Mountains and climate change

 

A multi-part expert dialogue on mountains and climate change was held the first week of the SBs. Mountain ecosystems are home to over 1 billion people and unique natural resources and biodiversity. They are suffering impacts including substantial glacier retreat that decreases access to freshwater and increases extreme events including floods, landslides, wildfires, and heat waves. If these areas become uninhabitable, people currently living there will need to relocate to other areas, leaving behind ancestral homes and livelihoods and possibly encountering conflicts for space and resources. It was noted that mountains are indicators of what the rest of the world will face and that impacts to mountains don’t stay in mountains as there are significant downstream impacts. The presentations and key messages from breakout groups are available at the following link: expert-dialogue-on-mountains-and-climate-change. At the end of the session, there was a call to include a dialogue on mountains and climate change as a permanent part of the SB agenda as was done recently for oceans. 

The rights of children

Noteworthy for the 2024 SBs was a mandated dialogue on children and climate change. Some key messages:

• Enhanced climate resilience of children includes all aspects necessary for survival, health, and development such as water, food and nutrition, sanitation, health, education, safety, and social services.
• Girls are uniquely vulnerable, as they may be subjected to increased domestic burdens, interruptions in education, child labor, forced marriages, and gender-based violence.
• Policies are needed that provide benefits immediately and last a lifetime. It is important to consider the protection of the child plus everything that supports the child – parents, caregivers, families, schools, communities, and others.
• Impacts and necessary safeguards often differ by age group and can last lifetimes. Early intervention (between 1-3 years) is important.
• Quality climate education is needed at all age levels. Greening school grounds can serve as both mitigation and adaptation. Curricula should prepare youth for changing conditions as well as for a new green economy and green jobs.
• The unique needs of children should be factored into all UNFCCC agendas and actions including in NDCs and NAPs, IPCC Reports, Loss and Damage actions (which should consider both economic and non-economic losses), and Finance.
• Children should be involved in these discussions, serve on future panels, and should be given agency to make decisions. Preparing youth and providing ways for them to get involved and contribute to solutions is important because it is their futures, and it can help reduce climate anxiety and grief.

The session was concluded by a statement from an indigenous perspective. (My apologies for not catching the speaker’s name or affiliation.) The speaker said to think of our ancestors and what they would do, taking their best practices and learning from their mistakes, while considering the present day, and thinking of multiple generations from now. This type of thinking helps ensure protection and sustainable use of natural resources.

Nature and Climate Change

 

I am pleased to be attending the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference, the intersessional meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies (SBs) in Bonn, Germany, as part of Moravian University’s observer delegation. The first session I attended filled me with hope and enthusiasm, which is the best way to start an SB or COP.

The session was led by UNFCCC and centered on REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries). To date, REDD+ activities in 17 countries have reduced GHG emissions by over 11 billion tons of CO₂ (Global Stocktake, UN Climate Change, 2023). Parties are asked to enhance these efforts by 2030 and include forest protection goals in their next NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions, or Paris Agreement pledges, for which third updates are due in 2025). As reported in this session, halting deforestation is now embedded in the UNFCCC for the first time, indicating the growing recognition that the forest sector can help countries achieve NDC targets.

One of the speakers also emphasized how far countries and REDD+ have come in the past 15 years or so. In the early days, a lot of assumptions were used in calculations and models, whereas now there are more baselines, datasets, and maps. I have noticed the change in tone of the REDD+-related interventions myself: when I first started listening to REDD+ talks in 2009 and 2010, the sessions were riddled with complaints about the program, while at least at this session in 2024, there were, in effect, celebrations of the program’s effectiveness and success stories.

It was also highlighted that forest protection amounts to millions of dollars in annual revenue for developing countries. In this way, forest protection went from a logistical challenge to an economic asset (though I am sure it is still challenging). There was also a comment that soon coastal nations would be receiving funds from blue carbon projects, including through protection and restoration of seagrasses, marshes, and coral reefs, as blue carbon is being factored into both NDCs and NAPs (National Adaptation Plans). It is wonderful to see nature protection being prioritized for its own value and as a way to achieve climate mitigation and adaptation goals.