Colombia became South America’s first country to submit its contribution to a UN global warming pact, setting out how it will slash greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to extreme weather.
The pledge outlined a 20% cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from a business as usual projection. That could rise to 30%, conditional on international cash to aid the mitigation effort.
But it warned the end of decades-long conflict, while welcome, could bring increased pressure to clear forests, jeopardising climate goals.
In its communication to the UN, the government said it had considered the “potential impacts” of “post conflict scenarios in different regions”.
“In the past, peace processes elsewhere in the world have been associated to negative impacts on the environment, due to, among other things, migration patterns that increase pressure on natural resources in the most vulnerable areas, often resulting in increased deforestation.”
But its climate strategy, such as better use of water resources, had “the potential to facilitate the consolidation of peace territories,” it said.
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French environment minister Nicolas Hulot has resigned live on national radio in a surprise move that will come as a blow to president Emmanuel Macron’s green credentials. Nicolas Hulot had not made the French president aware of his decision to quit, he told radio presenters, adding his time in office had been an ‘accumulation of disappointments’.
Liberia’s largest palm oil producer, Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) pulls out of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – how can rural communities cope with the impacts? The forests near GVL’s Liberian plantations are not only sacred sites of the region's people but also heavily populated with chimpanzees, leopards, pygmy hippopotamus and forest elephants which are significant not only to the local ecosystem but globally.
Mine closures have caused social and political turmoil in many regions, for example in South Africa. But there are ways of planning and managing the phase-out so that when the inevitable happens, people are better prepared. A new study looks at opportunities beyond mining and finds that infrastructure that supports mining can also be put to new use.
Population pressure, a lack of economic opportunities, environmental degradation, and new forms of travel are contributing to human displacement and unsafe migration on an unprecedented scale. And as millions more people see climate change erode their livelihoods, the problem will get worse in the absence of visionary global leadership.