Stepping forward with public commitments for Making different sectors carbon neutral by 2050

Already months we can find youngsters coming on the streets to wake up politicians, opening their eyes for the miserable predicament for our climate and conservation of plants and animals.

This week, leaders from some of the most heavily polluting industries on the planet – shipping, aviation, iron and steel to name a few – stepped forward with public commitments to make each sector carbon neutral by 2050. Others in the private sector committed themselves to advancing universal healthcare, improving air quality, halting deforestation and tackling child labour, all key elements in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

In its third year the SDI Summit is already able to get more business leaders coming to this meeting than any other organized meeting by the World Economic Forum outside the Annual Meeting in Davos. A back-of-the envelope calculation based on the CEOs and chairs that joined the SDI suggested the combined annual turnover of companies they represent was nearly $1 trillion.

Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, was allowed to kick off the proceedings telling how the Netherlands has set very ambitious climate targets. According to him – 49% emissions reductions by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050.

But as well as mitigation efforts such as reducing emissions, Rutte says his government has also focused on adaptation – building resilience to the climate conditions that are becoming unavoidable, such as rising sea levels.

What’s the PM’s advice for other countries? Be clear on the steps you want to achieve, he says, and make sure you educate and bring as many people along with you as possible.

The 18-year-old Indonesian activist Melati Wijsen, a few days after millions of young people swarmed the streets in cities all over the world in an effort to pressure governments to take meaningful action against climate change, spoke about the role of young people in finding solutions to the climate crisis.

“We’re unstoppable,”

she said.

“You saw us on the streets on Friday, millions of us came out. It’s an unstoppable movement that’s demanding change.”

Action such as bans on single-use plastics has taken too long, she adds, and with 2030 just around the corner, we need to speed up the implementation of climate solutions.

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It is incredible how we still have so many politicians who still keep denying we are facing a terrible situation for plant, animals as well as human beings. It is like they prefer not to see that greenhouse gas emissions are rising.  In preference for creating more jobs in polluting industries they have no ears for scientists’ extreme weather predictions which appear to be coming true. All over the world we find politicians who put economic matters in front of ecological matters. The keep their nose closed for the air in our cities which is becoming dangerous. How long shall it take before they come to see how our earth is crying, having groundwater getting scarce, ocean health and fish stocks declining, whilst they allow forests and natural habitats being destroyed. But the ordinary citizen is also often at fault, polluting their habitat with all the rubbish they produce. Lots of people also do not have an eye for the plastic in our ocean which is out of control. They do close their ears for the many researchers that warn that a “biological annihilation” of wildlife means a human-driven sixth mass extinction event is underway.

Mankind risks flipping itself out of the goldilocks “Holocene” period of predictable warm weather (which has allowed humans to flourish during the last 12,000 years) and into a highly risky “hothouse earth” scenario, with uncontrolled feedback driving faster warming and more droughts and storms.

Global middle class is expanding, and millions of people are being lifted out of poverty. The bad news: wealth inequality within countries, in both the industrialized and developing worlds, is actually worsening. Meanwhile many people (23 million in 2017 alone) are already being displaced by natural catastrophes aggravated by the effects of climate change. While a number of public-private partnerships have been formed to tackle these issues, more must be done to restructure development finance in such a way that makes it more attractive to a wider array of investors. Excluding people from the benefits of economic growth can undermine the sustainability of that growth – and failing to address serious environmental issues, like threats to biodiversity and natural resources, is a formula for disaster.

People should be aware that answers for our climate won’t come from governments, businesses, and academia alone – they should also come from the public.
Delivering on the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement is no easy task.

Taking place during the United Nations General Assembly, the SDI summit engages the most relevant and influential leaders across business, government, civil society, NGOs and academia to collaborate on and address the world’s most pressing problems. But without contributions of people from all over the world, to this important debate, they’ll be speaking only to themselves.

If you’d like to get involved, read more about the five questions below, and head to the WEF submissions page to upload your video, from mobile or desktop. Please take note of their recommendations when shooting video, otherwise they may not be able to feature your submission.

1. What’s the biggest thing we should change in the way we live to create a #sustainableworld?

2. What action should governments take to create a #sustainableworld?

3. How should business change to create a #sustainableworld?

4. How can we work together to create a #sustainableworld?

5. What technology can best help us achieve a #sustainableworld?

You can share your perspective. The Forum is asking participants on the ground at the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit (#sdi19) to also give them their answers to these questions, and they’ll be featuring the best of the responses on weforum.org/sustainableworld, as well as across Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

The complexity of today’s world calls for new ways of working together to tackle global challenges. Driving progress towards meeting the SDGs and tackling climate change aren’t easy tasks, but no global challenge is too daunting to address as long as we work together.

> Record a short video answering one of the 5 questions.

