2 August 2023, The Guardian: Australia is not being ‘singled out’ by Unesco’s in-danger recommendation for the Great Barrier Reef. Australia has the wealth, technology and resources to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Until this happens, it is not doing all it can to protect the reef. The latest update from Unesco on the Great Barrier Reef world heritage area has been widely misreported as a decision to not place the reef on the world heritage “in danger” list. In reality, Unesco has simply postponed the next consideration of an in-danger listing until the 2024 meeting of the world heritage committee. Unesco has acknowledged some recent improvements reported to them by the commonwealth and Queensland governments, such as a promised ban on gill nets as well as some additional investments in culling starfish and small-scale reef restoration. But buried deep within the diplomatic language of Unesco’s latest assessment is an acknowledgment of the slow speed of progress being made on meeting targets for reducing coastal pollution, and of Australia’s inadequate responses to the escalating impacts of climate change. Read more here
Tag Archives: Extreme Events
11 July 2023, DW Global Media Forum: Climate change in India: A growing environmental crisis. Intense monsoon rains have lashed parts of northern India over the past few days, leaving a trail of death and destruction, as well as rendering many areas inaccessible. The state of Himachal Pradesh has been the hardest hit. Television footage showed landslides and flash floods, washing away vehicles, destroying buildings and ripping down bridges. According to the India Meteorological Department, torrential rains across the country in the first week of July have already produced about 2% more rainfall than normal. The agency has forecast more rain across large parts of northern India in the coming days. “The region, which is usually one of the driest, has received disproportionately high rains,” an department official told DW… 2022 extreme weather events. In 2022, the Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based public interest research and advocacy organization, tracked extreme weather events in India. It found out that India on the whole experienced extreme weather events on 314 out of the 365 days, meaning that at least one extreme weather event was reported in some part of India on each of these days. The report concluded that these events caused more than 3,000 deaths in 2022, affected about 2 million hectares (4.8 million acres) of crop area, killed more than 69,000 animals used as livestock and destroyed roughly 420,000 houses. Read more here
3 July 2023, Reuters: World hits record land, sea temperatures as climate change fuels 2023 extremes. The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing … Continue reading →
17 May 2023, The Conversation: Global warming to bring record hot year by 2028 – probably our first above 1.5°C limit. One year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there’s a two-in-three chance a … Continue reading →