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Five Urgent Needs for Global Governance: UN Secretary-General Sets Priorities for 2022 (IISD) Safe havens for coral reefs will be almost non-existent at 1.5°C of global warming – new study (The Conversation) How a humble mushroom could save forests and fight climate change (The Conversation) Three reasons why climate change models are our best hope for understanding the future (The Conversation) 22 ways to live better in 2022 (Eco-Business) ‘A deranged pyroscape’: how fires across the world have grown weirder (The Guardian) Extreme weather has cost Europe about €500bn over 40 years (The Guardian) . . .
The coming Friday is International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Yet women and girls continue to be excluded from participating fully in science. Addressing this contributes not only directly to SDGs 5 and 10 but to all the SDGs as all solutions will include some form of scientific input and to diminish the contribution of half the population can only be a negative impact. . . .
The headline areas of sustainability and the SDGs are quite rightly those that present an existential threat to the future of humanity, but to paraphrase many a perspective, will what we have left be worth living in? To this purpose we must not neglect the lesser elements of sustainability which include preserving enough of our heritage to maintain understanding of the cultures we have evolved through in space and time. Our heritage provides both value in its own right as well as the potential for us to learn. The Conversation has a good piece on climate impacts on heritage artifacts here. . . .
Coffee may become more scarce and expensive thanks to climate change (The Conversation) The race to protect the food of the future – why seed banks alone are not the answer (The Conversation) Will the fossil energy crisis make renewables more popular? (Eco-Business) Asia must spend $2.5 trillion annually to meet 2050 climate deadline (Eco-Business) 2022 marks an important year for environmental milestones (EU) Carbon offsetting is not warding off environmental collapse – it’s accelerating it (The Guardian) Female leadership is good for the world. Just look at Barbados (The Guardian) . . .
Wetlands do not conjure up particularly strong emotions. In fact, many people might be put off by the term. But wetlands are one of the most important habitats we have, and they are among the most threatened, especially with so much already having been lost. They cover only around 6 per cent of the Earth’s land surface, 40 per cent of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands. Approximately 87% of all wetlands have been lost to human development over the last 300 years and 35% of that has happened since 1970. This has meant that there is a specific convention – Ramsar – for their protection. Not only are they so important for living species, the soils of wetlands store twice as much carbon as all forests. Draining them releases this. So there are just two super important reasons to consider what you can do to encourage or even better cause the protection and possible replenishment of wetlands on this World Wetlands Day. . . .
Next week will see high level government representatives, including national leaders, gather with leaders of multilateral institutions, business leaders and civil society policymakers in Brest, France, to determine and launch a new raft of ocean protection and cleaning policies and initiatives. An extensive programme will bring together so many stakeholders who can make a positive impact to improve the situation of this incredible and crucial habitat which provides humanity with so much – food, transport, water, carbon sequestration and so on. See the summit page here. . . .
Can Vertical Farming Stand the Test of COVID-19 and Food Insecurity? (IISD) Strengthening Data Use to Achieve the 2030 Agenda (IISD) Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit (The Conversation) Birds and bees: why new buildings need to support the natural world (The Conversation) China renewables firms burst on to ranking of world's most sustainable corporates (Eco-Business) Asia's emissions-reduction plan for the world (Eco-Business) ‘Like a work of art’: rare stretch of pristine coral reef discovered off Tahiti (The Guardian) By 2050, a quarter of the world’s people will be African – this will shape our future (The Guardian) . . .
Late in 2021, UNESCO published a new report called Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. [open access – read here] It is 2 years of work which consulted with over a million people. Its premise is that education can be seen in terms of a social contract – an implicit agreement among members of a society to cooperate for shared benefit. It sees the old contract as being nationally focused but now we need collective endeavours and to provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape sustainable and peaceful futures for all anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice. The report highlights: Principles: Assuring the right to quality education throughout life. It must also encompass the right to information, culture and science – as well as the right to access and contribute to the knowledge commons, the collective knowledge resources of humanity that have been accumulated over generations and are continuously transformi . . .