Mainstreaming gender and climate change is more likely to become institutionalised when activities are organised in a cross-sectoral manner and build on each other over time. In the past few years, the Government of Ethiopia has taken important steps in setting up and strengthening the institutions and governance arrangements for climate change and gender, including through the establishment of Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) units and gender directorates in different sectoral ministries.

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs.

Over a decade ago, developed countries promised to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries deal with the worst impacts of global warming and invest in green energy sources. But they almost certainly missed their goal last year amid a pandemic that upended economies.
Rich countries are racing to close a climate-finance shortfall of at least $10 billion, with a handful of European nations planning to increase their pledges this month ahead of crucial talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

“We don't qualify for grant financing because we're not a least developed country, but nevertheless, we will struggle to engage in our transition if the only form of finance that's available to us is in the form of loans at commercial rates,” said Barbara Creecy, South Africa's environment minister. South Africa has spelled out what a 1.5 degree-compatible plan would look like.

According to the International Energy Association’s newly released World Energy Outlook for 2021, emerging markets and developing economies require a massive surge in investment in clean energy and infrastructure in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Climate financing is one of the major missing ingredients to help lower-income countries invest in renewable energy that can achieve both climate and development imperatives.

Food Waste is the New Green Energy

Southeast Asia’s economy is set to lose trillions over the next 50 years if it does not significantly reduce its carbon emissions, a Deloitte report found. Also, the region’s services industry is predicted to lose $9 trillion by 2070, followed by $7 trillion of losses in manufacturing, while retail and tourism could collectively lose $5 trillion. They need to pivot from seeing global warming efforts as an optional cost to seeing it as an investment in a climate-driven transformation to a better future.

Methane is the second most abundant human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG), and is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 20 years in the atmosphere (34 times more powerful over 100 years). Because it exists for a relatively short time in the atmosphere, cutting methane provides a quick benefit in terms of limiting near-term temperature rise. Studies estimate that ambitious actions to reduce methane can avoid 0.3 degrees C of warming by 2050.

Analysis of the total carbon dioxide emissions of countries since 1850 has revealed the nations with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency. But six of the top 10 have yet to make ambitious new pledges to cut their emissions before the crucial UN COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow in November.
The six include China, Russia and Brazil, which come only behind the US as the biggest cumulative polluters.

In addition to COP26 in Glasgow at the end of October, today, world leaders are gathering in Kunming, China and virtually for the first phase of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15). Here's a quick recap of what you need to know about this Conference and what to expect from it.

The most influential climate science paper of all time

After the second world war, many of Japan’s smartest scientists found jobs in North American laboratories. Syukuro (Suki) Manabe, a 27-year-old physicist, was part of this brain drain. He was working on weather forecasting but left Japan in 1958 to join a new research project by the US Weather Service to develop a numerical model that could be used to study the climate.