The post UNU report warns on tipping points if environmental risks not addressed appeared first on The Source.
]]>The risks mentioned in the Interconnected Disaster Risks Report 2023, released by the UNU-Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) on 23 October, could deliver adverse impacts that are irreversible, including accelerating extinction of species, groundwater depletion, melting mountain glaciers and unbearable heat.
The deterioration of vital systems such as food, water and the wider ecosystem is typically not a simple or predicted process. Generally, such deterioration increases slowly over time until it reaches a tipping point, when fundamental system change occurs, potentially including catastrophic collapse. Such an event is defined by the report as a moment when a specific socioecological system can no longer buffer risks and provide its normal function, potentially even leading to catastrophic collapse.
The report cites groundwater depletion as an example of a tipping point. Aquifers which supply drinking water to over two billion people worldwide are currently helping to mitigate around half of the losses in agriculture caused by drought, but the report warns that aquifers are now being depleted faster than they can be replenished. This in turn risks catastrophic failure of entire food systems.
The report warns that some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have already passed a groundwater tipping point, while other countries, such as India, are rapidly approaching it. However, the report also proposes a new framework to avoid or mitigate the impacts, involving Avoid and Adapt solutions which address the negative impacts of tipping points if they cannot be avoided.
Current solutions being implemented are more focused on delay rather than on transformative change. The report highlights changes to behaviours and values that can achieve transformative solutions, although they will also require considerable societal and personal effort.
More information: https://interconnectedrisks.org/
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]]>The post UK government announces new water plan appeared first on The Source.
]]>The plan includes a commitment to undertake a public consultation on a ban on the use of plastic in wet wipes. It also requires water companies to bring forward £1.6 billion of investment in infrastructure upgrades between now and 2025. Agricultural support will be boosted with an additional £34 million to tackle water pollution and increase food production, and a further £10 million will be provided for farm reservoirs and irrigation.
The plan includes the creation of a new Water Restoration Fund through which fines from water companies will be invested to support water quality projects and community-led schemes that protect waterways.
Secretary of State Thérèse Coffey said: “Our rare chalk streams and world-famous coastlines, lakes and rivers are hugely important to local communities and to nature.
“I completely understand the concerns that people have about the health and resilience of our waters, which is why I am setting out this plan for a truly national effort to protect and improve them. That includes higher penalties taken from water company profits which will be channelled back into the rivers, lakes and streams where it is needed.
“This is not straightforward, but I take this issue extremely seriously and things need to change. That’s why we have developed this plan and we are committed to delivering the progress that people want to see.”
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]]>The post UNEP sets out freshwater priorities appeared first on The Source.
]]>It aims to stimulate urgent understanding, prioritisation and action for water worldwide, describing the main freshwater issues and how they meet the water-related Sustainable Development Goal, while addressing the three crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss and pollution and waste.
These three interrelated crises impose adverse impacts on freshwater resources, thereby also impinging on the lives, livelihoods and health of people and also on economies and the planet. However, freshwater resources can also help to resolve all three crises, helping to protect and restore biodiversity, mitigate pollution and contributing to climate stability.
Currently, the world is falling behind on efforts to meet the water-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets.
With its partners, UNEP is seeking to facilitate measurable and substantive progress on freshwater issues at global, regional and national levels.
Linking science to policymaking, UNEP says it will drive forward a number of actions, including:
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]]>The post Data reveals advanced climate change appeared first on The Source.
]]>Climate scientists researching climate change typically use around 30 massive, intricate computer networks that use computational models to calculate the state of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and ice, capturing past and present climate variability and using the data to predict future climate change. The results are analysed and then form the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report.
The study findings will help climate scientists to correct any bias in the models and create a more accurate prediction of future climate patterns. It will also help scientists to get a better understanding of the intensification of winter storms over recent decades and thus a better understanding of the Earth’s climate. This in turn will enable them to more accurately predict the damage that climate change is expected to cause.
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]]>The post EEA cites climate losses across member states appeared first on The Source.
