At least ten countries pledged to halt glacier melt and thawing permafrost in the Arctic at a conference on Monday.
Foreign ministers and officials from the European Union, Japan and United States, signed a joint statement during the State Department-devised Glacier summit in Anchorage, Alaska.
They endorsed mounting scientific research documenting retreating sea ice, set out an action plan to curb black carbon emissions and called for more research to measure the advance of permafrost and wildfires.
But China and India did not sign the document, somewhat limiting its impact.
“Climate change poses a grave challenge in the Arctic and to the world,” the declaration read.
“But these challenges also present an imperative for cooperation, innovation, and engagement as we work together to safeguard this vital region and to inform the world why the Arctic matters to us all.”
For the complete article, please see RTCC.
The impact of climate change is posing a growing threat to peace and security. Germany is therefore putting climate and security on the Security Council’s agenda.
Russia’s economic development minister warned last week that the EU’s plans to deploy a carbon tax at the bloc’s borders will not be in line with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, just as Brussels doubled down on the idea of green tariffs.
Few places have suffered more from the COVID-19 pandemic than southern China, the region where the novel coronavirus was first detected in the city of Wuhan. But it turned out that the pandemic is not the only calamity to befall south China this year. The region has been inundated by heavy rainfall since late May, creating a risk of catastrophic flooding.
Natural resources-based conflicts are sometimes made complex by non-climate push and pull factors, like unemployment and political tension. These factors should be taken into account when developing and implementing a peacebuilding strategy, making sure all stakeholders are at the table – including those fueling the conflict. The online workshop ‘Integrating peacebuilding and climate change mitigation efforts in natural resource management’, organised by the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) and adelphi, looked into this complex issue.