*[Enwl-eng] here is the latest High-level Climate Champions news!

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Apr 2, 2021, 8:49:17 AM4/2/21
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UN Climate Change
Global Climate Action
1 April 2021
High Level Climate Champions
Newsletter
The Resilience Front-Runners
People and communities around the world are already building their own resilience to the impacts of climate change. This work must be locally-led, because it varies across communities and geographies. But the solutions also need to be scaled up to benefit the billions of people already on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

“The real transformation comes when we connect the local with the global in terms of resources, aspiration and ambition,” Sheela Patel, founder of Slum Dwellers International, told Tuesday’s event Race to Resilience: Meet the initiatives mobilizing action.

Efforts to build resilience should also create the space and opportunities for young people to share their ideas, and provide the education and jobs that allow them to get involved, said Labiba Samad, from the Least Developed Countries Universities Consortium on Climate Change. “Climate resilience, adaptation, mitigation and even disaster risk reduction needs to be addressed everywhere, but there are no jobs or roles for addressing this,” she said. 

The first 20 Race to Resilience partner initiatives, announced during the event, aim to support, develop and expand locally-led work. The initiatives have a combined global reach of over 1 billion people, and focus on issues ranging from water stress to disaster warnings to mangroves to insurance. 

NbScale4Resilience, for example, provides software that helps financial institutions make more informed decisions for financing smallholder farmers, and that informs smallholder farmers about nature-based solutions. It aims to make 100,000 smallholder farmers more resilient in Ecuador, Senegal, Guatemala, Benin and Rwanda. “We have to find solutions at scale, while listening to local voices,” said Sabrina Nagel during the event. 

Risk-informed Early Action Partnership, similarly, aims to have 1 billion people covered by improved early warning systems, and to increase investment in early warning systems that deliver information coming from ‘last-mile’ communities. “The so-called last-mile should actually be the first mile from the design stage up to the implementation stage,” said Emma Flaherty. 

The Race to Resilience looks forward to welcoming more initiatives in the coming months! For more information on how to join, read about our criteria, fill out an expression of interest, or email resil...@climatechampions.team.
The Water Breakthrough
Access to clean water is a universal human right, because it is fundamental to our health and life. 

Yet today, 2.2 billion still lack basic safely managed drinking water service and 3 billion lack hand-washing facilities, according to our Climate Action Pathway for water. The water sector’s emissions account for 10 percent of global greenhouse gases and are on track to outstrip sustainable supply by 40 percent by 2030. This will be driven by the growing demand for evermore scarce supplies. On top of that, nine out of 10 natural disasters - exacerbated by the climate crisis - affect water, such as droughts and floods. 

That makes the water sector a crucial player in both the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience. The 50 largest water utilities supply over 1 billion people. So the more they emit, the more unstable their water supplies and customers become. But the more they mitigate and build resilience, the better and healthier the future will be for all. 

In a zero-emissions future, freshwater resources will be protected, restored and reused, along with wastewater. Operations will be powered entirely by renewable energy. Regenerative agriculture will be a global norm. And half of freshwater ecosystems and inland waters will be sequestering CO2, reversing biodiversity loss and supporting resilience and livelihoods for nearby communities.

Change is underway. Ten water utilities have joined the Race to Zero, including Chile’s Aguas Andinas, France’s Suez and Australia’s Yara Valley Water. Four UK water companies have published a sector-wide plan for reaching net-zero carbon by 2030. To accelerate a system breakthrough, we are challenging water and wastewater utilities responsible for 20 percent of the global supply to join the race by COP26 and help drive full decarbonization of their services in 20 countries by 2030.  

In the Race to Resilience, we welcomed the Water Resilience Coalition as an inaugural partner initiative. The coalition of 19 major businesses has already raised its goals to deliver positive action to 100 water-stressed basins (from 30), and to ensure resilient water supplies and sanitation services to 100 million people (from 30 million). 

That is the type of exponential ambition that will drive our transformation to zero emissions and greater resilience. 
Host Your Own TEDx Countdown Event
TED is inviting communities around the world - schools, universities, businesses, nonprofits, city representative offices and more - to share their own climate solutions by curating and hosting TEDx Countdown events between 30 October and 31 December. 

Countdown is a global initiative powered by TED and Future Stewards to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, turning ideas into action. TEDx Countdown events are special gatherings to amplify the moment and demonstrate local and global climate solutions. The events can vary in format – virtual gatherings with or without original speakers, community brainstorms, turn-key gatherings, showcases of climate solution technologies, or even volunteer actions contributing to positive change.

If you'd like to join the Countdown and organize your own TEDx Countdown event, you can get in touch with mihika...@leadersquest.org or apply here.
In Case You Missed It
  • Taking stock of net zero: Nearly two-thirds of countries, 13 percent of cities with more than 500,000 people and at least one-fifth of the 2,000 largest public companies are now committed to reaching net zero emissions, according to the first such quantitative analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and Oxford Net Zero. However, the quality of these commitments varies hugely, with only 20 percent of targets meeting the Race to Zero’s minimum criteria. 

  • Vision 2050: To reach zero emissions by 2050, business leaders will need to reinvent capitalism to reward true value creation, focus on building long-term resilience, and move beyond the principle of do-no-harm to regeneration, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The report sets out nine transformation pathways covering essential business activities such as energy, transport, products and material, financial products and services, health and wellbeing, and water and sanitation. 

  • Future public transport: Green investments in public transport systems will create 4.6 million additional jobs by 2030 across 100 cities, and protect tens of millions of workers in lower income and service sector jobs, according to research from C40. The investments would cut air pollution in some cities by up to 45 percent - reducing health impacts - and cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2030.  

  • Urban opportunities: Cities in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa could help cut annual emissions by an extra 87-96 percent by 2050 if they adopt existing solutions such as retrofitting buildings and transforming urban mobility, the Coalition for Urban Transitions found. Creating more compact and better connected cities helps reduce urban poverty and inequality at the same time. 

  • Renewable cities in 2021: One billion people, or a quarter of the world’s urban population, live in a city with a renewable energy target and/or policy - a sign that city leaders are increasingly using renewables to help fight energy poverty, tackle air pollution and climate change, and improve public health and wellbeing, according to REN21. Over 800 cities are now committed to net zero emissions - an eight-fold increase from 2019.

  • The energy pathway to 1.5°C: Proven technologies for transitioning to a net-zero energy system largely already exist, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Renewable power, green hydrogen and modern energy will dominate energy supplies in that future, along with energy efficiency and greater use of power in buildings, industry and transport.

  • Climate Action 100+ benchmark: While corporate climate ambition is growing, investor group Climate Action 100+ has found that companies still have a long way to go. None of the companies assessed in its first benchmark performed at a high level across the nine key indicators and metrics. None had fully disclosed how they intend to achieve their goals for net zero emissions by 2050, either. 

  • Latin America and Caribbean Regional Climate Week 2021: The organizing partners are accepting expressions of interest in joining the Virtual Thematic Sessions for Regional Climate Week, on 11-14 May and hosted by the Dominican Republic. Regional Climate Weeks are an opportunity for national and subnational governments, indigenous communities, the private sector and civil society to shape the implementation and delivery of national Paris climate plans. Expressions of interest are due by 7 April.
Mark Your Calendars
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