This weekly round-up brings you key climate news from the past seven days, including an update on the ongoing, fourth mass coral bleaching event and damage from Typhoon Trami in the Philippines.
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1. Over 80% of Nations Miss Deadline to Submit Plans to Preserve Biodiversity Ahead of COP16
Over 80% of the nearly 200 nations that two years ago committed to preserve and restore global biodiversity have missed a deadline to submit national pledges on how they plan to achieve it.
Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) were slated to submit their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) before the commencement of the United Nations 16th biodiversity conference, known as COP16, starting today in Cali, Colombia. These plans are expected to detail how countries intend to achieve targets and commitments outlined in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a landmark agreement adopted by 196 countries at COP15 in 2022 under the CBD.
However, as of Sunday, only 32 out of the 193 CBD Parties – including the European Union – had submitted their revised and updated plans.
Only five of the 17 megadiverse countries, which together are home to about 70% of the world’s biodiversity, produced NBSAPs: Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico. Canada, Italy, France and Japan were the only G7 countries to submit plans. The UK and Germany did not submit a plan, while the US is not a signatory.
Colombia, this year’s summit host, also failed to meet the submission deadline but said it would present its plan during the meeting.
Read more here.
2. ‘We’re Playing With Fire’: World on Track for 3.1C Warming, UN Report Warns
Nations must collectively commit to slashing emissions by almost half in the next decade for a chance to stay within the Paris Agreement’s global warming threshold, a new United Nations report has warned.
Published Thursday, the Emissions Gap Report looks at how much nations must promise to cut off greenhouse gases, and deliver, in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – national plans for emissions reduction that each signatory to the Paris Agreement is required to set up and update every five years. The next submissions are due in early 2025.
Current pledges put the world on track for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1C over the course of this century, according to the report. The UN warned that cuts of 42% by 2030 and 57% by 2035 are needed to get on track for 1.5C of warming. For a 2C pathway, emissions must fall 28% by 2030 and 37% by 2035 from 2019 levels.
The report argues that the 1.5C goal is still technically feasible, owing to increased deployment of solar and wind energy.
Read more here.
3. ‘A People’s COP’: UN Chief Urges COP16 Delegates to ‘Convert Words into Action’ to Save Dwindling Biodiversity
As global biodiversity keeps vanishing at an alarming rate, it is time for governments to “convert words into actions” and deliver on their nature conservation pledges, the UN chief said during the opening ceremony of the UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia.
Some 15,000 attendees, including a dozen heads of state, 103 ministers and over 1,000 international journalists flocked to the city to attend the summit, also known as COP16. It is the first summit since countries adopted the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) two years ago.
The GBF includes four overall goals for mid-century and a series of 23 more urgent and elaborate targets to meet by 2030 set the path to “halt and reverse nature loss” and safeguard global biodiversity in the coming decades.
Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) were slated to submit their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) before the commencement of the summit. But as of Sunday, only 32 out of the 193 CBD Parties – including the European Union – had submitted their revised and updated plans.
Read more here.
4. At Least 14 Dead As Typhoon Trami Makes Landfall in the Philippines
At least 14 people are dead and thousands have fled their homes as Typhoon Trami made landfall in the northeastern part of the Philippines’ main Luzon island on Thursday morning.
Over 500 mm of rainfall, the equivalent of more than a month’s average, has been recorded in some northern provinces, flooding streets and entire villages and prompting the evacuation of some 32,000 people. Of the 14 casualties accounted for so far, 12 were in central Naga city, home to nearly 210,000 people, Reuters reported.
Typhoons – also known as hurricanes in the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific – are a rather common weather phenomenon, though there has been a significant increase in their intensity in recent decades, which scientific observations link to anthropogenic climate change.
Read more here.
5. Global Coral Bleaching Event Now Largest on Record, NOAA Says
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in April declared that the world was undergoing its fourth global bleaching event, the second in the past ten years. At the time, at least 53 countries had been experiencing mass bleaching. The number has since gone up to 72.
This is the largest mass bleaching event on record, the US agency told Reuters last week. Satellite images revealed that a staggering 77% of the world’s coral reefs have been affected by bleaching across all the regions where warm-water corals live: the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
“This event is still increasing in spatial extent and we’ve broken the previous record by more than 11% in about half the amount of time,” said NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello. “This could potentially have serious ramifications for the ultimate response of these reefs to these bleaching events.”
Read more here.
