At first, it looked like a sunset. It was just after five o’clock in June. I was running in Toronto beside Lake Ontario when I stopped to glance at my watch and noticed that the sky was no longer blue but a rusted orange. It took only a few breaths to realize the bonfire smell in the air was the drifting product of faraway wildfires.
It’s quite possible you had a similar experience this summer: The plumes of gases and soot from Quebec and northern Ontario that plagued Canada also blanketed the American Midwest and East Coast. But as I watched the sun burn a hole in the horizon, I had an additional realization: Thirty years ago, I did something that probably helped fill the sky with smoke.… Seguir leyendo »
COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland last year, saw a range of commitments on forests. In addition to agreeing to halt forest loss and land degradation, significant resources were pledged to facilitate a transition to sustainable production and land-use models, as well as to support Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC). The challenge now is to translate these pledges into transformative action, however, this must not be at the expense of civic engagement. Forest and land economies need to be rebuilt around principles of equity, sustainability and regeneration.
Equity or speed?
One of the recurring critiques of international conferences, such as COP26, is that the agendas primarily reflect the concerns of the Global North.… Seguir leyendo »
Science is clear: climate change is unequivocal, and a result of human activity. The planet is already 1.1C warmer than pre-industrial levels and on a route to reach 2.5C or more this century, which could be catastrophic. The poorest and the most vulnerable populations will suffer more and earlier.
Climate change will bring droughts, floods, extreme temperatures and hurricanes that may become more intense and frequent overtime and impact billions of people. The rise of sea levels, lack of water and food, and regions becoming unfeasible to live may generate massive migrations in a planet already closing frontiers.
The 2015 Paris climate agreement called on nations of the world to preserve forests and other ecosystems that store carbon. But forests continue to disappear — cut and burned and fragmented into ever smaller patches. This failure challenges all of our other climate efforts because unless forests remain standing, the world will never contain global warming.
In one of their first major actions this week, delegates at the global climate conference in Glasgow pledged to end deforestation, committing $12 billion to the effort, with an additional $7 billion from the private sector. But this is not the first time such a promise has been made, and yet deforestation has continued.… Seguir leyendo »
Indigenous peoples in Brazil are in an increasingly precarious position and, as a result, the Amazon forest is, too. That's bad news for the world.
The fires burning and choking the western United States have transfixed the nation's attention and the alarm is warranted: The world is warming, meaning present and future changes to the climate will continue to lengthen and intensify fire seasons. Now labeled the worst fire season on record, the 5 million acres already burned across California, Oregon and Washington may not be unprecedented for long.
Yet the fate of US forests doesn't rest in American hands alone.… Seguir leyendo »
El Foro Económico Mundial (FEM) no deja de sorprendernos. En su informe sobre los riesgos globales para la economía mundial de este año subrayó que la economía no supone ningún riesgo para la economía. Los riesgos para la economía son fundamentalmente ambientales.
Muchos lo teníamos bastante claro desde hacía tiempo, pero quién mejor para hablar de riesgos para la economía que el mismísimo Foro de Davos. Nos deja también descolocados cuando pone sobre la mesa cuestiones que los activistas y los científicos del cambio global llevamos años señalando.
En un alarde de arqueología informativa, el FEM ha recuperado algunas ideas importantes para estos tiempos de emergencias diversas e interconectadas.… Seguir leyendo »
December’s UN climate talks held in Madrid were aptly titled ‘Time for Action’. While little progress was made at the conference in establishing an international framework that would help to instigate this, there is still much scope for action in 2020. The need for this has become all too apparent as the impacts of climate change are increasingly seen around the world.
One of the key areas where progress can be made in 2020 is in increasing the ambition of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), these being governments’ plans to take action in response to climate change. To date, 184 countries have submitted NDCs, yet the commitments that have been made fall far short of what is needed to avert catastrophic climate change.… Seguir leyendo »
Ever since the collapse of the attempt to negotiate a global agreement on forests at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (the ‘Earth Summit’) in 1992, there has been, in effect, no rules-based international order relating to forests.
