The 1.5°C Reader
8 NOVEMBER 2021
Climate justice means many things to many people, but at its core is the recognition that those who are disproportionately impacted by climate change tend not to be those most responsible for causing it. Climate change is not only an environmental problem: it interacts with social systems, privileges and embedded injustices, and affects people of different class, race, gender, geography and generation unequally. The climate solutions proposed by climate justice advocates aim to address long-standing systemic injustices.
10 NOVEMBER 2021
(...) It’s become increasingly clear that numerous Western outlets have more journalists here than many entire countries, sometimes significantly so. Access and exclusion have been huge stories at COP26—some of the countries most immediately threatened by the climate crisis were unable to send their leaders, never mind activists and concerned citizens—for reasons ranging from cost to COVID to both. There are excellent journalists from the Global South on the ground here (indeed, I featured some of their work in my dispatch for CJR on Tuesday) and many more covering COP remotely; many Western journalists, meanwhile, have shone a spotlight on very vulnerable countries, both in their coverage and during live events such as those at the Climate Hub. Still, as far as physical representation goes, media is very clearly part of the broader, highly unequal trend.
8 NOVEMBER 2021
"Le-Anne Roper, lead negotiator on loss and damage for the Alliance of Small Island States, wants a new finance goal for loss and damage: 'It is the only way we will be able to give our people a better chance at surviving.'"
8 NOVEMBER 2021
"#COP26 turned out primarily to be a public relations exercise for a number of leaders, and the type of ambitious commitments that we require in order to address these existential issues, those commitments weren’t made.” — Prime Minister Gaston Browne, Antigua & Barbuda
9 NOVEMBER 2021
The world is on track for disastrous levels of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at the UN COP26 summit.
8 NOVEMBER 2021
Antigua and Barbuda's Environment Minister Joseph: "We are being responsible global citizens. We are cleaning up our environment. And at the same time, we have been victims of the polluters."
7 NOVEMBER 2021
Agreements on deforestation, methane and coal were welcome news. Less so was some countries’ absence from major initiatives.
8 NOVEMBER 2021
As the second week of the annual UN climate talks in Glasgow—also called COP26—gets underway, negotiations are entering the crunch period. After all the speeches and a flurry of voluntary initiatives announced by politicians in the first week, it’s now time for real talk about what countries will actually commit to doing as part of an agreement. Specifically, will Glasgow deliver a transparent, robust and inclusive agreement to help keep global climate goals within reach, ramp up climate finance for developing countries and address the loss and damage caused by extreme unavoidable climate impacts?
→ READ MORE ON UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
4 NOVEMBER 2021
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has proposed a resilience-adjusted Gross National Income (GNI) measure for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to access concessional finance.
Termed the Recovery Duration Adjuster (RDA), this measurement framework better reflects the economic, social, and environmental realities of SIDS, including those in the Caribbean region. The framework is based on two key principles. Firstly, it takes a holistic view of development needs and incorporates underlying structural weaknesses, high debt levels, and insufficient investment in resilient infrastructure as important inputs in determining the extent of a country’s vulnerability to exogenous shocks.
5 NOVEMBER 2021 - GEORGE MONBIOT
By framing the pittance they offer as a gift, rather than as compensation, the states that have done most to cause this catastrophe can position themselves, in true colonial style, as the heroes who will swoop down and rescue the world.
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