Tag Archives: climate

Sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, is at high risk of climate impacts on food availability and affordability. Higher average global temperatures and more extreme weather events associated with climate change will reduce the reliability of food production. Here the authors explore the potential impact of a changing climate on food …

Leaders all across the globe reach a consent to make immediate action against climate change and to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to secure net-zero emissions by 2050, not only through controls on traditional trade and land activities but also through the sea. Some …

United Nations’ Members States agreed on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on September 25, 2015 to make huge development on various factors by 2030. Amongst those 17 goals, the SDG 13 is related to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The article reviews the solid waste …

David Malpass, President of the World Bank, looks at how we can mitigate the impacts of climate disasters. Private companies and investors can support adaptation and resilience, investing, for example, in hurricane-proof houses, efficient irrigation, resilient microgrids. With commitment from governments, multilateral lenders like the Bank Group, and the private …

Lightning is one of the most powerful sources of energy in the natural environment. As anyone who has spent time in Johannesburg during the South African summer will attest, there is nothing as spectacular as a Highveld thunderstorm at the end of a long, hot day: the scent of petrichor, …

Fewer consumers are practicing green behaviour during the pandemic, Ipsos survey shows. Poll results suggest COVID-19 upheaval has weakened concern about environmental impact. Nearly a third of respondents say they’ve made no green changes to their daily activities. Successfully tackling climate change will require all of us to make changes …

Visiting a modern petrochemical plant makes you feel incredibly small. Enormous compressors roar incessantly, distillation columns tower high above your head, large pipelines full of oil and gas criss-cross the site. Heat radiates from inspection hatches in the furnaces in which the hydrocarbons are heated to 850°C to make the …

Use of phosphate fertilizer is on the rise but its raw material is depleting fast The world faces an imminent crisis in the supply of phosphate, a critical fertilizer that underpins the world’s food supply. Phosphate is an essential mineral for all life on earth and is added to farmers’ …

Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere that extend from the tropics to higher latitudes. In dry conditions, atmospheric rivers can replenish water supplies and quench dangerous wildfires. In wet conditions, they can cause damaging floods and debris flows, wreaking havoc on local economies. Research predicts …

Fish and seafood as a food source are often overlooked for environmental reasons. However, new research known as the ‘Blue Food Assessment’ has shown that these could help to us to simultaneously meet the challenges of climate change and food security. The UN Summit of Food Systems is now embracing …

AI can be a powerful tool to combat climate change, but its role also as a contributor to emissions cannot be overlooked. The first step to make AI greener is to promote the practice of more holistic and multidimensional model evaluation. By changing our mindset that bigger is always better …

In the middle of this summer’s shocking fires and floods came the grimmest climate science report yet from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning of a “code red for humanity” as our use of fossil fuels continues to drive up global temperatures. To keep below the threshold of …