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Coal-fired power generation, natural gas fracking, oil drilling… These topics are increasingly bringing environmentalists to the streets today. But renewables can also be highly controversial – even from the perspective of environmental activists.

Talking about the plans to cut down the forest near her house for a new wind farm, Gabriele Niehaus-Uebel, in her own words, feels powerless, helpless, and furious. She is the leader of a civil initiative against the construction of a 20-turbine wind farm in the federal state of Hesse.

While plans to build the facility call for less than two percent of the forest to be cleared, Gabriel says it would still destroy “a previously untouched ecosystem.” She compares the forest area in Hesse to the unique Hambach forest near Cologne, which has been under the threat of cutting down for many years: the RWE concern plans to expand its coal mine. “Environmentalists and activists there are fighting for every tree, and this is constantly written about in the media. Here they want to cut down 200 square kilometers here, and they don’t say a word about it anywhere,” Niehaus-Jubel is indignant.

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The average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15°C above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels. 2022 is the eighth year in a row that annual global temperatures have been at least one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The likelihood that the 1.5°C limit set by the Paris Agreement will be exceeded has increased even more.

Thanks to the climate impact of the La Niña cooling event, 2022 was not the warmest year on record, but “only” fifth or sixth on the list. However, experts say the cooling effect will be short-lived and will not reverse the long-term warming trend driven by record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“In 2022, we faced a series of dramatic weather events that claimed many lives, deprived millions of livelihoods, undermined food and energy security, and destroyed infrastructure,” said WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas. – Vast areas of Pakistan were flooded, resulting in loss of life and major economic losses. China, Europe, North, and South America experienced record-breaking heat waves. A prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa threatens a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Global warming and other long-term climate change trends are expected to continue due to record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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“This is not fiction or an exaggeration,” said António Guterres. – This is what the current energy policy is leading to. We are on track for global warming that is more than double the 1.5 degree Celsius agreed limit in Paris. Some statesmen and businessmen say one thing and do another. Simply put, they lie. The consequences of this lie will be catastrophic.”

Climatologists, who prepared the report published on Monday, warned that humanity is dangerously close to tipping points, which will be followed by irreversible climate consequences. “Governments and high-emission corporations are not just turning a blind eye to this, they are adding fuel to the fire,” António Guterres said. – They are strangling our planet, based on momentary selfish interests. They stubbornly continue to invest in fossil fuels, while cheaper renewable energy solutions can provide employment, energy security, and stable pricing.”

In order to still reach the 1.5-degree temperature limit agreed in Paris, humanity needs to cut global emissions by 45 percent already this decade. At the same time, existing climate commitments mean that emissions will not decrease, but increase by 14 percent.

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The winners of the World Ecosystem Restoration Award are conservation initiatives located in territories from Central America to East Asia. The winners were eligible for United Nations support, advice, or funding.

The winners were presented at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal and a special virtual gala featuring actors Jason Momoa and Edward Norton, Dr. Jane Goodall, extreme mountaineer Nirmala Purji, singer Ellie Goulding, British group Bastille, Chinese celebrity Li Bingbing, Executive Director UNEP Inger Andersen, FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo and British economist Sir Part Dasgupta, among others. The gala performance was hosted by Indian National Geographic explorer and wildlife filmmaker Malaika Vaz.

The names of the winners of the World Ecosystem Restoration Prize were announced and were eligible for UN support, advice or funding. They were selected under the auspices of the United Nations Decade for Ecosystem Restoration, a worldwide movement coordinated by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) aimed at preventing and reversing the degradation of natural areas around the planet.

Together, the 10 winners intend to restore more than 68 million hectares of territory – an area larger than Myanmar, France or Somalia, and create almost 15 million jobs.

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From the United States and Europe to China to Japan, extreme temperatures are rising for weeks, killing hundreds, starting wildfires in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Greece, and forcing thousands of residents to flee their homes as many seek refuge in public cooling centers.

Nearly 90 cities have issued heat warnings, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, including several Japanese cities that have broken heat records dating back to 1875. Meanwhile, in the United States, the lives of more than 100 million people have been threatened by heat-induced wildfires raging in California, prompting President Joe Biden to consider declaring a climate change emergency.

The epicenter of the current heat wave is Europe, where millions of people in France, Italy, and the UK are suffering from the ongoing chaos caused by commuter train delays.

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Over the past five years, fluctuations in surface water levels outside their natural range have been observed in one in five river basins. At the same time, rivers across South Asia are bursting due to increased rainfall and accelerated glacier melt, with the most recent devastating impact in Pakistan.

Although rivers make up a tiny fraction (0.49 percent) of surface freshwater, they play an important role in sustaining life on Earth and human development. Of all the liquid surface fresh water in the world, 87 percent is found in lakes, 11 percent in swamps, and only 2 percent in rivers.

Rivers are highly diverse and productive ecosystems that contribute to economic growth, food security, and human well-being. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), globally, an estimated two billion people get their drinking water directly from rivers, and 500 million people (about one in 14 people on earth) live in river deltas that feed on river sediments.

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But sand, like other natural resources, is limited and its ungoverned extraction is driving erosion, flooding, the salination of aquifers, and the collapse of coastal defenses.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has partnered with Kenyan spoken word poet Beatrice Kariuki to shed light on the problems associated with sand mining, part of a wider push towards a zero-waste world.

“We must redouble our efforts to build a circular economy, and take rubble to build structures anew,” Kariuki says in a new video. “Because without new thinking, the sands of time will run out.”

Sand is the second-most used resource on Earth, after water. It is often dredged from rivers, dug up along coastlines, and mined. The 50 billion tonnes of sand thought to be extracted for construction every year is enough to build a nine-story wall around the planet.

A 2022 report from UNEP, titled Sand and Sustainability: 10 Strategic Recommendations to Avert a Crisis, found that sand extraction is rising about 6 percent annually, a rate it is called unsustainable. The study outlined the scale of the problem and the lack of governance, calling for sand to be “recognized as a strategic resource” and for “its extraction and use… to be rethought.”

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