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Fern and 15 EU NGOs working on climate, environment, social justice and sustainable development issues have come together to welcome EU support for partner countries. The NGO statement in support of local communities, vulnerable groups and those on the frontlines of the pandemic in partner countries asks the EU global response to reinforce the Green Deal, and calls for solidarity, transparency, inclusiveness and equity at all stages of the response. Importantly, NGO partners in target regions stand ready to help.
Since the pandemic broke out, European leaders have agreed the Global EU response to COVID-19, recovery, and stimulus packages to mitigate the social, economic and health impacts of the crisis in partner countries. A growing number of stakeholders, including EU environment ministers and the European Parliament are asking that the initiative be complemented by stronger measures on climate and the environment.
The links between environmental destruction, human encroachment into habitat and viral diseases has been recognised for years. Increasingly, the world’s land is being used for agriculture, mining and infrastructure, with tropical forests bearing the brunt of the dramatic changes, suffering high rates of agricultural conversion. Any EU support for recovery in partner countries must therefore integrate climate, biodiversity objectives and Sustainable Development Goals.
As EU NGOs have indicated, local communities and civil society groups should be closely involved in monitoring progress to ensure that commitments become concrete action, to avoid duplication and to improve accountability.
Fern’s partners are ready to offer their help: by giving practical advice, opening their address books, relaying information to far-flung communities and ensuring those playing a crucial role maintaining households throughout the crisis are fully involved.
Foundation for Community Initiatives (FCI) and SDI Liberia providing Covid-19 care packages to rural forest communities
Partner NGOs already have networks that could be put in motion to contribute to the COVID response. For instance, across the four forest regions of the Central African Republic, a heavily aid-dependent and post-conflict country, Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement Durable (CIEDD) is coordinating members of a civil society platform (Gestion Durable des Ressources Naturelles et de l’Environnement: GDRNE) to build on existing ties with Indigenous and local communities not only to exchange information on ongoing consultations for the Voluntary Partnership Agreement, REDD+ and Nationally Determined Contributions but also to inform them of the pandemic and help them prepare. In Liberia, the Foundation for Community Initiatives and Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) are now working with some 50 communities in Sinoe, Grand Bassa, Grand Gedeh, Margibi, Gbarpulo, Nimba, Lofa and Rivercess Counties to create awareness and help with COVID-19 response. In Cameroon, the Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED) has approached 20 rural communities in Southern Dja and in the Ocean. Such efforts exist in other regions also.
These efforts go hand in hand with ensuring continued responsible management of natural resources and preventing unsustainably and illegally sourced forest commodities. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, forest-monitoring organisations Observatoire de la Gouvernance Forestière (OGF) and Réseau des observateurs indépendants des ressources naturelles (RENOI) are set to carry out COVID awareness-raising in at-risk forest areas, and will also assess COVID’s impact on forest management and governance commitments under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI). Across the Congo Basin, fears that a proper lack of oversight may put forests and forest peoples in danger are looming despite emerging initiatives.
Central African countries' commitments to landscape restoration have the potential to deliver about three times more the climate benefits of all GCF allocations to date… These Central African commitments represent 24% of global commitments and 28% of African countries' commitments under the Bonn challenges...
The Central African Forests Observatory (OFAC) presents an updated assessment of the state of protected areas in the ten member countries of the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC). Join us on 29 June 2021, 11:00 AM dans Bruxelles for the launch of this publication. Interpretation English-French will be available.
4 June 2021, Nairobi/Rome - Leaders in global politics, science, communities, religion and culture joined hands today to officially kick off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - a rallying call for the protection and revival of millions of hectares of ecosystems all around the world for the benefit of people and nature.
Today's World Environment Day sees the start of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly for the period 2021 to 2030. It follows the UN Decade on Biodiversity which came to an end in 2020. The goal in the coming decade is to halt the ongoing degradation of ecosystems and begin their restoration. Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze will give a video message at a high-level virtual event organised by Pakistan, host of this year's World Environment Day, to mark the launch of the new UN Decade
Biodiversity is under immense threat. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 1 million species of plants and animals are facing extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019). Moreover, without such action, the rate of species extinction will accelerate.
