Hong Kong’s first blog for SDG education news and announcements
Coffee may become more scarce and expensive thanks to climate change (The Conversation) The race to protect the food of the future – why seed banks alone are not the answer (The Conversation) Will the fossil energy crisis make renewables more popular? (Eco-Business) Asia must spend $2.5 trillion annually to meet 2050 climate deadline (Eco-Business) 2022 marks an important year for environmental milestones (EU) Carbon offsetting is not warding off environmental collapse – it’s accelerating it (The Guardian) Female leadership is good for the world. Just look at Barbados (The Guardian) . . .
Wetlands do not conjure up particularly strong emotions. In fact, many people might be put off by the term. But wetlands are one of the most important habitats we have, and they are among the most threatened, especially with so much already having been lost. They cover only around 6 per cent of the Earth’s land surface, 40 per cent of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands. Approximately 87% of all wetlands have been lost to human development over the last 300 years and 35% of that has happened since 1970. This has meant that there is a specific convention – Ramsar – for their protection. Not only are they so important for living species, the soils of wetlands store twice as much carbon as all forests. Draining them releases this. So there are just two super important reasons to consider what you can do to encourage or even better cause the protection and possible replenishment of wetlands on this World Wetlands Day. . . .
Next week will see high level government representatives, including national leaders, gather with leaders of multilateral institutions, business leaders and civil society policymakers in Brest, France, to determine and launch a new raft of ocean protection and cleaning policies and initiatives. An extensive programme will bring together so many stakeholders who can make a positive impact to improve the situation of this incredible and crucial habitat which provides humanity with so much – food, transport, water, carbon sequestration and so on. See the summit page here. . . .
Can Vertical Farming Stand the Test of COVID-19 and Food Insecurity? (IISD) Strengthening Data Use to Achieve the 2030 Agenda (IISD) Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit (The Conversation) Birds and bees: why new buildings need to support the natural world (The Conversation) China renewables firms burst on to ranking of world's most sustainable corporates (Eco-Business) Asia's emissions-reduction plan for the world (Eco-Business) ‘Like a work of art’: rare stretch of pristine coral reef discovered off Tahiti (The Guardian) By 2050, a quarter of the world’s people will be African – this will shape our future (The Guardian) . . .
Late in 2021, UNESCO published a new report called Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. [open access – read here] It is 2 years of work which consulted with over a million people. Its premise is that education can be seen in terms of a social contract – an implicit agreement among members of a society to cooperate for shared benefit. It sees the old contract as being nationally focused but now we need collective endeavours and to provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape sustainable and peaceful futures for all anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice. The report highlights: Principles: Assuring the right to quality education throughout life. It must also encompass the right to information, culture and science – as well as the right to access and contribute to the knowledge commons, the collective knowledge resources of humanity that have been accumulated over generations and are continuously transformi . . .
The right to education is article 26 of the UDHR which aims for free and compulsory elementary education for all, with vocational education generally available and higher education accessible by merit. It also states that “education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups….” The later Convention on the Rights of the Child develops this further to make higher education accessible to all. Education is fundamental to all human activity but what we must realize is that education needs to be properly prioritized if we are to have a chance of reaching the goals of the 2030 Agenda – essentially to survive as a species. This means not only that universal education needs to be achieved but that sustainability education needs to become standard in all curriculums . . .
Ocean heat is at record levels, with major consequences (The Conversation) Meat and dairy gobble up farming subsidies worldwide, which is bad for your health and the planet (The Conversation) Despite COP26 forest vow, one third of commodity firms have no plans to halt deforestation (Eco-Business) Natural disasters cost world US$280 billion in 2021 — a third more than in 2020 (Eco-Business) Nearly quarter of world’s population had record hot year in 2021, data shows (The Guardian) Plants at risk of extinction as climate crisis disrupts animal migration (The Guardian) . . .
It may have taken a couple of decades to break through but it is probably safe to say that significant numbers of people now understand the link between atmospheric carbon, especially carbon dioxide and methane, and global temperature. Hopefully, this allows the majority to realize that the transfer of carbon to the atmosphere is now mostly caused by human activity. Those with a slightly deeper understanding will know that deforestation plays a part by reducing the natural mechanism that remove carbon from the atmosphere and therefore contributes to global heating. But research now confirms that deforestation also has a clear local climate impact as well by leading to more frequent storms at the local scale and these in turn have an amplified impact as the removal of trees means there is a greater likelihood of those storms leading to flooding. See more here . . .
