10 December 2020 - NPWJ News Digest on Environmental Justice & Human Rights

Articles

‘Green recovery’ from COVID-19 can slow climate change: UN environment report
UN News, 09 Dec 2020

Despite a brief dip in global carbon dioxide emissions as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the planet is still heading for a global temperature rise in excess of 3 degrees Celsius this century, a new United Nations report has revealed.

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‘That roof over there is mine’: Guatemala’s flooded communities
Aljazeera, 09 Dec 2020

The Guatemalan Coordinator for the Reduction of Disaster (CONRED) estimates that there are 234 communities left incommunicado following the rains that followed Hurricanes Eta and then Iota in November. CONRED lists 2.4 million people affected by flooding, with more than 270,000 in temporary shelters. However, David Deleon, a spokesman for CONRED, acknowledges that they do not yet know the total amount of loss and damage to property. 

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Madagascar: Authorities must drop spurius charges against environmental activist
Amnesty International , 09 Dec 2020

Razafimalala, a well-known campaigner against the illegal trafficking of rosewood and other timber, is facing charges of destruction of public buildings and arson related to a 2016 incident which he was never part of.  Razafimalala spent 10 months in jail between 2016 and 2017 for the related crime but later acquitted after witnesses submitted that he was never part of the said crime.

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Shift to a Not-So-Frozen North Is Well Underway, Scientists Warn
The New York Times, 08 Dec 2020

The Arctic continued its unwavering shift toward a new climate in 2020, as the effects of near-record warming surged across the region, shrinking ice and snow cover and fueling extreme wildfires, scientists said Tuesday in an annual assessment of the region.

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Developing countries raise climate ambitions to plotpath out of pandemic
UN News, 08 Dec 2020

UNDP is supporting 115 developing countries, to enhance their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – the specific steps that each country intends to take to help meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which committed the international community to restrict global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and aim, if possible, for 1.5C.

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