Fiscal policies with the right incentives can be a powerful tool to help governments reduce deforestation and forest degradation and promote the sustainability of forests, according to a new report from the CIF Forest Investment Program (FIP) and the World Bank, commissioned by the CIF Evaluation and Learning (E&L) Initiative.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has launched a new report on how global finance can be aligned with sustainable development in order to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and deliver a COVID-19 economic recovery.
Following the first ministerial meeting of the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue, 24 countries have endorsed a statement committing to working together to protect the world’s precious forests while also promoting sustainable trade.
April was a busy month for the park, with new radio systems installed for security and ranger operations across our field posts, with ongoing checks during the month of May. This new system will permit permanent, voice contact with all our key sites, and even ranger teams in the field!
This year's Carbon Pricing Leadership Report comes as much of the world continues to grapple with the global COVID-19 crisis that has ravaged communities , overwhelmed health care systems, closed borders, and brought economies to a near halt over the past year. As future generations look back at this time, they will see this pandemic as one of humanity's greatest tragedies, but they will also see our resilience.
Leaders from the UN, the private sector, national and local governments, youth and other organizations have called for countries, businesses, cities, and civil society groups to put forward “Energy Compacts” to show how they will contribute to achieving the goal of clean, affordable energy for all by 2030 (SDG 7) and net-zero emissions by 2050.
The UNCCD Secretariat and Global Mechanism provide technical advice and capacity building support in this process through a Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded and UNEP (UN Environment) implemented Global Support Programme (GSP). GEF has recently approved two million USD funding to help the countries complete the next reporting cycle in 2021-2022. A new reporting platform planned for the project would ensure that a higher level of accurate assessment and analysis of land degradation trends at national and regional levels is achieved and that policy makers can make informed land management decisions.
...but trade, environmental protection and social justice don’t have to be mutually exclusive, says Chiara Vitali. The doubts about the climate crisis that Boris Johnson used to express in his newspaper columns are a thing of the past.
The virtual meeting of the CBFP Scientific College was held online on June 26, 2021 from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. After the Co-Leader Richary Atyi welcomed all participants and introduced them to the agenda of the meeting, the floor was given to CBFP Facilitator Dr. Christian Ruck representing the German Facilitation to the partnership. The Facilitator gave a short overview of the activities the Facilitation has pursued since the last virtual meeting of the College. Please download the minutes of the meeting.
The event will put a spotlight on how to promote the climate and environment agendas in West and Central Africa region, home to the second largest tropical rainforest in the world, but facing major challenges such as poverty, inequality, food insecurity, weaknesses in governance, institutions and infrastructure.
Our study suggests that reinforcing actions are needed to prevent the initial degradation that leads to forest clearance in 45% of the cases... This approach can be applied to future Landsat data (from 2020) automatically and is intended to be adapted to Sentinel-2 data (available since 2015) for TMF monitoring with higher temporal frequency and finer spatial resolution.
The African Development Bank and the Association of African Development Finance Institutions are hosting a virtual workshop titled “Mainstreaming Climate Finance Actions in National Development Finance Institutions.”
Investor and trade interest in Africa remains strong despite challenges around Covid-19, senior officials from the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom said at the recently concluded annual conference of the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.
Thank you for your interest in our webinar series, “Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change: Reconciling the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Recordings of both webinars are now available...
Still Only One Earth: Lessons from 50 years of UN sustainable development policy. Over-exploitation of natural resources harms the health of ecosystems and the wellbeing of people. In the face of environmental crises and growing inequality, we need to act, including developing extended producer responsibility and supply chain legislation, guaranteeing green public procurement, supporting technical innovation to enhance resource circularity, and adopting decision-making processes that include and respect women, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities.
