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Die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) hat einen strategischen Vorsorge- und Reaktionsplan (SPRP) aufgelegt. Er umfasst 120 Millionen Euro für die Bekämpfung von Mpox in den nächsten sechs Monaten. Auch Deutschland plant, die betroffenen Gebiete zu unterstützen.

Secretary-General António Guterres witnessed the impact of rising sea levels while in Samoa. Credit: Kiara Worth/United Nations

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 2024 (IPS)

UN General Secretary General António Guterres warned of the wide-ranging impacts of climate change on a visit to the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga.

“(Climate change) spells disaster: wide-ranging and brutal impacts, coming far thicker and faster than we can adapt to them—destroying entire coastal communities,” said Guterres, speaking at a meeting of Pacific Island leaders in Tonga.

Rising sea levels and warming ocean temperatures pose a threat to the stability of Pacific Island nations and their socio-economic viability. Two new reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shed light on the accelerating rate of sea-level rise and warn of its impact on coastal areas worldwide.

A report from WMO, The State of Climate Change in the Southwest Pacific 2023, reveals that sea levels in that region are higher than the global average. Among other factors,  Sea-level rise is among the consequences of global warming and climate change shaping the fabric of seas and oceans. The UN Climate Action Team’s new technical brief, Surging Seas in a warming world, provides a breakdown of sea-level rise through scientific reporting and considers the implication on a broader scale.

While in Tonga for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting, Guterres warned that rising sea levels would have an “unparalleled power” to wreak havoc on coastal cities and their economies.

“The reason is clear: greenhouse gases—overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels—are cooking our planet,” said Guterres. “And the sea is taking the heat—literally.”

Sea-level rise poses a global threat to low-lying islands and coastal communities connected to the sea. In this area, nearly 11 percent of the world’s population (900 million) lives on continents or islands connected to the sea, which also hosts a great concentration of the world’s economic activities and cultural heritage sites. Coastal megacities across all continents, such as Bangkok, Dhaka, Buenos Aires, London, Tokyo, and New York City, face risks to their safety and sustainability. Sea-level rise erodes land, destroys infrastructure, and disrupts lives and livelihoods.

Sea-level rise, however, has a disproportionately negative impact on small island developing states (SIDs), particularly those in the Pacific. Many islands in the Pacific are dealing with a sea-level change of 15 cm between 1993 and 2023, much higher than the global mean sea-level rise of 9.4 cm. Based on a projection of 3 degrees Celsius in global temperatures, sea-level rise in the Pacific will increase by an additional 15 cm between 2020 and 2050. Yet Pacific Islands only account for 0.02 percent of global emissions. The UN special brief notes that at least 90 percent of Pacific Islanders, or 700 million people, live within five kilometers of the coastline.

The average rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled since the 1990s. Between 1993 and 2002, the rate was 0.21 percent. The rate from 2014 to 2022 was measured at 0.48 percent. This increasing rate has been attributed to the warming of oceans and the loss from ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic.

Along with rising sea levels, ocean surface warming is a grave concern for the Pacific. Between 1981 and 2023, nearly the entire South-West Pacific region reached rates of 0.4 degrees Celsius, about three times faster than the global surface ocean warming rate of 0.15 percent over the same period. The WMO also identified that marine heatwaves—periods of unusually high ocean temperatures—increased in intensity and duration in much of the Pacific over the last decade. It will have far-reaching adverse effects on fish stocks and coral reef resilience, which will impact ecosystems, economies and livelihoods in the Pacific.

“The [Pacific] ocean has taken up more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and is undergoing changes that will be irreversible for centuries to come. Human activities have weakened the capacity of the ocean to sustain and protect us and—through sea level rise—are transforming a lifelong friend into a growing threat,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

“For some nations, the loss of land due to climate change and rising sea levels may render them uninhabitable. With this raises the implications of relocation, sovereignty and statehood. Island nations across the Pacific are already experiencing a loss of life and land erosion due to sea-level rise. They are also particularly vulnerable to tropical cyclones and the increasing frequency and severity of coastal flooding. Adaptation to the impacts of sea-level rise needs to work on a greater scale than in the past. Without investing in new adaptation and protection measures in the Pacific, economic damage and loss due to coastal flooding could come up to trillions of dollars lost,” Guterres said.

