2nd Climate Diplomacy Week 2018 - Highlights
Climate Diplomacy Week is a perfect opportunity to highlight positive climate action, set new goals and engage more and new actors in the fight against the devastating impacts of climate change. Each year, the week has its own character. Climate Diplomacy Week 2018, from 24-30 September, was marked by action – throughout the world, civil society participated in inspiring educational activities and engaged the wider public in the climate cause. We’ve selected some of the highlights for you.
In Venezuela and Serbia, citizens went on cycling tours to remind us that low-carbon transportation is possible…and fun!
Meanwhile, EU ambassadors spoke to local communities in Malaysia and hosted a river clean-up event:
Many organizations and embassies have hosted a range of climate-related events, tackling region-specific problems and focusing on engaging a key societal group in the climate change talk: youth.
#ClimaDiplo Week is also an ideal occasion to address in-depth some of the cross-cutting issues that contribute to climate change, such as waste management and industry-specific impacts, as demonstrated by the German Embassy in Nigeria.
Climate change is all about inequality, both in terms of who will suffer its effects most and who contributes most to its causes. During Climate Diplomacy Week, vulnerabilities and responsibilities come to the surface and pave the way for fruitful dialogue and exchanges:
Incidentally, have you seen our best climate diplomacy stories of 2018 yet?
And last but absolutely not least, our touring exhibition on Environment, Conflict and Cooperation (ECC) in Indonesia was a blast! If you are in Jakarta, make sure to drop by until 14 October 2018. If not, take a look at our permanent online exhibition and share it in your networks.
This is just a glimpse of all that happened during this (second) #ClimaDiplo Week 2018. The climate community is a global force which is becoming stronger. We are excited to see what Climate Diplomacy Week 2019 will bring!
Meanwhile, take a look at our summaries and highlights of the (first) 2018 Climate Diplomacy Week. See you next year!
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Linking climate change and peacebuilding in Colombia through land access
Colombia’s long-standing internal conflict and the country’s contribution to climate change share one common root cause: land concentration. Policies to strengthen access to land and to ensure sustainable land use might therefore hold the key to promoting peacebuilding in Colombia, while simultaneously reducing emissions.
Climate-related disasters pose grave challenges to health in South Asia
As disasters wreak havoc all over South Asia, health impacts have increasingly emerged as a major concern for communities and governments in the region. It underscores the need for concerted efforts towards building synergies between the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, particularly now, in the post-disaster reconstruction phase, to ensure “building back better” and future disaster prevention.
Forty years of tree-planting in China: successes and failures
In the Inner Mongolian county of Horinger, Northwestern China, afforestation efforts have transformed a barren, dusty landscape into a pine forest. Planting trees has diminished the sandstorms, boosted biodiversity and improved the environment generally. As the climate emergency worsens, the potential for planted trees to draw carbon out of the atmosphere is being re-examined. What can the world learn from the Chinese experience with afforestation?
Two events in August 2019 underlined the complexity of paving the way to a climate-neutral world: the publishing of the new IPCC report and the Amazon fires. Both events demand that climate diplomats move beyond a narrowed focus on energy in decarbonisation debates.