As a member of the Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance, we recently published our final report on mobilizing financial services to support Canada’s economic prosperity through the global transition to cleaner growth. Our recommendations seek to connect the dots between Canada’s climate objectives, its economic ambitions and its investment imperatives. The overriding message is that…
The green belt of tropical rainforests that covers equatorial regions of the Americas, Africa, Indonesia and Southeast Asia is turning brown. Since 1990, Indonesia has lost 50% of its original forest, the Amazon 30% and Central Africa 14%. Fires, logging, hunting, road building and fragmentation have heavily damaged more than 30% of those that remain.…
June was hot. Really hot. That much we knew. What we didn’t know was just how hot it was – not just in parts of Europe, but around the world. New analysis by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, shows that temperature records weren’t just broken for…
The evidence of the climate crisis is now undeniable. But state responses to climate change often have social and political motivations, rather than addressing the realities of this threat. Since the 1980s, preventative action has been internationally stifled by the industrial agenda of a conservative political agenda which has maintained intensive subsidies to the fossil…
These are difficult times in farm country. Historic spring rains – 600% above average in some places – inundated fields and homes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that this year’s corn and soybean crops will be the smallest in four years, due partly to delayed planting. Even before the floods, farm bankruptcies were already…
From the school strikes for climate, to Extinction Rebellion protests and calls for a Green New Deal, citizens around the world are putting pressure on their governments to prevent global warming more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. In the UK, these efforts have met with some success – the government has declared a “climate emergency”…
Climate change is the fastest-growing global threat to World Heritage. However, no systematic approach to assess the climate vulnerability of each particular property has existed – until now. Our newly developed tool, the Climate Vulnerability Index, was showcased this week at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan. This CVI provides a systematic…