In his statement, Guterres appealed that countries need to step up in their commitments towards climate action by presenting new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by 2025. This is an opportunity for all stakeholders in climate action to take immediate action to cut emissions and build up resilience to climate impacts. Guterres called for governments to increase finance and support vulnerable countries, singling out developed countries to honor their financial commitments, such as doubling adaptation finance to USD 40 billion by 2025. He also called on countries to support new financial goals during this year’s UN Climate Conference (COP29).

By 2027, every person on Earth should be protected through effective early warning systems, Guterres added. This would be done through investing in and building capacity of local climate data services and knowledge, which can help inform early warning systems and long-term adaptation solutions.

“The world must look to the Pacific and listen to the science,” said Guterres. “This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety. But if we save the Pacific, we also save ourselves.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Credit: UNCBD

By Stella Paul
MONTREAL & HYDERABAD , Aug 27 2024 (IPS)

“We are living in a time where nature is regularly raising its hand and saying, ‘Look, I’m here and I’m in trouble,’ and then bringing us all sorts of natural disasters to the table,” says Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), in an exclusive interview with IPS. 

“And,” she emphasizes, “The world is beginning to recognize that we have to have a different relationship with nature. Luckily, we already have a framework to do that.”

Since taking the reins of the UNCBD in July—less than three months before the 16th Biodiversity Convention of the Parties (COP16) is held in Colombia—Schomaker has been a leader in a rush. From preparing for the COP to coordinating with Colombia, the COP presidency and global leaders who will be attending the conference, while also presiding over a number of meetings and communicating the urgency of timely implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, Schomaker has a damaging schedule.

There are three COPs this year—all within a short span of three months and the CBD COP16, scheduled to take place from October 19–November 1, is the first of them. Schomaker is looking at this as a huge opportunity to send out a message to the other COPs.

“Unless we have a different way of interacting with the earth’s natural resources, we will not succeed on biodiversity, but also certainly not on climate change. And if that comes out and there is meant to be a new coalition launched at the COP that Colombia will be piloting, I think we will send a super strong message to the other conventions and I’m sure they will hear it and pick up on it.”

Coordinating With Other UN Conventions

But a successful COP will also depend on how well CBD can collaborate with other COPs, as the issues—biodiversity, climate change and drought are also closely linked. Schomaker asserts that she is on the right track, coordinating closely with other conventions as well as other UN agencies.

“I’ve been working with all these other conventions and processes as well, because for us to make this Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) a success is to make sure that the UN system pulls together and that governments also reflect on their own way of working,” she explains, that biodiversity is not sector specific where environment ministries alone can run it, but one in which other ministries and stakeholders are needed to make this framework a success.

From Green Diplomacy to Biodiversity

Schomaker, however, is not new to multi-agency collaboration and coordination. She begins the interview by sharing glimpses into her previous role at previous role at the European Commission’s Environment Department, describing it “a bit of warm-up” for her current position as the head of UN CBD.

“My last job was the Director for Green Diplomacy and Multilateralism. So, previously, I did it for a group of 27 countries. Now I work with 196 member states. Previously, I covered, so to speak, environmental governance and all assessments, including biodiversity, but also the chemical conventions and how all these conventions work together. Now I’m more focused on biodiversity—this is very much about everybody coming together.”

Schomaker also describes this as a “super exciting opportunity” to be able to work dedicatedly on biodiversity at a time “when the world has sort of heard the wake-up call”.

COP16: Challenges and Hopes

Barely eight weeks from now, world leaders will be heading to Cali, Colombia, to attend the first COP since adopting a new global plan in Montreal to protect at least 30 percent of the earth’s biodiversity by 2030. The past two years have seen a slew of activities, including structuring the implementation mechanism, supporting countries to revise their individual biodiversity action plans and setting up indicators for measuring the progress of the implementation. According to Schomaker, there are, however, several issues that need urgent attention at Cali.

“I think in Montreal (which is dubbed Biodiversity’s Paris moment), we managed to be more successful than in Paris, because we already had our monitoring framework and its broad outlines agreed at the same time. So that was actually a great success,” Schomaker says, continuing with a candid assessment of the challenges.

