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Anthropocene Visualized: Video Summarizes Key Findings of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report
›“Humanity is altering Earth’s life support system. Carbon dioxide emissions are accelerating; greenhouse gas levels are unprecedented in human history,” says a new video summarizing some of the most striking finds of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report. The climate system is changing rapidly, and it is “extremely likely,” the video quotes the IPCC, that humans are the central reason why.
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Crowded Out: New Evidence Points to Population Growth as Key Driver of Biodiversity Loss
›November 12, 2013 // By Kathleen MogelgaardIn 2009, economist Jeffrey Sachs, alongside more than 20 eminent scholars from different fields, highlighted the importance of biodiversity for human well-being in a policy commentary published in Science. They noted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) included a target to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of species loss, and they also noted that it was one of the MDG targets that was most off-track. “Our lack of progress toward the 2010 target,” they said, “could undermine achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the long term.” The 2010 target was missed, and today species are moving toward extinction at an ever faster pace. Last week’s announcement confirming the extinction of Africa’s western black rhino is the latest sad example of this trend.
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Curbing China’s Massive – and Destructive – Distant Water Fishing Fleet
›Last month, two Chinese fishing boats were caught operating illegally in South Korean waters. The incident made local headlines and minor diplomatic waves, but it’s just a drop in the bucket in what has become a troubling trend for China’s foreign water fishing fleets. Over the last decade, there have been more than 4,600 cases of Chinese fishing boats being caught illegally in South Korea’s waters alone, according to the government, and these marine transgressions have not been limited to neighbors.
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ECC Platform
Data for Peace: Inventory of Shared Waters in Western Asia
›October 1, 2013 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article appeared on the Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation (ECC) Platform.
The Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation team talked to Eileen Hofstetter from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. She is co-author of the Inventory of Shared Water Resources in Western Asia released at this year’s World Water Week in Stockholm. The Inventory was prepared by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.
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Southeast Asia’s Haze Problem a Harbinger of Challenges to Come
›The original version of this article first appeared on The Globalist.
Haze may be the new weapon of mass destruction. Not in the narrow sense of an incoming ballistic missile, of course, but for millions in Southeast Asia, this summer’s sooty haze poses a threat more dire than a nuclear-tipped missile.
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Development vs. Conservation: Global Trends in the Battle Over Oil in Ecuador’s Yasuní Rainforest
›Ecuador, the OPEC member with the smallest amount of proven oil reserves, has gained outsized attention in the debate over the future of oil extraction in recent days and may well play a decisive role in the outcome of the global tension between economic development and environmental conservation.
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Geoff Dabelko on Avoiding Conflict From Climate Adaptation
›Although major global action remains stymied in many respects, policymakers around the world are increasingly at least recognizing the need to increase resilience to the effects of climate change. But are the consequences from hastily implemented initiatives being adequately considered? Perhaps not.
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First “Nexus Dialogue” on Water, Energy, and Food Kicks Off in Nairobi
›Water, energy, and food – this “nexus” of interrelated resource issues continues to garner attention from analysts, policymakers, and the media. Over the next four decades global population is projected to increase to about 9.6 billion and, worldwide, demand for water is projected to increase 55 percent; energy, 80 percent; and food, 60 percent. In a new video about the first of a series of workshops on this nexus, the International Union for Conservation on Nature and the International Water Association explain how they are working to bring together private and public sector water infrastructure experts from across Africa and the world to build partnerships and create some consensus on a “nexus-based approach” to managing scarce resources.
Showing posts from category international environmental governance.