To meet pledges to save forests spending must triple, U.N. report says
Four years after a global pledge to end deforestation, the amount of money going toward conserving and restoring forests is not enough, the analysis found.
Nations are not spending enough to ensure that the forests that cover nearly a third of the planet remain healthy, according to a new United Nations report. To meet various international climate, biodiversity and land restoration goals, annual global spending needs to triple to $300 billion by 2030, the report found.
Forests are the “quintessential definition of a public good,” because of the benefits they provide, said Gabriel Labbate, who leads the climate mitigation unit at the U.N. Environmental Program and is one of the lead authors of the analysis.
Read more on The New York Times.
How can we help scientists tell their stories?
Science has a communication problem. This week on Possibly we’re taking a look at an audio-storytelling organization, called Transom, that’s trying to help fix it.
Welcome to Possibly. Where we take on huge problems, like the future of our planet, and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
Science has a communication problem. It can be hard for everyday people to understand what scientists are saying about their research..
Juliana Merullo and Nat Hardy are here to tell us about a science storytelling workshop trying to help solve this problem.
Read more or listen on Possibly.
Feeding Resilience: Ethiopia
Compound security, hunger, and climate risks
A Crossroads for Conflict, Food, and Climate
Ethiopia sits at the intersection of climate change, food security, and conflict risks that will shape the country’s internal stability, influence on East African security, and geopolitical role for years to come.
Huge danger from permafrost loss
With the Arctic warming four times as fast as the rest of the globe, and fires now routinely burning large swaths of northern forests, carbon stored in permafrost is rapidly escaping into the atmosphere where it can warm the planet even faster. Edward Alexander, Senior Arctic Lead at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and a Co-Chair of the Gwich’in Council International, speaks with Host Jenni Doering about the enormous climate risks of permafrost loss and how Indigenous cultural practices can help protect this vital resource.
It is now peak hurricane season: What to expect for storms in the Atlantic
Don’t be fooled by the lack of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Basin.
The peak of hurricane season is here, and activity could soon ramp up, despite the relative quiet currently occurring in the tropics, according to meteorologists.
Soil carbon: Crucial ally or potential threat to net-zero commitments?
The daily destruction of nature’s carbon stores is happening right before our eyes, as forests are ravaged by catastrophic wildfires and vast tracts of wildlands are cleared for agriculture. But even greater stores of carbon lie hidden beneath our feet, and they too are under threat.
The world’s soils are a gigantic carbon sink that has so far played a vital, outsized role in mitigating humanity’s excessive carbon emissions. But climate change, industrialized agriculture and other human activities threaten to degrade global soil carbon storage — maybe dangerously so.
Preserving the ecosystem services of this subterranean environment is crucial to meeting global net zero commitments.
We now know just how much climate change supercharged Hurricane Katrina
Two decades after the devastating storm, scientists can more easily determine how much global warming is intensifying tropical cyclones.
Two decades ago, Hurricane Katrina spun up like a massive atmospheric engine, using warm ocean water as fuel. Making landfall as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, it devastated New Orleans — surging seawater over levees, killing nearly 1,400 people, and causing more than $150 billion in damage. Even though engineers have since significantly bolstered those levees, their ability to withstand climate-supercharged cyclones remains uncertain.