ENVIRONMENT - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

Fishermen, farmers fear power ship

WENDELLL ROELF A floating gas-turbine generator meant to alleviate South Africa's crippling power cuts has run into objections by oyster farmers and small-scale fishermen, who fear the environmental damage will destroy their livelihoods. The seafood sellers fear the 415 megawatt ship - to be moored for two decades at Saldanha Bay, 140 km north of Cape Town - will pump hot water into the bay and make endless noise, spoiling farmed oysters and scaring off fish as Africa's most industrialised country scrambles to fix electricity problems. Responding to complaints by the Green Connection environmental justice group, the South African government…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Iron Man’ Downey backs DNA mapping of rivers, wetlands to protect wildlife

ENVIRONMENT

MICHAEL TAYLOR "IRON MAN" star Robert Downey Jr. has backed a new project that will use DNA technology to map information on fish and other wildlife living in and around rivers, lakes and wetlands to advance conservation and attract more money for such efforts. The eBioAtlas, launched on Thursday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UK-based company NatureMetrics, aims to unlock private investment and guide government policy on biodiversity. "We are at a point ... where we understand the urgency of addressing biodiversity loss," NatureMetrics founder Kat Bruce told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It is really being talked…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Climate change risk is complex: here is a way to assess it

ENVIRONMENT

A key feature of climate change is that it doesn’t pose one single risk. Rather, it presents multiple, interacting risks that can compound and cascade. Importantly, responses to climate change can also affect risk. NICHOLAS P. SIMPSON, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Africa Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, University of Cape Town CHRISTOPHER TRISOS, Senior Research Fellow, University of Cape Town In our highly connected world, climate risks and our responses to them can be transmitted from one system or sector to another, creating new risks and making existing ones more or less severe. In many cases risks cannot…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Legal opinion puts governments ‘on notice’ over export finance for fossil fuels

ENVIRONMENT

MEGAN ROWLING GOVERNMENTS could face litigation if they do not step up efforts to stop their export credit agencies financing fossil fuel infrastructure and activities overseas, legal experts and climate activists warned on Tuesday. Advocacy group Oil Change International released a legal opinion saying the agencies - which provide loans, insurance and guarantees for businesses to invest abroad - should stop lending to oil, coal and gas projects around the world immediately. "If they continue doing this, they are breaching international law," said Jorge E. Viñuales, a professor of law and environmental policy at the University of Cambridge who authored the opinion…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Winners of ‘Green Nobel’ fight deforestation, coal power

ENVIRONMENT

ANASTASIA MOLONEY AS a teenage mother and activist, Liz Chicaje would travel by boat and foot across Peru's Amazon rainforest with her young daughter campaigning to protect the ancestral lands of the Bora indigenous people from illegal logging and mining. To preserve the forest that the Bora and other indigenous people depend on for hunting and fishing in Peru's northeastern region of Loreto, Chicaje spearheaded the creation of a two-million-acre (809,370-hectare) national park. On Tuesday, Chicaje's activism and leadership earned her a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize - known as the "Green Nobel" - which honors grassroots activism, along with five…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

EXPERT VIEWS-G7 climate commitments judged too weak to bag COP26 success

ENVIRONMENT

MEGAN ROWLING LEADERS of G7 wealthy nations have said that 2021 should be a "turning point for our planet", faced with an "existential threat" from the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. In a joint communique at the end of a summit in Britain, they agreed to support "a green revolution that creates jobs, cuts emissions and seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees" above pre-industrial times. They said they would cut their climate-heating emissions to net-zero by 2050, halve their collective emissions by 2030 from 2010 levels, and boost climate finance for developing…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Ghana plants 5 million trees in a single day to combat deforestation

ENVIRONMENT

GHANA aimed to plant at least 5 million trees in a single day to help regrow the country's lost forests and curb the impacts of climate change, the president said. The expansion of farming, and to a lesser degree mining and logging, has led to high levels of deforestation in Ghana, environmentalists say. Forest cover in the West African gold miner has dwindled to less than a fifth of what it was in the 1990s, according to Forestry Commission figures. At Jubilee House, the seat of Ghana's presidency, President Nana Akufo-Addo planted a seedling of lignum vitae, one of the…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Why renewable energy won’t end energy poverty in Zimbabwe

ENVIRONMENT

ZIMBABWE is one of the African countries that hopes renewable energy technologies will help to address their energy problems. About 42% of Zimbabwe’s households are connected to the electricity grid. ELLEN FUNGISAI CHIPANGO, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Johannesburg The country has huge and diverse renewable energy potential. Its sustainable energy portfolio could include solar, hydro, biomass and, to a limited extent, wind and geothermal. Zimbabwe put forward a National Renewable Energy Policy in 2019. The policy aims to have 16.5% of the total generation capacity (excluding large hydro) from renewable sources by 2025. This increases to 26.5% by 2030.…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Youth demand action on nature, following IUCN’s first-ever Global Youth Summit

ENVIRONMENT

ALISON KENTISH FOLLOWING almost two weeks of talks on issues such as climate change, innovation, marine conservation and social justice, thousands of young people from across the globe concluded the first-ever International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) One Nature One Future Global Youth Summit with a list of demands for action on nature. Under three umbrella themes of diversity, accessibility and intersectionality, they are calling on countries and corporations to invest the required resources to redress environmental racism and climate injustice, create green jobs, engage communities for biodiversity protection, safeguard the ocean, realise gender equality for climate change mitigation…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Young climate activists need a seat at the decision-making table – on and offline

ENVIRONMENT

NKOSILATHI NYATHI WHEN I stood in the registration queue at COP25, the 25th UN climate talks in Madrid in 2019, I was really inspired to see people not only from diverse cultures in their native cultural dress, but also so many young people. At 16 years old, I was able to meet with decision-makers face-to-face and tell them exactly what my generation wanted. Participating at the summit gave me hope and confidence that my message was aired on an international stage that promised tangible action. And I wasn’t the only one. More than 26,700 people registered to attend COP25, from…