Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
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.
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 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.
November 22, 2019
About one in every three plant species in Africa is at the risk of extinction due to climate change, a study has revealed. Researchers classified about 7,000 out of more than 22,000 vascular plant species in Africa as "likely or potentially" threatened, the report said, pointing towards the losses of biodiversity, rapid human population growth, changes in land use, and the effects of changing the climate as reasons behind the disappearance.
November 14, 2019
Children born today will face a lifetime of climate change-related health problems, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journals warns in a report released yesterday.
The Lancet's "Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change" says the new era of climate change will "define the health of an entire generation" — unless there is significant intervention.
November 8, 2019
Four years after world leaders negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement, now signed by 195 countries around the world and ratified by 187, national policies and market signals are starting to reflect the urgency both of increasing finance for mitigation of and adaptation to the effects of climate change, and of making all financial flows consistent with a pathway toward low-carbon and climate-resilient development. However, much more ambition will be needed to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, including a push at the national level for countries to meet and exceed their climate action plans.
November 8, 2019
A top Federal Reserve policymaker on Friday signaled the U.S. central bank may join its international peers in incorporating climate change risk into its assessments of financial stability, and may even take it into account when setting monetary policy.
November 7, 2019
The 2015 Paris climate agreement was made possible when countries realized it was in their own interest to commit to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. But a similar understanding of the need for stronger conservation policies has yet to take hold, putting the world's ecosystems increasingly at risk.
November 6, 2019
France and China have reasserted their mutual support for the "irreversible" Paris climate agreement, just days after the US made its first formal step to withdraw from the accord.
Speaking at a joint press conference on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping also maintained their "strong commitment to improving international cooperation on climate change."
November 6, 2019
More than 11,000 researchers from around the world on Tuesday issued a grim warning of the "untold suffering" that will be caused by climate change if humanity doesn't change its ways.
The group said that as scientists, they have the "moral obligation to tell it like it is."
Phoebe Barnard, one of the lead authors of the report and the chief science and policy officer at the Conservation Biology Institute, a nonprofit science group, told CNN the report makes it clear "there's no more wiggle room" for policymakers.
November 6, 2019
A group of 27 countries met in Paris this month to raise $9.8 billion for the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program that routes money from wealthier countries to poorer ones to combat climate change.
But climate activists said it was a disappointing haul for a program critical to meeting the goals of the Paris climate accord — where countries agreed to limit warming this century to less than 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
November 5, 2019
he vast majority of national commitments in the 2015 Paris Agreement are inadequate to prevent the worst effects of global warming, scientists said on Tuesday, naming the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitting countries as among those that must ratchet up their efforts.
November 5, 2019
Nature is essential to both global economic prosperity and individual business success. We cannot have a sustainable future for people and economies if we do not address nature, climate and people in an integrated way.
November 4, 2019
By the end of the century plants could consume substantially more water, leaving less for people across North America, Europe, and Central Asia—even if it rains and snows more, a new study reports today in the journal Nature Geoscience.
