UN
Climate Change
Global
Climate Action
16
October
2020 | |
It's
Time to Change Climate
Change | |
Stop
the damage, start the repair.
That is the call on everyone — from national and
local government leaders, to big and small
businesses, to individuals — in the Countdown
now underway to a healthier, greener, thriving,
more resilient, fairer and zero-emissions
future.
“To
those who have already joined the race, I
applaud you. But I also ask you to do more, and
much faster,” said UN
Secretary-General António Guterres.
“To those yet to join, my message is simple: we
can only win the race together. So I urge you
all to get on board.”
Countdown,
driven by TED
and Future
Stewards,
is about accelerating solutions to the climate
crisis by both cutting emissions and building
resilience to its impacts. It’s about urgency
and optimism. Here’s a look at some of the big
ideas and themes that emerged during the
global launch on 10.10.20. The talks,
musical performances, poetry readings and
graphics are still available on YouTube.
| |
Healthy, Human-sized
Cities | |
The
city of the future should converge life into
human-sized space rather than fracturing it into
“inhuman bigness”, said Carlos
Moreno,
scientific director at the Panthéon Sorbonne
University-IAE Sorbonne Business School. The
answer: a
15-minute city,
where the rhythm follows the movement of people,
not cars; each square metre serves many
different purposes; and neighbourhoods are
designed to live, work and thrive in without
constant commuting. Paris is the first city in
the world to adopt the 15-minute city idea, but
the concept is even more relevant as cities
recover from Covid-19, enhancing health and
resilience and reducing travel, C40
notes.
The
need for resilience is what drove Freetown Mayor
Yvonne
Aki-Sawyerr
to “make
Freetown a tree town”
with a plan to plant 1 millon trees in the next
two years, increasing vegetation cover by 50
percent. The Sierra Leone capital (a Race to
Zero member) is under pressure from the
expansion of informal settlements, construction
and deforestation in recent decades. “One
million trees will not fix climate change, but
they will reduce the risk of landslides and
flooding and they will reintroduce biodiversity
… and they will protect our water catchment,”
Aki-Sawyerr said.
Building
healthier, more resilient cities also requires a
transportation
detox,
said Monica
Araya,
an electrification advocate. More than 30 cities
and regions have already set bans on tailpipes,
mostly starting in the 2030s, and are
overhauling their space in favour of cycling and
walking. Others are cleaning their air by
rolling out electric public transport. China
already boasts 420,000 electric buses (and
18,000 buses and 21,000 electric taxis in
Shenzhen, noted engineer and investor John
Doerr).
Santiago de Chile has 455 electric buses, while
Africa now has its first
electric bus factory
in Uganda, Araya added.
| |
Business,
growth and development should not come at the
expense of health, clean air, resilience,
justice or equity, speakers stressed. In fact,
it behooves the private sector to step up and
“fix capitalism,” said Rebecca
Henderson, a capitalism rethinker.
“Business
is screwed if we don’t fix climate
change.
It’s going to be hard to make money when the
great coastal cities are under water and
millions are migrating north as the harvests
fail.”
This
is the impetus driving Varun
Sivaram,
chief technology officer of India’s renewables
company ReNew, to help reimagine
an Indian economy
powered by clean energy and the export of
efficient air conditioners, electric rickshaws
and other innovations. This requires India to
add thousands of gigawatts of solar and wind
(enough to power the US); electrify trains,
scooters, rickshaws and heavy industry; and
pursue radical efficiency. India’s big
advantage: an incredible 70 percent of the
country’s infrastructure in 2030 has yet to be
built, Sivaram said.
Overall,
businesses can grow while simultaneously
shrinking their carbon footprint if they let go
of the myths that sustainability comes at a
premium or that purpose and profit cannot go
hand-in-hand, said Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ingka
Group (IKEA) (a Race to Zero member). Success
isn’t a trade-off to doing the right thing
either, said Lisa
Jackson,
environment and social VP of Apple. “It’s a
false choice.”
That
said, not everyone can or should follow the same
path to zero emissions. Africa
and poor nations around the world should be
allowed to use more of the remaining carbon
budget to develop too,
said energy researcher Rose
Mutiso.
Rich countries, however, are increasingly
restricting their funding in Africa to
renewables, sending the message that developing
countries must limit their development, she
said.
| |
The New Forest
Generation | |
“Humans
have an extraordinary capacity to set goals and
strive to achieve them.” Inspired by President
John F. Kennedy's Moonshot, Prince
William
argued that this next decade requires
extraordinary ambition to tackle an even greater
challenge: the
Earthshot.
The Earthshot goals seek to protect and restore
nature, clean the air, revive oceans, build a
waste-free world and fix the climate— all in the
next decade. “It may seem overwhelming, but it
is possible,” Prince William said.