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High time to to put the environment at the heart of people’s lives

In 2018 lots of people had hoped that many politicians all over the world would be willing to put the environment at the heart of people’s lives.

The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (the UN-REDD Programme) which was the first joint UN global initiative on climate change could celebrate its 10th anniversary.

Many observers have suggested that we are witnessing a new mass extinction event (Ceballos et al. 2015), although there is as yet no scientific consensus. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) (Box 6.4) Red List of Threatened Species (http://www.iucnredlist.org/) provides the most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant, animal and fungi species. The Red List process has become a massive enterprise involving the IUCN Global Species Program staff, partner organizations and experts in the IUCN Species Survival Commission and partner networks who compile the species information to make The IUCN Red List the indispensable product it is today.

To date, many species groups including mammals, amphibians, birds, reef building corals and conifers have been comprehensively assessed. As well as assessing newly recognized species, the IUCN Red List also re-assesses the status of some existing species, sometimes with positive stories to tell.

More than 27,000 species are threatened with extinction. That is more than 27% of all assessed species. We all should be deeply concerned about ongoing and new threats to the animal species.

The status of vertebrates has been relatively well studied (Rodrigues et al. 2014), but fewer than 1 per cent of described invertebrates (Collen et al. 2012) and only about 5 per cent of vascular plants (Royal Botanical Gardens Kew 2016) have been assessed for extinction risk.

According to IUCN’s latest estimates, cycad species face the greatest risk of extinction with 63 per cent of species in this plant group considered threatened. The most threatened group of vertebrates are amphibians (41 per cent). Of the few invertebrate species assessments completed, 42 per cent of terrestrial, 34 per cent of freshwater and 25 per cent of marine species are considered at risk of extinction (Collen et al. 2012). Among well sampled invertebrate groups, reef-forming corals have the highest proportion (33 per cent) of species under threat.

We all should know the decline should not go on. We can reverse or at least halt, the decline in biodiversity. But this will demand political courage, empathy and respect for all species.

The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures towards increasingly dangerous levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. The report found that levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another new record high, according to the World Meteorological Organization. There is no sign of a reversal in this trend, which is driving long-term climate change, sea level rise, ocean acidification and more extreme weather.

The most comprehensive and rigorous assessment on the state of the environment completed by the UN in the last five years was published the 19th of March 2019, warning that damage to the planet is so dire that people’s health will be increasingly threatened unless urgent action is taken.

The report, which was produced by 250 scientists and experts from more than 70 countries, says that either we drastically scale up environmental protections, or cities and regions in Asia, the Middle East and Africa could see millions of premature deaths by mid-century. It also warns that pollutants in our freshwater systems will see anti-microbial resistance become a major cause of death by 2050 and endocrine disruptors impact male and female fertility, as well as child neurodevelopment.

But the report highlights the fact that the world has the science, technology and finance it needs to move towards a more sustainable development pathway, although sufficient support is still missing from the public, business and political leaders who are clinging to outdated production and development models.

The sixth Global Environmental Outlook has been released while environmental ministers from around the world are in Nairobi to participate in the world’s highest-level environmental forum. Negotiations at the Fourth UN Environment Assembly are expected to tackle critical issues such as stopping food waste, promoting the spread of electric mobility, and tackling the crisis of plastic pollution in our oceans, among many other pressing challenges.

“The science is clear. The health and prosperity of humanity is directly tied with the state of our environment,”

said Joyce Msuya, Acting Executive Director of UN Environment.

“This report is an outlook for humanity. We are at a crossroads. Do we continue on our current path, which will lead to a bleak future for humankind, or do we pivot to a more sustainable development pathway? That is the choice our political leaders must make, now.”

Innovative policy options

The projection of a future healthy planet with healthy people is based on a new way of thinking where the ‘grow now, clean up after’ model is changed to a near-zero-waste economy by 2050. According to the Outlook, green investment of 2 per cent of countries’ GDP would deliver long-term growth as high as we presently projected but with fewer impacts from climate change, water scarcity and loss of ecosystems.

At present the world is not on track to meet the SDGs by 2030 or 2050. Urgent action is required now as any delay in climate action increases the cost of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, or reversing our progress and at some point, will make them impossible.

The report advises adopting less-meat intensive diets, and reducing food waste in both developed and developing countries, would reduce the need to increase food production by 50% to feed the projected 9-10 billion people on the planet in 2050. At present, 33 per cent of global edible food is wasted, and 56 per cent of waste happens in industrialized countries, the report states.

While urbanization is happening at an unprecedented level globally, the report says it can present an opportunity to increase citizens’ well-being while decreasing their environmental footprint through improved governance, land-use planning and green infrastructure. Furthermore, strategic investment in rural areas would reduce pressure for people to migrate.

The report calls for action to curb the flow of the 8 million tons of plastic pollution going into oceans each year. While the issue has received increased attention in recent years, there is still no global agreement to tackle marine litter.

