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25 May 2023 - NPWJ News Digest on Environmental Justice and Human Rights
Articles
WHO issues urgent call for global climate action to resilient create sustainable health systems
World Health Organization, 24 May 2023
Today, at the World Health Organization (WHO), panelists made an impassioned plea for urgent climate action as it hosted a Strategic Roundtable on the Role of the Health Communities in Climate Action: taking stock and moving forward at the World Health Assembly. “The most pressing reasons for urgent climate action are the impacts not in the future, but right now, on health” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, as he opened today’s Strategic Roundtable. “The climate crisis is a health crisis, fuelling outbreaks, contributing to higher rates of noncommunicable diseases, and threatening to overwhelm our health workforce and health infrastructure.” Climate change is emerging as one of the greatest health challenges of the 21st century. It is bringing more deadly extreme weather events, increasing non-communicable diseases, and is facilitating the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.
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Green light for global greenhouse gas tracking network
UN News, 24 May 2023
The landmark decision comes as heat-trapping greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels – “higher than at any time over the last 800,000 years”, WMO warned. The new Global Greenhouse Gas Watch will combine observations from Earth and from space with modelling, to fill critical information gaps. It will build on WMO’s experience in coordinating international collaboration on weather prediction. The agency said that the exchange of data will be “free and unrestricted”, in support of the Paris Agreement on climate change. According to WMO, between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate from the main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, rose by nearly 50 per cent. “We know from our measurements that greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels”, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “The increase in carbon dioxide levels from 2020 to 2021 was higher than the average growth rate over the past decade and methane saw the biggest year-on-year jump since measurements started.
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German police raid climate activists’ homes
Politico, 24 May 2023
German police early Wednesday morning raided homes belonging to members of the so-called Last Generation climate activist group across the country, according to local authorities. Authorities are investigating allegations that a total of seven defendants, aged 22 to 38, formed and supported a criminal organization, according to a statement from the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, which is responsible for the case. The investigators accuse the defendants of having collected a total of €1.4 million via a fundraising campaign, which the Last Generation is said to have used mainly to commit crimes. According to the statement, the aim of the raids was to uncover information about the group's structure and financing. Two of the suspects are alleged to have planned criminal acts themselves, as they are accused of trying to sabotage an oil pipeline from Trieste in Italy to Ingolstadt in Germany last April.
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France bans short-haul flights in effort to fight climate change
Al Jazeera, 24 May 2023
France has formally banned domestic flights on short routes that can be covered by train in less than two-and-a-half hours in a move aimed at reducing airline emissions. Max Boycoff, chairman of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said the French law will be a test case for governments around the world. “While this material impact is quite minimal – only 2 percent of global emissions come from aviation – in symbolic ways, it has a lot of purchase,” he told Al Jazeera. “The way in which this generates conversations, much like the one we’re having now, can open up further possibilities for emissions cuts elsewhere.” He noted rail travel represents about one-third of the hydrocarbon emissions compared with flights.The change, which came into effect on Tuesday, will mostly rule out air trips between Paris and regional hubs such as Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, with connecting flights unaffected.
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Global heating will push billions outside ‘human climate niche’
The Guardian, 22 May 2023
Global heating will drive billions of people out of the “climate niche” in which humanity has flourished for millennia, a study has estimated, exposing them to unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather. The world is on track for 2.7C of heating with current action plans and this would mean 2 billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past. Up to 1 billion people could choose to migrate to cooler places, the scientists said, although those areas remaining within the climate niche would still experience more frequent heatwaves and droughts. However, urgent action to lower carbon emissions and keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cut the number of people pushed outside the climate niche by 80%, to 400 million.
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Brazil to set tougher climate change target, sources say
Reuters, 22 May 2023
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva plans to commit Brazil to a more ambitious climate change goal this year, addressing criticisms of the previous target set by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, two sources told Reuters. In 2021, amid growing global outrage over Bolsonaro's light-touch stewardship of the Amazon rainforest, his government pledged to cut greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2030, up from a previous commitment of 43%. But Bolsonaro's government used a higher, 2005 baseline - a move that made it easier for Brazil to reach its target compared with the previous pledge and that was widely criticized by environmentalists. Brazilian lobby group Climate Observatory calculated that the Bolsonaro target would allow an additional 400 million tonnes of greenhouse gas to be emitted, compared to the prior target.
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Climate change causes 2m deaths in 50 years; poor suffer most: UN
Al Jazeera, 22 May 2023
Extreme weather has caused the deaths of 2 million people and $4.3 trillion in economic damage over the past half a century, a report by the United Nations finds. According to the new figures published on Monday from the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), 11,778 weather-related disasters have occurred from 1970 to 2021, and they have surged over that period. The report found that more than 90 percent of deaths reported worldwide due to these disasters took place in developing countries. “The most vulnerable communities unfortunately bear the brunt of weather, climate and water-related hazards,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement. Cyclone Mocha, which wreaked havoc in Myanmar and Bangladesh last week, exemplified this reality, Taalas said.
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Heat insurance offers climate change lifeline to poor workers
Reuters, 22 May 2023
A bright sun beat down on the sprawling Indian market where Kamlaben Ashokbhai Patni sat worrying about the brass jewellery on display in her wooden stall. When the heat rises, the metal blackens. Plastic pearls become unglued. "The colour of the jewel starts to fade as it becomes hotter, making it worthless and akin to junk", said the 56-year-old mother of four, on a late April day when temperatures simmered around 38 Celsius (100F) in the western city of Ahmedabad. Climate change drove heat in the city to a record-breaking 48C (118F) in 2016. Last year, it peaked at nearly 46C (114.8F). Such high temperatures could mean a hit to business. But Patni is now among 21,000 self-employed women in Gujarat state enrolled in one of the world's first insurance schemes for extreme heat, launched this month by nonprofit Arsht-Rock Foundation Resilience Center in partnership with microinsurance startup Blue Marble and a trade union.
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