Other
Countdown contributors are already proving him
right, showcasing breakthroughs and innovations
that will help reach the Earthshot goals. One
such innovation, Restor,
is pioneering an open data platform for
ecosystem restoration. It aims to capture up to
30 percent of the excess carbon in the
atmosphere through carefully managed
restoration, by enabling on-the-ground
practitioners to share their successes,
failures, learnings and data, said Thomas
Crowther,
an ecosystem ecology professor.
Such
technological improvements must come with an
equally improved mindset, said climate and
gender activist Ernestine Leikeki
Sevidzem.
Members of her local community in Cameroon have
invested more time and money into forest
conservation as a result of their bee farming
training, but an equally important gain is their
newfound appreciation of how protecting their
local forests also protects their livelihoods
and income. “Planting trees is essential,”
Sevidzem said, “but we
need to raise a forest generation
that will thrive and live in harmony with
nature.”
| |
Each
and every person’s mindset is equally as
important as what governments and businesses do,
said Pope
Francis,
outlining three
key actions that we must take to protect our
planet.
Speaking from Vatican City, he outlined the
importance of greater comprehension of
environmental problems and their links to human
emissions, and the urgent need for safe drinking
water, nutrition and the transition to clean
energy. “The future is built today,” he said,
“and it is not built in isolation, but rather in
community and in harmony.”
Individuals
must also play their part by making the planet a
priority when casting their ballots across every
level of decision-making, said filmmaker
Ava
Duvernay.
Engaging politicians is one of the 16 steps the
new Count Us
In
initiative, with a
vision to mobilize 1 billion people to reduce
their carbon emissions
and challenge leaders to “deliver bold, global
change.” Aggregating data from four partner
platforms and recording over 727,086 kg CO2e
saved since launch, the initiative demonstrates
the considerable combined power of individual
action on climate change.
| |
Daring
Cities 2020: This
global
virtual forum
for urban leaders who are tackling the climate
crisis is underway and continues until October
28.
Responsible
Business Europe 2020: Reuters
is bringing
together
CEOs, CSOs, CFOs, heads of sustainability and
others to talk about how business can innovate,
invest and collaborate in putting the clean and
just transition at the heart of their
post-pandemic recoveries, on October 22 to 26.
Chile
2020 Green Hydrogen Summit: The
largest
hydrogen event
in Latin America, this virtual summit looks at
the opportunities and challenges posed by
hydrogen around the world. On November 3 and 4.
Local
Climate Solutions for Africa: ICLEI
Africa’s virtual
congress,
organized with the Covenant of Mayors in
Sub-Saharan Africa and others and co-hosted by
the Rwandan government, Kigali and the Rwandan
Association of Local Government Authorities,
from November 3 to 12.
Race
to Zero November Dialogues: The
High-Level Champions and Marrakech Partnership
are convening a series
of dialogues
looking at pathways to transformation, emissions
reductions and resilience across the economy and
world. From November 9 to 19.
Green
Horizon Summit: Looking
at the role of
green finance
in the Covid-19 recovery, hosted by the City of
London Corporation and the Green Finance
Institute, and supported by the World Economic
Forum. From November 9 to 11.
London
Climate Action Week: London’s
cultural institutions, policymakers,
professionals, communities, faith leaders and
academics and researchers discuss
solutions
for the transition to an equitable net zero
world. From November 14 to 20.
| |
The
poetic case for a carbon tax: Nadir
Godrej, managing director of India’s Godrej
Industries, surprised a New York Climate Week
event by reciting a brilliant and detailed poem
on the policies needed to cut emissions and
boost clean energy. It’s well worth a watch,
via Climate Home News.
Asset
owners set deep decarbonization goals:
The
UN
Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance,
made up of 30 global investors with $5 trillion
in assets under management, announced a goal to
reduce emissions by 16-29 percent by 2025,
compared to 2019. This will substantially
decouple the asset owners’ portfolio emissions
from the global economy.
Climate
League 2030 launches in Australia: This
new
league
of investors, private companies, banks and
insurers is committed to helping Australia
reduce its emissions by at least 230 million
tonnes per year in the next decade, in line with
limiting warming to 1.5°C.
Clean
energy lessons from China, India and Brazil:
These
emerging economies were the first, fourth and
sixth largest renewable energy producers in 2019
and now face an immense potential to become
major clean energy innovators, according to an
op-ed in
The Conversation.
With insight on India’s transition to LEDs,
China’s soaring solar and Brazil’s biofuels
success story.
Saudi
Arabia to plant trees: Saudi
Arabia is kicking off a campaign this month to
plant 10 million trees by the end of 2021 to
reduce desertification, as part of its Saudi
Arabia Vision 2030 programme, Esquire
reported.
Caribbean
clean investment gets a boost: IRENA
and the CARICOM Development Fund signed
an initial agreement
to provide Caribbean island states with
technical and financial assistance in developing
clean energy and reducing their reliance on
fossil fuels.
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