The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, the Africa Union Commission and the African Tax Administration Forum will launch the 2021 Tax Transparency in Africa (TTIA) report on 26 May 2021 at 9:00 GMT.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has spoken of the multiple disasters the world is currently facing, which have only been accentuated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Ensuring corporate accountability for environmental impacts in the upcoming EU directive on sustainable corporate governance. As the European Union develops its future sustainable corporate governance directive, a number of civil society organisations published a briefing that outlines why and how environmental protection must be integrated into companies’ due diligence requirements alongside respect for human rights.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) today published a new energy scenario. It models for the first time how the world can achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and limit global warming to 1.5ºC. A group of environmental and social NGOs campaigning to stop the EU burning forests for energy says this is a step forward; but they also criticise the IEA for relying heavily on bioenergy to meet climate goals and for failing to halt the use of land for energy production. Bioenergy is a false climate solution that adds emissions to the atmosphere, exacerbates biodiversity loss and negatively impacts food security.
Here, we report responses of structurally intact old-growth lowland tropical forests inventoried within the African Tropical Rainforest Observatory Network (AfriTRON). We use 100 long-term inventory plots from six countries each measured at least twice prior to and once following the 2015–2016 El Niño event.
The CEO of the Global Center for Adaptation (GCA) contends that “climate disasters have doubled” during the last 20 years, CNBC reported Wednesday. Patrick Verkooijen, who runs the GCA, which describes itself as a “solutions broker to accelerate, innovate and scale adaptation action for a climate-resilient world,” told CNBC the coronavirus pandemic had been a “wake-up call” for the world.
China, 23rd April 2021: Global leaders from China’s tourism industry have pledged their commitment to tackling the illegal trade of wildlife by signing the Tourism Industry’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Convention created by the World Tourism Federation (WTA) and China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA), at a dedicated event hosted by TRAFFIC’s China office.
HANOI, 21 May 2021 – Today, TRAFFIC is urging consumers to adopt active lifestyles and only use proven medicines as alternatives to tiger bone glue, in a bid to reduce demand for tiger products in Vietnam.
Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) erupted on Saturday killing at least 22 people and sending thousands of others fleeing to neighboring Rwanda.
The pandemic has reminded us how much we depend on each other. How much we depend on nature. How much our fate depends on our relationships with nature. How much we need a good political will, combined with collective action, and sustained investment. When these come together, we can make a difference.
There has been intense criticism of the European Union (EU) Renewable Energy Directive (RED) for leading to adverse impacts on forests in Europe and beyond. To tackle these concerns, the EU developed sustainability criteria that forest biomass must meet to be counted towards EU renewable energy targets (and therefore be eligible for subsidies).
Land is the foundation of our societies and is a cornerstone to global food security and environmental health, zero hunger, poverty eradication and affordable energy. It underpins the success of the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Developmen, and yet this finite resource is under existential threat. On 14 June event will be broadcast live on UN WebTV and streamed to UNCCD Facebook page 14.00-17.00 and 19.00-22:00 GMT.
This journey for ELYX, the UN’s Digital Ambassador, begins on World Bee Day, 20 May 2021, with more stops ahead – the International Biodiversity Day on 22 May and World Environment Day on 5 June, and finally a celebration of Desertification and Drought Day on 17 June
On 18 May 2021, the Wilson Center organized a discussion focused on the role of the Green Climate Fund in scaling up finance for climate action. Ambassador Mark Green, the President of the Wilson Center, opened the discussion with a call to action : “the climate crisis is already here, and so is our opportunity to respond. The world will face huge costs in adapting to climate change, up to $500 billion per year by 2050.” He then raised the biggest unanswered question in climate finance : why does adaptation currently attract only 20% of all climate finance?
The studies aim to assess the possibilities for remuneration of environmental and social services provided by certified sustainable forest management companies in the Congo Basin, according to the Vertdeep platform (© Venturexpert) based on the sale of positive impact certificates.