Recent developments, however, hold out the prospect – faint though it may be – of the emergence of an international framework promoting forest governance and law enforcement by regulating trade in timber and agricultural commodities associated with deforestation.
There is no doubt that this is an urgent challenge. Over the last 60 years, the world has lost almost 10 per cent of its remaining forests. … Seguir leyendo »
Hace 30 años la Organización para la Alimentación y la Agricultura de las Naciones Unidas lanzó el Plan de Acción por los Bosques Tropicales, la primera iniciativa global intergubernamental para luchar contra la pérdida de bosques. Desde entonces la deforestación ha seguido su ritmo sin pausa, y no parece que el último esfuerzo internacional por detenerla (conocido como Programa de reducción de emisiones de carbono causadas por la deforestación y la degradación de los bosques, o REDD+) vaya a ser más eficaz. Irónicamente, lejos de proteger los bosques del mundo el resultado más notable de ambos acuerdos ha sido la producción de muchos y muy costosos estudios de consultoría.… Seguir leyendo »
Cuando el Papa Francisco visitó América Latina en julio hizo una conmovedora defensa de la selva amazónica y de las personas que la habitan. “El hogar de todos está siendo saqueado, destruido y dañado con impunidad”, dijo a activistas reunidos en la Cumbre Mundial de Movimientos Populares en Bolivia. “Es un grave pecado no defenderla por cobardía”.
Atender el llamado del Papa Francisco no es solo una cuestión moral sino práctica. Más adelante en París, durante la Conferencia de las Naciones sobre Cambio Climático en la que se diseñará una respuesta a los desafíos que plantea el calentamiento global, se debería adoptar una serie de políticas para proteger a los bosques tropicales y a los pueblos que las habitan.… Seguir leyendo »
The loss of native tropical forests accounts for more than 10% of the carbon emissions responsible for the changing climate, receiving much-deserved attention at the recent U.N. climate change conference in Warsaw.
When forests are cleared and burned, the carbon contained in the trees and other vegetation -- roughly half of their dry weight -- is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. Most of the carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activity come from fossil fuels. But native tropical forests average about 150 tons of carbon per hectare, and millions of hectares are cleared and burned every year.… Seguir leyendo »
Trees are on the front lines of our changing climate. And when the oldest trees in the world suddenly start dying, it’s time to pay attention.
North America’s ancient alpine bristlecone forests are falling victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. In Texas, a prolonged drought killed more than five million urban shade trees last year and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, two severe droughts have killed billions more.
The common factor has been hotter, drier weather.
We have underestimated the importance of trees. They are not merely pleasant sources of shade but a potentially major answer to some of our most pressing environmental problems.… Seguir leyendo »
Faced with a global credit crunch, the governments of the world are coming together to act with urgency. But faced with a far more serious climate crunch, we have yet to show our mettle.
If we are to prevent dangerous and unpredictable climate change, global greenhouse emissions must have peaked by 2015 and be cut by 50-80 per cent from 2000 levels by 2050. So how, in only seven years, can we reverse the gathering emissions momentum? A key part of the answer lies in the rainforests - and the Prince of Wales's Rainforest Project.
Rainforests are critical because their destruction deals a double blow to our defence against climate change.… Seguir leyendo »
How do you make a tree worth more alive than dead? This question will certainly not be put so simply but it is one of the main ones occupying the minds of those gathered on the Indonesian island of Bali this week for the UN conference on climate change.
It is a question of vast importance to the world and if an answer is found then we will have gone a considerable way to combating climate change.
Bali is an apt venue. When you include emissions from deforestation, Indonesia ranks third in the world league table of carbon emitters (the US claims the top spot and China is second) and the cause of most of its pollution is the burning of rainforests, responsible for 85 per cent of that country's emissions.… Seguir leyendo »
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