Blog - Page 28 of 28 - S20 South Africa

28 November 2024

Farmers, women, youth – all will benefit from potato project

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20241124144434962&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AFNL0475

Egerton University is partnering with the National Potato Council of Kenya (NPCK) and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) in a bid to ensure sustainable potato production in the country.

In July 2024, the three institutions joined forces to launch a three-year project called the Kenya Sustainable Potato Initiative (KSPI), aimed at promoting sustainable potato production through adopting climate-smart potato farming practices. The goal is to improve yields and profitability.

CLIMATE CHANGE

26 November 2024

Global emergence of regional heatwave hotspots outpaces climate model simulations

Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2411258121

Multiple recent record-shattering weather events raise questions about the adequacy of climate models to effectively predict and prepare for unprecedented climate impacts on human life, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Here, we show that extreme heat in several regions globally is increasing significantly and faster in magnitude than what state-of-the-art climate models have predicted under present warming even after accounting for their regional summer background warming. Across all global land area, models underestimate positive trends exceeding 0.5 °C per decade in widening of the upper tail of extreme surface temperature distributions by a factor of four compared to reanalysis data and exhibit a lower fraction of significantly increasing trends overall. To a lesser degree, models also underestimate observed strong trends of contraction of the upper tails in some areas, while moderate trends are well reproduced in a global perspective. Our results highlight the need to better understand and model the drivers of extreme heat and to rapidly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to avoid further harm from unexpected weather events.

CLIMATE CHANGE

21 November 2024

25 Universities inject Climate Change into Medical Curricula

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20241121162238272&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GLNL0811

Twenty-five top universities from 12 European countries – led by the University of Glasgow – have launched a network to educate and train medical students on the dangers of climate change to health. The European Network on Climate and Health Education (ENCHE) will also teach about sustainable healthcare.

It is estimated that 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the health sector.

Network universities aim to equip up to 10,000 medical students a year with the awareness and knowledge to prevent, identify, and treat diseases that are new and changing in their countries and regions. Among those most feared is malaria, as mosquitoes move north to an increasingly hotter Europe.

CLIMATE CHANGE

21 November 2024

ECOWAS climate centre uses COP29 to show its regional impact

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20241120075502894&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AFNL0475

Source: https://wascal.org/wascal-commits-to-advancing-green-hydrogen-at-ecowas-sustainable-energy-forum-2024/

The West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use, WASCAL, a regional body that offers capacity-building and research-focused services in the fight against climate change, has showcased its work – and the impact it has on enhancing climate resilience in West Africa – at COP29, the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

WASCAL made presentations at two side events at COP29, on 16 and 17 November. In a video exchange, Dr Kwame Oppong Hackman, a senior scientist at WASCAL, spoke about the launch of the West African research report on Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, of West African governments. NDCs are the commitments made by countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE

21 November 2024

Tapping the climate mitigating role of university forests

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20241121185124472&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AFNL0475

The analysis of geographic and management diversity of 12 university-affiliated forests located in North America, the Asia-Pacific, Europe and Latin America, highlights the need to enhance their role in global environmental sustainability and mitigating climate change, including by advancing research and innovation, enhancing educational outreach, and global collaboration and knowledge sharing.

“The role of universities in addressing climate change is often discussed, but one crucial aspect tends to be overlooked: their potential contribution to carbon sequestration,” states a study titled “University forests and carbon sequestration: An untapped potential”, published in Discover Sustainability on 28 October.

CLIMATE CHANGE

21 November 2024

Climate change caused worst forest fires in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 23 years

Source: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/climate-change-caused-worst-forest-fires-in-europe-the-middle-east-and-africa-in-23-years

Last year, in 2023, Europe, the Middle East and Africa collectively experienced their worst wildfires since 2000, according to a report published by European Union Commission’s Joint Research Centre

According to the Forest Fires 2023 report, nearly 500,000 hectares of natural land which is equivalent to about half the size of the island of Cyprus experienced wildfires during the year.

CLIMATE CHANGE

14 November 2024

New book highlights climate crisis facing Southern Africa

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20241113071231948&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AFNL0474

As world leaders and negotiators gather in Azerbaijan for COP29, the urgency of addressing the global climate crisis has never been clearer.

Southern Africa is already experiencing the escalating impacts of climate change, with increased frequency and intensity of heatwaves, droughts, floods and extreme weather. These events, driven by long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns due to the burning of fossil fuels, pose a significant threat to the region’s unique ecosystems and the livelihoods they support.

Early discussions at COP29 (the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 11-22 November 2024) have focused on evaluating global progress towards the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is crucial to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

However, contentious issues, including increased ambition on emission reduction targets and the fulfilment of climate finance pledges, particularly for vulnerable nations, remain key points of debate.

Sustainability of Southern African Ecosystems under Global Change: Science for management and policy interventions, published by Springer, provides a comprehensive analysis of the region’s vulnerability to climate change and outlines potential solutions.

CLIMATE CHANGE

6 October 2024

The Climate Action that the World needs

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/10/climate-change-action/679732/

The 2015 Paris Agreement was a landmark, but countries need to raise their ambition again to complete the transition away from fossil fuels.

On December 12, 2015, the 195 country parties to the United Nations’ climate body adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change. The accord was historic, sending a message to governments, boardrooms, clean-tech innovators, civil society, and citizens that the leaders of the world had finally come together to combat climate change.

The agreement was groundbreaking in many respects. It cast aside the old paradigm in which climate obligations applied only to developed countries. It articulated strong goals to limit global temperature and greenhouse-gas emissions. It required countries to submit nationally determined targets for reducing emissions, and to do this every five years, with each new target stronger than the previous one. It established a second five-year cycle for a “global stocktake” to see how the world is doing in the aggregate on climate change. It set up a transparency system for countries to report on their progress and for those reports to be reviewed by international experts. And it adopted a hybrid legal arrangement, with legally binding procedural rules complementing the nonbinding emission targets.

CLIMATE CHANGE

30 November 2023

Decisions adopted by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement. Outcome of the first global stocktake

Source: https://unfccc.int/decisions

Report of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement on its fifth session, held in the United Arab Emirates from 30 November to 13 December 2023.

REPORT

CLIMATE CHANGE

21 April 2017

The Unfolding Tragedy of Climate Change in Bangladesh

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/the-unfolding-tragedy-of-climate-change-in-bangladesh/

A three-foot rise in sea level would submerge almost 20 percent of the country and displace more than 30 million people—and the actual rise by 2100 could be significantly more.

In some places, the impact of climate change is obvious. In others, scientists predict that climate change will occur based on elaborate computer models. In Bangladesh, it is already happening at a scale that involves unprecedented human tragedy. I witnessed this in December 2016, when I visited Bangladesh to give some talks at the University of Chittagong.

S20 South Africa

Farmers, women, youth – all will benefit from potato project

Global emergence of regional heatwave hotspots outpaces climate model simulations

25 Universities inject Climate Change into Medical Curricula

ECOWAS climate centre uses COP29 to show its regional impact

Tapping the climate mitigating role of university forests

Climate change caused worst forest fires in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 23 years

New book highlights climate crisis facing Southern Africa

The Climate Action that the World needs

Decisions adopted by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement. Outcome of the first global stocktake

The Unfolding Tragedy of Climate Change in Bangladesh

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