Hong Kong’s first blog for SDG education news and announcements
Founded in 2014 by Author and Entrepreneur Paul Hawken in collaboration with over 200 researchers, Project Drawdown is one of the most influential research-backed databases of climate solutions on the planet. The project’s mission is to help the world reach ‘drawdown’ – the point in time where levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to decline – as quickly and as safely as possible. Four world-class researchers—James Gerber, Kate Marvel, Amanda D. Smith, and Paul West—are joining Project Drawdown as inaugural members of a new science team. Their mission: to advance the science of how to effectively implement climate solutions; to advance the public discourse on climate solutions; and to collaborate with companies, funders, and organizations to accelerate action to quickly, safely, and equitably halt climate change. Check out earth.org for more . . .
I’m Chantal Sun, a 16-year old Year 10 student studying at Australian International School Hong Kong. I first got interested in sustainability last year in Year 9, where I competed in a Hong Kong inter-school competition, ‘Nature Works’, where we were required to pitch an idea that improved our schools' environmental practices. As a result, this led to the formation of our school's first sustainability group, which I am currently an active member of. Since then I have joined organizations surrounding social change as well as currently participating in the ITSF/UNITAR Youth Ambassador Asia-Pacific Programme, all with the aim to create a long lasting impact in developing a sustainable world for future generations. I am mainly passionate around SDGs 1 (No Poverty), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and 13 (Climate Action). As a member of the YAC, my position will open me up to a variety of opportunities and upscale my contribution, enabling my impact to reach . . .
COP27 will be remembered as a failure – here’s what went wrong (The Conversation) Energy transitions: why countries respond differently to the same problem (The Conversation) Sustainable finance in Asia: Taxonomies How can taxonomies help accelerate green finance in Asia? (Eco-business) Online activism both a boon and a bane in fighting gender-based violence (Eco-business) How tide has turned on UK tidal stream energy as costs ebb and reliability flows (The Guardian) Vertically-Grown Indoor Wheat Breakthrough Holds Potential To Localize The Global Food System (green queen) ‘Plastics and Climate Change Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin’ (green queen) 5 Books To Kickstart Your Zero-Waste Lifestyle Journey (green queen) China on track to hit new clean & dirty power records in 2022 (Reuters) . . .
Not only is this Friday, 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women but it is just the first of 16 days of activism under the theme UNiTE! Activism to End Violence against Women & Girls which culminates with the very appropriate International Human Rights Day on 10th December. Violence against women and girls is found in a range of forms including: intimate partner violence (battering, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide); sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, cyber- harassment); human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation); female genital mutilation; and child marriage. While awareness has risen tremendously in recent years, and many previously immune offenders brought to justice, VAWG remains one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today. Sadly, the rise of . . .
The surprise return to power in Brazil of previous president Lula da Silva has also seen a surprise reprieve for rainforest areas whose future looked doomed under the previous regime. At COP27, Lula said: “I would like to say to you all that Brazil is back. Brazil is back to resume its ties with the world and to once again fight hunger in the world. To cooperate once again with the poorest countries – above all Africa – to cooperate with technology transfers to build a better future for our peoples. “We are back. We are back to help build a peaceful world order based on dialogue and multilateralism. The world of today is not the same as the world in 1945.” As part of this, one of his first announcements was that Germany and Norway will reopen the Amazon fund. He called for COP30 to be held in the Amazon rainforest, and announced that he would be setting up a ministry for Indigenous people. . . .
Experts Issue Guide to Prevent Net-zero Greenwashing by Non-State Actors (IISD) 4 signs of progress at the UN climate change summit (The Conversation) 'There is greenwashing at COP': ClientEarth CEO slams sponsor Coca-Cola's plastic footprint (Eco-business) Solar power saves US$34 billion in fossil fuel costs for Asian countries (Eco-business) Global heating to drive stronger La Niña and El Niño events by 2030, researchers say (The Guardian) 'First digital nation': Tuvalu turns to metaverse as rising seas threaten existence – video (The Guardian) Opinion - There Is No Such Thing As Sustainable Dairy (green queen) Why Climate Grief is the Next Mental Health Crisis (green queen) Impacked packs up $2.5M to give the packaging industry a greener tint (techcrunch) . . .
While we can never know the exact population of any large scale entity (even a city is unknown, let alone the whole world) we can make a reasonable approximation, and a year here or there does not make any difference to the global scale impacts over the coming decades and (hopefully!!) centuries of the human species. The UN will mark 15 November as the day on which humanity reached 8 billion people. This will draw attention to the patterns we see in fertility and population growth and how they impact on the quality of life and standards of living of people around the globe. In my school days we thought the world population might reach 20 billion!! Now it has reached 8 billion 12 years after hitting 7 billion and is expected to take 15 years to get to 9 billion and stabilize at 9.7 or so. This is good news as with a slowing rate of growth and a ceiling not too much more, planning for resource distribution and sustainability can become much more accurate. . . .
There’s a very good article by John Naughton, professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, in The Guardian (for whom he writes regularly). He highlights the way that tech has followed other examples in history of using one label – for something perceived as ‘good’ – to describe a different thing, which may be perceived to be, or actually be, ‘bad’ or at least not ideal or not what we think it is. He highlights how machine learning is now almost always referred to as AI. Now machine learning is definitely not artificial intelligence but whether by laziness or something more pernicious that is the label now used and the tech companies do not object and in fact amplify it. Our feeling that AI may generally work for good, allows all the social and environmental damage of machine learning to go unchallenged and allows the continued economic exploitation of tech users through the data usage that machine learning manip . . .
