European peatlands could turn from carbon sinks to sources as a quarter have reached levels of dryness unsurpassed in a record stretching back 2,000 years, according to a new study. This trend of “widespread” and “substantial” drying corresponds to recent climate change, both natural and human-caused, but may also be exacerbated by the peatlands being used for agriculture and fuel.
As global temperatures rise, warmer air and oceans are expected to fuel stronger hurricanes, with dangerous consequences.
While diplomats in Bonn work on the operating manual for the Paris Agreement, Washington ponders withdrawing from climate action.
The Climate Diplomacy platform has been dedicated to monitoring and supporting the climate debate, by gathering and promoting stories, which touch on different aspects of climate diplomacy. Thus, to end the year on a positive note and maintain the motivation for 2017, we’ve complied our top ten climate diplomacy stories published on our platform over the past year.
Recognizing the risks to development posed by climate change and lessons learned on integrating environmental governance and peacebuilding, implementation of Liberia’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) with cooperation from climate finance institutions offers an opportunity to plan and create an environment for sustainable peace, explains Jonathan Rozen.
Sustaining peace in Kenya’s Kajiado County requires looking beyond climate change and recognizing the role of land privatization in pastoralists’ vulnerability. Author Jonathan Rozen illustrates how climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating challenges such as economic precariousness, water shortage and violent land disputes.
In his speech at COP22, U.S. State Secretary John Kerry highlighted that "there’s nothing partisan about climate change for the world scientists who are near unanimous in their conclusion that climate change is real, it is happening, human beings for the most part are causing it, and we will have increasing catastrophic impacts on our way of life if we don’t take the dramatic steps necessary to reduce the carbon footprint of our civilization." At COP23 in November 2017, he wants to attend as "Citizen Kerry".
This article finds evidence that “risk of armed-conflict outbreak is enhanced by climate related disaster occurrence in ethnically fractionalized countries”. The authors state that while each conflict is the result of a very context-specific mixture of factors, natural disasters triggered by anthropogenic climate change might act as a threat multiplier.
For the abstract and full article please see here.
In this report, Luca Bergamaschi, Nick Mabey, Jonathan Gaventa and Camilla Born from E3G explore practical actions that EU foreign policy institutions could undertake to manage climate risk and an orderly global transition. Read on for a summary of the report here.
Closer collaboration on alternative energy with the US could help China accelerate the exploitation of its shale gas reserves
Sino-US plans to work together on climate change could trigger a new shale gas boom, fuelled by US technology and Chinese cash, say experts.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), Tuesday blamed the widespread insecurity in different parts of the country on the phenomenon of climate change.
The remarkable silence of this year's presidential candidates on the issue of global warming was all the more notable during Monday's debate on foreign policy.