]]>Over the 41-year period of 1980-2020, weather and climate related events generated losses of between €450 billion and €520 billion, with 34 percent to 44 percent of total losses being caused by meteorological and hydrological events. Only one quarter to one third of these economic losses were insured. Furthermore, there is a wide disparity between different types of events.
According to the G20 Risk Atlas, annual damages from river flooding alone, across the EU and G20 countries in Europe, such as France, Germany, Italy and Turkey, are expected to be in the region of €21 billion by mid-century and €30-40 billion by the end of the century under a relatively moderate temperature increase scenario. Adjusted to a high emissions increase scenario, losses from river flooding could escalate to over €70 billion by the end of the century.
The PESETA IV project, operated by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, indicates that climate measures aligning to a scenario of a 1.5°C temperature increase, rather than 3°C, could halve damage from river flooding to around €24 billion per year, while economic losses caused by coastal flooding could be reduced by more than €100 billion per year by 2100.
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]]>The post UNEP warns of climate adaptation gap appeared first on The Source.
]]>Among its findings, the report concludes that there is an urgent need to increase climate adaptation finance, given that adaptation costs in developing countries in particular are five to 10 times greater than public adaptation finance flows. This gap is widening, with developing countries potentially facing adaptation costs of US$ 280-500 billion per year by 2050. International public adaptation finance has increased by more than 50% over 2017-2018 and 2019–2020, but is still far too low, it adds.
The report also finds that COVID-19 recovery stimulus packages are becoming a lost opportunity to finance climate adaptation. Less than one third of the 66 countries investigated in the report explicitly funded COVID-19 measures to address climate risks up to June 2021. Furthermore, the increased cost of servicing debt, in association with reduced government revenue, could potentially hamper future government spending on adaptation.
However, there is a positive trend generally with regard to adequacy and effectiveness in adaptation planning, compared with 2020. Climate change adaptation is increasingly being integrated into policy and planning, with around 79% of countries adopting at least one national-level adaptation planning mechanism, representing an increase in such measures of 7% since 2020. Implementation of adaptation measures is also growing slowly, with the top 10 donors funding more than 2,600 projects with a principal focus on adaptation between 2010 and 2019.
More generally though, the report finds that further ambition is needed to advance national-level adaptation planning, finance and implementation around the world, including overcoming barriers facing private sector engagement. Even if greenhouse gas emissions ceased immediately, the world would still face decades of impacts from the climate change that has already occurred, it adds.
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]]>The post DNA test to support global atlas of freshwater life appeared first on The Source.
]]>According to the two, the eBioAtlas project will support conservation efforts and unlock business investment for nature protection. It aims to fill gaps in existing knowledge by building a databank informing global policy intended to reverse the decline in biodiversity.
The databank will interface with national and global environmental databases and make data freely available for research establishments and conservation groups.
The first three years of the project will be devoted to the collection of 30,000 water samples, in order to assess environmental data such as DNA left by fish, birds, amphibians and land animals. This data will then be analysed to identify the range and distribution of species in each ecosystem. The work will feature testing kits supplied by NatureMetrics, which can be used by non-specialists.
The partners say that action to protect the world’s rivers and wetlands is urgently needed, but knowledge about the status and distribution of species is limited. Obtaining a clearer picture is vital in order to obtain funding for conservation projects, target action effectively and measuring progress.
Footprint Coalition, founded by actor/entrepreneur Robert Downey Jr., will fund one of the first projects, examining the Malagarasi-Moyovosi wetland in Tanzania.
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]]>The post Study warning on ageing of large dams appeared first on The Source.
]]>In the report ‘Ageing Water Storage Infrastructure: An Emerging Global Risk’, published by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, the authors note that there are around 16,000 large dams in North America and Asia that are 50 to 100 years old, with another 2300 that are more than 100 years old. They state that the design life of dams constructed between 1930 and 1970, when most existing large dams were built, is 50 to 100 years, adding that the problem “is most prominent in the USA”, where 80% of all dams were already more than 50 years old as of 2020.
