Climate Action: A consensus of the sensible can beat polluters' PR

Six steps the world should take to fight climate change

Last month, the most thorough scientific review of climate science in history was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  However, confirmation of clear, dangerous and present epochal changes in our planet drowned in the noisy coverage of the UK’s carnival-esque party conferences, the US Government shutdown, and coquettish phone calls between Americans and Iranians.

Financing the transition to a green economy: Where’s the money?

 Credit: Agni Klintuni Boedhihartono

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Earth is set to warm by 4 to 5 degrees compared with pre-industrial levels, warming that will wreak devastating effects on the planet and lead to massive destruction, loss of life and loss of subsistence for millions. In order to avoid this outcome, the International Energy Agency says we need US$1trn a year until 2050 to finance a transition to green growth and green lifestyles.

Where is this US$1trn going to come from?
First, based on research by the Climate Policy Initiative, three-quarters of all climate financing already comes from the country it is spent in. We will need (and will have to get) funding from most countries, even very poor ones, though that’s not the same thing as saying we need it from their public purse: climate change is a global “commons” and requires every individual, company, and country to participate in its solution.

Climate change raises issues of equity, justice and fairness, IPCC affirms

 

The Synthesis Report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Sunday, November 2, 2014 has affirmed that limiting the effects of climate change raises issues of equity, justice, and fairness and it is increasingly becoming necessary to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication.

The Synthesis Report makes a clear case that many risks constitute particular challenges for the least developed countries and vulnerable communities, given their limited ability to cope. People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally, or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change.

“Many of those most vulnerable to climate change have contributed and contribute little to greenhouse gas emissions,” Pachauri said. “Addressing climate change will not be possible if individual agents advance their own interests independently; it can only be achieved through cooperative responses, including international cooperation.”

IPCC Synthesis Report Press Conference

From Marrakech to Bulawayo, African CSOs confront climate change

Cross-Section of African CSO Leaders at Launch of PACJA Morocco

It took twenty-two (22) days in the month of October 2014 to complete the race of about 70707km from Morocco to Zimbabwe.

What is at stake here, the Olympics, the World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations torch or the visit of King Mohamed VI to President Mugabe? You be the Judge!

If East Africa was involved in this race, you can guess they will lift the gold medal but it was between the north and south so it can't be it.

Well, this was the distance covered by the Morocco Network on Climate Change (MNCC) at Marrakech on October 7, 2014 and Zimbabwe Climate Change Coalition (ZCCC) on October 29, 2014 when the two national chapters of PACJA were launched respectively.

What did the two nations have in common besides been African countries- THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE!

Morocco Welcomes PACJA

"We are holding your German Hostage," Shekau boasts in a new video

Abubakar Shekau

Boko Haram has claimed in a new video obtained by AFP that a German national is in their custody. Leader of the terrorist group, Abubakar Shekau's boast that "we holding your German hostage," makes it the first claim of responsibility for the abduction, which happened on July 16.

The German foreign ministry in Berlin said it did not want to comment when contacted by AFP.

Armed gunmen kidnapped the foreigner, who was said to be a teacher at a government technical training centre in Gombi, about 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the Adamawa state capital Yola.

Suspicion immediately fell on Boko Haram, which has repeatedly attacked schools teaching a so-called Western curriculum, as well as teachers and students. An offshoot of Boko Haram, Ansaru, has previously claimed the kidnapping of at least eight foreigners in northern Nigeria since 2012 but the group has been largely dormant for more than a year.

The group reportedly broke with Boko Haram to specifically target foreigners instead of Nigerians and executed seven expatriates it seized from Bauchi state in 2013.

In January 2012, Boko Haram kidnapped German engineer Edgar Raupach at a construction site on the outskirts of the northern city of Kano. He was killed during a military raid on a Boko Haram hideout on the outskirts of the city four months later.

With emission cuts and adaptation, climate change effects can be limited, Says IPCC

Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks, a UN-backed expert panel says.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals in a blunt report that continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.

The IPCC's Synthesis Report was published on Sunday in Copenhagen, after a week of intense debate between scientists and government officials.

“Adaptation can play a key role in decreasing these risks,” said Vicente Barros, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II. “Adaptation is so important because it can be integrated with the pursuit of development, and can help prepare for the risks to which we are already committed by past emissions and existing infrastructure.”

But adaptation alone is not enough. Substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are at the core of limiting the risks of climate change. And since mitigation reduces the rate as well as the magnitude of warming, it also increases the time available for adaptation to a particular level of climate change, potentially by several decades.