“But there are many areas that need extra focus. First of all, for the parties now need to move from this political agreement into implementing it and into aligning what they’re doing nationally with the targets and goals of the framework. And as you know, we have this National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) as our key instruments for implementation; those need to be revised, and the parties have committed to revising those national action plans, or where they cannot do that, at least to come forward with targets by COP16. And for me, this is a bit like the proof of the pudding.”

A Push for Inclusiveness

But it is resource mobilization that tops Schomaker’s list of priorities, including raising money from private sector investors.  The UN Biodiversity Convention aims to mobilize at least USD 20 billion per year by 2025 and at least USD 30 billion per year by 2030 for biodiversity-related funding from all sources, including the public and private sectors. However, so far, the actual pledges have been just about USD 300 million, while the contribution has been less than USD 100 million.

In May of this year, the then acting Executive Secretary David Cooper told IPS that the world needed a clear roadmap to bridge this wide financing gap.

Schomaker appears in agreement with that and talks about an all-inclusive resource mobilization strategy to meet the unmet goals in biodiversity financing. She is especially pushing for greater inclusion of business and thinks contribution from private business could unlock the investment that has been missing so far.

“Business, I think, plays a super important role. It was really great to see the private sector show up in force in Montreal. I think we’re now expecting a greater mobilization for Cali. So business is very, very aware of their role, of both their dependencies and their impact.”

“As you know, there are compelling figures on the relationship between nature and business, which is worth USD 44 trillion,” reminds Schomaker, referring to the New Nature Economy Report of the World Economic Forum. Published in 2020, the report highlighted that USD 44 trillion of economic value generation—over half the world’s total GDP—is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and, as a result, exposed to risks from nature loss.

“So, I think that’s important if you continue to work with business and make sure that they have the tools to understand what the impacts and dependencies are. And we will provide a lot of space for that also at the COP, the Business and Biodiversity Day and many other activities, for sure,” she says.

Staying Positive

But, despite the challenges ahead, Schomaker doesn’t want to sound all gloom and doom. Instead, she is looking at each development, however small, as a sign of positivity and hope.

In fact, on the day of this interview, the CBD had been leading a crucial meeting on Digital Sequencing Information conference in Montreal. DSI discussions center on the fair and equitable sharing of valuable benefits from digital sequence information—the digital versions of plant, animal, and microorganism DNA—and are generally considered one of the most contentious issues among biodiversity negotiators from the global north and the global south. But Schomaker asserts that there are reasons for hope. One of them is planning to launch a DSI fund.

“As you know, COP15 has already decided that there should be a mechanism and a fund for Digital Sequence Information for the benefits to be paid—the benefit from the use of digital sequencing information from genetic resources. So, one of the options is that the Global Environment Facility (GEF) might manage this fund.

“But overall, I can say that the discussions that I’ve been witnessing over the past few days and this morning are very, very constructive. And this is not to downplay that there are different perspectives, but I think everybody has come here saying, ‘Okay, we’ve taken a decision at COP15 and that decision told us we’re going to have that mechanism, we’re going to have a fund and we need to operationalize it. And our deadline is Cali’,” Schomaker says.

States Must Take the Lead

As the chief of UN Biodiversity, Schomaker has already dived into action, but she doesn’t mince words while pointing out that the UN can only be a facilitator—the real power and the responsibility to make decisions lie clearly with the states. This is especially important to remember because to kickstart the implementation of the GBF, countries need to submit their revised, more ambitious NBSAPs but until today, only 14 of the 196 signatory countries have done so.

“We are looking at how these big planning processes, the NBSAPs and then the NDCs under the Climate Convention, and how these things can also be done in better coordination, also at national level, with each other, remains a big challenge. The second thing, and I’ve already hinted at that, is this idea that if we want to be successful in combating biodiversity loss, of course, governments need to take the lead,” she emphasizes.

“Do Something”

Finally, when asked what message she would have for anyone heading to COP16, Schomaker has a clear answer: Signing of the GBF proved that there was enough political commitment, but it should not be seen as an event that was “just a beautiful moment, where energy came together, and everybody just had good moment together, and the stars were aligned.”

Instead, she says,  “It’s time to roll up the sleeves and do something.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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IPS UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Cali, Columbia, COP16,

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