“Ageing water storage infrastructure slowly grows into a significant global development issue. Thousands of large dams built in the middle of the previous century have already or will soon exceed the age of 50 years – a lower bound of dam design lifespans – and many are approaching 100 years,” the report states.
It continues: “They will incur more significant maintenance costs while simultaneously declining in effective functionality and posing threats to the environment and human safety. To effectively deal with this emerging problem, it will be important to develop frameworks to understand decommissioning processes and outcomes. This depends on accurate data, understanding of the factors and impacts of dam ageing in the local context, and establishing relevant policies sooner rather than later.”
In the report, the authors explore the issues around the anticipated rise in the decommissioning of dams. The authors note that decommissioning is a relatively recent phenomenon. “Whether a dam is to be removed, partially or entirely, decommissioning is much less costly than repairing or rebuilding,” they state. They add that dam decommissioning should be seen as equally important as dam building in the overall planning process on water storage infrastructure developments. They conclude: “Ultimately, value judgements will determine the fate of many of these large water storage structures. It is not an easy process, and thus distilling lessons from and sharing dam decommissioning experiences should be a common global goal.”
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]]>The post Conservation groups raise concern over freshwater fish appeared first on The Source.
]]>According to the report, the conservation status of more than 10,000 freshwater fish species has been assessed by IUCN. Of these, 30% are considered to be at risk of extinction.
As well as highlighting the decline, the report celebrates the richness of freshwater fish diversity. There are 35,678 known species of fish, and 51% of these live in freshwater. The report adds that 80 species of freshwater fish have already been declared ‘Extinct’ according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, including 16 in 2020 alone. Populations of migratory freshwater fish have fallen by 76% since 1970, with populations of mega-fish falling by 94%.
In the report, the conservation organisations call on the world to implement an Emergency Recovery Plan for freshwater biodiversity. It says that this has been developed by scientists and freshwater experts from across the world, and is a practical, science-based plan incorporating six pillars.
The six pillars, which have each been implemented in different parts of the world, are to: let rivers flow more naturally; improve water quality in freshwater ecosystems; protect and restore critical habitats; end overfishing and unsustainable sand mining in rivers and lakes; prevent and control invasions by non-native species; and protect free-flowing rivers and remove obsolete dams.
In the announcement of the release of the report, Stuart Orr, WWF global Freshwater Lead, comments: “Nowhere is the world’s nature crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes and wetlands, and the clearest indicator of the damage we are doing is the rapid decline in freshwater fish populations. They are the aquatic version of the canary in the coalmine, and we must heed the warning.”
The report highlights that freshwater fisheries provide the main source of protein for 200 million people across Asia, Africa and South America, and that healthy freshwater fish stocks sustain recreational fishing, which generates more than $100 billion annually, and global trade in aquarium fish.
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]]>The post Banks provide update on SDG contributions appeared first on The Source.
]]>Among the water-focused activities, the report highlights the EBRD’s $1.5bn ‘Green Cities’ programme, which helps cities to develop environmental action plans, access sustainable infrastructure financing, and build technical expertise. This programme finances water and wastewater treatment. Similarly, the EIB’s $270m framework with the city of Valencia includes new wastewater treatment plants and major irrigation system upgrades.
Another related area is the IDB’s Natural Capital Lab, which focuses on protection of land and water-based ecosystems, driving innovation in sustainable use and conservation of land-based and marine ecosystems in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The report also features the ADB’s Action Plan for Healthy Oceans and Sustainable Blue Economies, launched in 2019, which will expand financing and technical assistance for ocean health and marine economy projects to $5bn during 2019-24. Among the projects being supported are work to: protect and restore coastal and marine ecosystems and key rivers; reduce land-based sources of marine pollution – including wastewater; and improve the sustainability of coastal infrastructure.
The EIB, with cooperation from German development bank KfW and the Agence Française de Développement, has committed up to $2bn in investment through to 2023 for the Clean Oceans Initiative, which supports projects that reduce wastes and clean up wastewater.
The IDB has provided grants worth $55.9m to support programmes in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica.
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