The scientists note advancements in collecting environmental statistics, particularly geospatial data, and highlight there is huge potential for advancing knowledge using big data and stronger data collection collaborations between public and private partners.

Policy interventions that address entire systems – such as energy, food, and waste – rather than individual issues, such as water pollution, can be much more effective, according to the authors. For example, a stable climate and clean air are interlinked; the climate mitigation actions for achieving the Paris Agreement targets would cost about US$ 22 trillion, but the combined health benefits from reduced air pollution could amount to an additional US$ 54 trillion.

“The report shows that policies and technologies already exist to fashion new development pathways that will avoid these risks and lead to health and prosperity for all people,”

said Joyeeta Gupta and Paul Ekins, co-chairs of the GEO-6 process.

“What is currently lacking is the political will to implement policies and technologies at a sufficient speed and scale. The fourth United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi in March needs to be the occasion when policymakers face up to the challenges and grasp the opportunities of a much brighter future for humanity.”

Everywhere in the world people should open their eyes and see around them how the climate is changing and how natures is intruding much more our way of life, by offering us more extreme weather types, with storms, floods,a.o..

In the United States of America there are deniers or people who want others to believe all that talk about global warming is fake news. They are not only misleading their own folks, they are endangering them too. In name of industrialisation and capital growth certain leaders mislead their people and do everything to give more opportunities to earn more money no matter what the impact on the environment may be. They are not interested in the world around them and certainly not interested in animal life and wellness for plants.
But we as creatures should know we are only placed into this world to use it as ‘tenants’, which demands from us to take care of it, with the knowledge that it does not belong to us personally.

Each of us personally has to take their own responsibility and should be aware of the urgency for changing route in this world. All of us should take up the responsibility to safe or to repair this world for the next generations.

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Preceding

Going for sustainable development

Shifting towards a cleaner economy

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Find also to read

How to make sustainable, green habits second nature

Vatican meeting of mayors talking about global warming, human trafficking and modern-day slavery

Republican member of Congress from Arizona to boycott pope’s address over climate change

Building a low-carbon world: the sixth industrial revolution

UK Politicians willing to tear up decades of environmental protections

Air-conditioning threat and HFCs extremely powerful heat-trappers

Ghosts of the mountains endangered big cat

Africa’s human existence and development under threat from the adverse impacts of climate change

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Going for sustainable development

People should know they all should join hands to make sure that we can survive in nice surroundings where nobody is afraid to seek to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom.

People should recognise that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. All countries and all stakeholders, should act in collaborative partnership, willing to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

At the moment we still lack the global political will to take the kind of transformational measures necessary to make the ongoing polluting and people misusing trends, be reversed before it is too late.

This month in many countries, all over the European Union, there shall be an opportunity to bring out a vote on the deepening climate crisis, but also on the human rights elements, which both should be at the top of our concerns.

Climate change is moving much faster than our efforts to address it, and the last four years were the hottest on record. We can not keep ignoring the many natural disasters which have wreaked havoc in nearly every region of the globe and which are demanding many lives (of humans but also of animals).

Last year, more than 35 million people were affected by floods, and when looking at Africa, we can not ignore the drought which is progressing, destroying livelihoods and forcing more and more people to move.
The average number of people exposed to heatwaves has increased by some 125 million since the beginning of the century, with deadly consequences.
The combination of extreme heat and air pollution is proving increasingly dangerous.

The climate crisis threatens decades of progress and jeopardizes all our plans for an inclusive and sustainable development.

And the clock is ticking. Science has clearly told us that we have only 12 years for this transformation, if we want to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“No country or community is immune. And, as we know, the poor and vulnerable are the first to suffer, and the worst hit,”

said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, at the Leader’s Roundtable on Promoting Green and Sustainable Development to Implement the 2030 Agenda in Beijing, China, warning that the climate crisis threatens decades of progress and jeopardizes all our plans for inclusive, sustainable development.

UN China/Zhao YunUN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends the Leader’s Roundtable on Promoting Green and Sustainable Development to Implement the 2030 Agenda in Beijing, China

To put it simply, we need green development. We need sustainable development. And we need it now.

We must not see it to dark or not as impossible, as a race to head off a climate catastrophe, with global action rooted in solutions that are sustainable and aligned with the landmark Paris accord and the UN 2030 Agenda it should be possible to ensure a safe and secure planet for all.

All those who can vote should stimulate their own country to have the greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 45 per cent over the next decade and to get to net zero emissions globally by 2050 through strong mitigation and adaptation measures.

We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path.

As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announced in Paris demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what these did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.

All those who can vote should bring out their vote to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.

All of us have to bear the responsibility and should be determined to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.

Please do look for those political parties who have people or representatives who live like they preach. Look for the parties where the people who want to present your voice are determined to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.

As concerned citizens we should be determined to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.

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