday [28 October 2021], by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
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Unsplash/Pablo Fierro | Yosemite National Park in the USA is one of ten World Heritage Forests that has gone from removing carbon from the atmosphere to emitting it.
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The agency’s new analysis, World Heritage forests: Carbon sinks under pressure , shows that instead of helping mitigate global warming, some of the world’s most treasured forests are in fact adding to overall CO2 emissions.
MADRID, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)* – Hadn’t it been so worrisome, it would be ironic to hear that humanity is to mark theWorld Disarmament Week (Oct 24 to 30, 2021) barely six months after learning that the world’s biggest military powers had spent last year some 2,000,000,000,000 US dollars on killing machines.
World military spending rose to almost two trillion dollars in 2020, an increase of 2.6 percent in real terms from 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas
And that the world’s nuclear arms arsenal is stuffed with some 150 atomic weapons, hundreds of which can be launched in just minutes.
Regenerating Biodiversity in our farms, forests, and our Gut Microbiome for Zero Hunger and Good – Health for All
Mother Earth is self-organised. Mother Earth has created and sustained Diversity.
The web of life is a web of diversity woven through the flow of Nutrition.
Colonialism transformed Mother Earth, Vasundhara, Pachmama , Terra Madre, into Terra Nullius, the empty earth. Our living, bountiful earth, rich in Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity was reduced to an empty earth.
People of the colonised lands were denied their humanity to justify the appropriation of the their lands, their homes, their resources.
The Biodiversity of the earth disappeared in the minds of men who reduced the earth to private property to be owned, and raw material to be extracted.
In February 2020, an agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban was signed in Doha, Qatar, promising the complete withdrawal of American and NATO troops from Afghanistan in May 2021. This agreement was supposed to put an end to an endless war, having claimed the lives of nearly 46,000 Afghan civilians and more than 2,500 American soldiers (1).
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 