SUSTAINABILITY - The African Mirror

Dec

05

2020

Uganda gives environmental consent to oil pipeline despite objections

SUSTAINABILITY

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA UGANDA has granted environmental approval for a $3.5 billion pipeline to export crude oil from western fields to the Indian Ocean coast in Tanzania, despite pressure from lobby groups. The planned pipeline, from fields co-owned by France's Total and China's CNOOC, would cross sensitive ecological systems including wildlife-rich areas, rivers and swampland that are catchments for Lake Victoria. International and local environmental groups including Global Witness say it poses unacceptable risks. But in a statement late on Thursday, Uganda's state-run National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) said it had issued a certificate of approval for the environmental and social…

Sep

18

2021

By The African Mirror

UN faces $100 trln shortfall in fight against climate change, inequality – report

SUSTAINABILITY

SIMON JESSOP GLOBAL goals tackling poverty, inequality, injustice and climate change face a $100 trillion funding shortfall and are likely to be missed unless 10% of global economic output is directed to the U.N. targets every year to 2030, a report on Friday said. The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals set targets on everything from the environment to health and equality and have the support of all member states, yet the supply of finance from governments, investors, banks and companies to help meet them has consistently fallen short. Hampered by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the annual shortfall is now…

Jan

31

2021

By The African Mirror

Declaring war on e-waste

SUSTAINABILITY

LISA WITEPSKI THAT old cell phone that couldn’t keep up with new apps. The fridge that just got too small for your family’s needs. The printer that went on the fritz and wasn’t worth the money needed to fix it. We all have a small collection of electronic goods that no longer have a use – but Green Kid Enterprises is aiming to get them out of our drawers and garages, and give them new purpose. Here’s a frightening statistic: in 2019, around 53.6 million tons of electronic waste was produced – an average of around 7.3kg per person. More…

Sep

17

2021

By The African Mirror

UK climate envoy to visit South Africa to discuss helping shift from coal

SUSTAINABILITY

BRITAIN’S envoy to the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) John Murton plans to visit South Africa ahead of the November talks, a spokesman in Pretoria said, to discuss helping it end an over-reliance on coal that makes it one of the world's leading carbon emitters. South African Environment Ministry spokesman Albi Modise said discussions were exploratory but would focus on cooperation in the transition from coal to renewables. Africa's most industrialised nation uses coal for 90% of its power needs. That has made it the world's 14th largest carbon dioxide emitter - pumping out 479 million tonnes equivalent in 2019…

Jan

30

2021

By The African Mirror

Use of dirty fuels is pervasive in Ghana. What can be done to transition to clean energy

SUSTAINABILITY

MANY Ghanaian households are energy poor. Households that use biomass like wood, grass, animal dung and charcoal are considered energy poor while households that use clean energy like electricity and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are non-energy poor. ABDUL-WAKEEL KARAKARA ALHASSAN, PhD Candidate, School of Economics, University of Cape Coast In 2018 the International Energy Agency indicators showed that only 25% of Ghanaian households had access to clean energy for cooking. Lack of access to modern energy by households, to some extent, is both a cause and consequence of underdevelopment. In our study we set out to determine the factors that…

Jan

29

2021

By The African Mirror

Africa’s Great Green Wall aims for fresh growth spurt after sluggish start

SUSTAINABILITY

THIN LEI WIN GROWING up in a village in Burkina Faso, Georges Bazongo remembers his parents and neighbours cutting down trees each year to expand their farmland so they could "grow enough food for our families to eat". He also noticed some trees becoming drier in the drought-prone region, an indication too that the soil was deteriorating as heavy rains washed away its fertile layer. Some of his relatives moved to Ivory Coast in search of a better life, Bazongo, 48, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. But things started improving a decade ago when the government and environmental groups helped…

Jan

28

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Resilient recovery’: Cities link pandemic, climate adaptation responses

SUSTAINABILITY

CAREY L. BIRON Cities across the globe pledged on Monday to use their post-pandemic recovery plans to bolster ways to adapt to the growing risks posed by climate change. The 1000 Cities Adapt Now initiative, launched by several non-governmental organizations and a U.N. agency, will initially start operating in 100 urban areas but eventually expand to 1,000, organizers said at the opening of the two-day virtual Climate Adaptation Summit. The project was developed amid concern that adaptation had received relatively weaker attention in the international climate discussion, and it will now use the issue to drive an inclusive and resilient post-pandemic…

Jan

27

2021

By The African Mirror

Crafting COVID-19 recovery plans to recycle more could slash emissions

SUSTAINABILITY

MICHAEL TAYLOR COVID-19 relief and recovery plans aimed at recycling and reusing more of the billions of tonnes of materials consumed each year could slash planet-heating emissions and limit the impacts of climate change, researchers said on Tuesday. By developing and promoting ways to reduce the amount of minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass used in new products, greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by 39%, or 22.8 billion gigatonnes annually, said a report by Amsterdam-based social enterprise Circle Economy. "Governments are making huge decisions that will shape our climate future," CEO Martijn Lopes Cardozo said in a statement. "They…

Jan

25

2021

By The African Mirror

World leaders urged to learn from pandemic in adapting to climate change

SUSTAINABILITY

MEGAN ROWLING THE COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world what it is like to go through a dangerous emergency of the kind that could occur if climate change accelerates - and offers lessons on how to respond, the head of the U.N. climate science panel said. Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the health crisis was "a foretaste of what climate change could do to our society, to nature and to our lives". "Both climate change and COVID-19 have shown us the risks of an unthinking and rapacious approach to nature and its resources,"…

Sep

08

2021

By The African Mirror

Insights for African countries from the latest climate change projections

SUSTAINABILITY

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – a body of the UN tasked with providing scientific information on climate change – has released a major new report, pulling together evidence from a wide range of current and ancient climate observations. It’s the most up-to-date understanding of climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science. VICTOR ONGOMA, Assistant Professor, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique It is crucial that we have a good understanding of the findings as they give an indication of what our future could look like. According to the report, global warming is evident, with each of…