For the last two decades, climate talks, and their top-down multinational approaches, have largely failed to curb rising temperatures. Since then, a number of subnational actors (provinces, cities, businesses, and civil society organizations, among others) have sought to tackle climate change from the bottom up. For example, at a summit in New York last year, various subnational associations pledged to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Around 75 mayors from around the world, recognizing that cities account for some 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, signed a Mayors Compact to accelerate ongoing efforts to shrink their carbon footprint. And major civil society organizations and businesses also signed various pledges on a range of initiatives, from expanding energy efficiency to halting deforestation.
These initiatives are promising, but they will not do enough. According to at least one study, the subnational initiatives agreed to at last year’s summit have the potential to reduce emissions by only a fifth of the required reduction needed to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius—a threshold that if exceeded, may trigger fiercer storms and increased droughts. Subnational progress is limited because ground-up climate diplomacy has largely operated on an independent track from international diplomacy. The risk with these parallel approaches is that ground-up goals will not be incorporated into top-down ones, which risks marginalizing their efficacy.
Unlocking the potential of subnational climate action will require integration of subnational and international initiatives. And the two entities that can bridge that gap are California and Germany—two of the world’s pioneers when it comes to climate policies.
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.