Climate change

Climate change impacts the most vulnerable first and worst and that's why Oxfam is making sure that climate action is central to our fight against ...

3. Black and Indigenous people face the worst impacts of climate change, which causes heat waves, storms, and other disasters. For example, due to the effects of climate change an estimated 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia have been displaced in search of water and pasture, just in the first quarter of 2022, despite having done little to cause the climate crisis. It is time that our elected officials give it the urgency, attention, and investment that is necessary.

Mangroves, salt marsh, and seagrass beds, known collectively as “blue carbon” ecosystems, are especially efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the air and ...

The protection and restoration of coastal wetlands such as salt marsh present an opportunity for incorporating nature-based solutions on the state and national levels. Protecting and restoring salt marshes, as well as creating space for them to move inland away from rising seas, are ways that countries and states can ensure that salt marsh persists in the face of climate change. Like U.S. states, countries around the globe can also look to their salt marsh habitats to bolster coastlines against the effects of climate change. However, the report notes that to be most effective, these ecosystems need sufficient space to expand, or migrate, inland and warns that as sea levels rise, coastal wetlands such as salt marsh are at risk of being inundated and converted to open water. To survive, wetlands must have enough space, free from barriers such as roads and seawalls, to migrate and avoid being overtaken by the ocean. The report, drafted by more than 270 leading experts from 67 countries, analyzes the feasibility of various climate adaptation measures and highlights coastal wetlands’ ability to protect against coastal erosion and flooding.

From plastic pollution to biodiversity collapse, extreme weather events and still-rising emissions, there's a dizzying array of subjects to keep up-to-date on.

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. C) Atlanta C) 49.6 C (121.3 F) C) BP B) Amazon Since last Earth Day, climate scientists have released more urgent warnings that humanity is running out of time to meet net-zero targets and avert catastrophe.

Carbon dioxide emissions tend to acidify oceans making aquatic species and marine habitats more vulnerable to declines and damage. This ocean acidification ...

The goal is to adopt proper implementation of global strategies that can ensure marine and coastal protection and the conservation of the global oceans in general. The WMO in particular also collaborates with the Food and Agriculture Organisation to understand the impacts of climate change on marine productivity and fisheries. More than hundred countries across the globe responsible for a majority of these emissions, have made national climate commitments and pledges to curb their impacts on the environment. With the Paris Agreement, the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow among others, we can definitely say that we are off to a good start. While 30% of the land on Earth is classified as areas of particular importance for biodiversity protection, in order to reverse the extinction crisis, there needs to be an additional 20% of land that needs to be conserved. To surmise, greenhouse warming has complex and perhaps, severe impacts on the ocean than on land. Countries have also started developing policies and implementing sustainable practices which can conserve the oceans and protect fisheries and marine habitats. On the other hand, La Niña events have also seen a build-up in recent years, and tend to have complex impacts on weather patterns particularly in the Pacific Ocean. Both El Niño and La Niña events are part of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), where the former brings warming effects while the latter brings significant cooling or changes in winter seasons in the Pacific regions. The cumulative impacts of deforestation, agricultural runoff, overexploitation of marine resources, overfishing and more also weaken marine ecosystems of the world. Oceans are known to absorb most of the solar energy reaching the Earth, and warming of the oceans is generally slower than the atmosphere, resulting in moderate coastal weather with few hot and cold extremes. While oceans tend to influence regional and weather conditions around the world, changes in the climate can also have profound impacts on the oceans. Oceans absorb almost 90% of the extra energy from greenhouse gas effects, and this has resulted in ocean warming at depths of 1,000 metres.

Let's Go Zero – a schools' climate campaign which has more than 1,200 UK schools, colleges and nurseries signed up so far, all sharing the goal to be zero ...

Let’s Go Zero schools take action to cut their emissions relating to transport, waste, food, water, the school grounds, energy use, procurement and in their teaching, and are supported by a coalition of eight leading sustainability organisations that work in schools. Cutting energy use through insulation and generating their own energy on-site will help reduce high energy bills now in response to today’s energy crisis.” “This strategy is completely lacking in urgency; the government needs to push harder. “We must invest now in a national programme to retrofit the nation’s schools. But providing schools with the means to decarbonise quickly was glaringly absent in the strategy.” Let’s Go Zero, representing over 104,000 teachers and nearly 620,000 pupils and rising rapidly, was invited to input to the strategy.

Climate change is already incorporated into the curricula for geography and science in England as both are compulsory subjects up to the age of 14. But in ...

So I think I would have liked to have been taught about the scale of climate change. Looking back, I wish there'd been a subject that brought together climate change as a holistic issue, and natural history is a great place to start. I remember being taught about the greenhouse gas effect and the hole in the ozone layer. And my school was very proud of its green flag which was given to schools for “promoting long-term, whole-school action for the environment.” I was taught some of the basics in geography class in secondary school. So it would have been good to learn more about eating well and making good choices for the environment. I became veggie when I lived in London because I thought it was best for the environment. That way, they could understand the political and economic structures that are in part to blame for the climate crisis - and how they can change the status quo. Millions of tonnes of garbage is piling up in landfills, yet we still have no idea what happens to it once it’s taken away and what a danger it can still be to us. I think climate change should be taught but I think we need to be careful. Climate justice is a topic that I feel was severely lacking as part of my education. I dropped geography when I was 13 and biology when I was 16 - i.e. the earliest I could drop both subjects.

Cities are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet cities can also do a lot to mitigate climate change and help people adapt to its ...

The children pointed out that they lived in cities such as Cape Town (South Africa), Lagos (Nigeria) and Tabarka (Tunisia) where the impacts of climate change are on the rise. But, without robust action and engagement of children at the local sphere of government, the commitments become empty noise. The Climate Change Act (2016) of Kenya is very clear on the obligations of institutions at the city level in relation to climate governance. I argue that cities can do more to protect children from the impacts of climate change. In a recent study, I explored how city-level climate law and policy protects children in the context of climate change. Almost 1 billion children – nearly half of the world’s children – live in countries that are at extremely high risk of climate change impacts.