African Climes

The 25 th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or COP 25 in short, will take place in Madrid, Spain from 2 nd to 13 th December under the presidency of Chile. It’s clarion call this year is ‘Time For Action’. This is meant to convey the urgency of and rally people around the most pressing need of our times: to save our planet and ourselves from the very real threat of climate change. The conference, an annual event, is meant to discuss policy and international law around climate action. It is supposed to be a united and consolidated global effort to counter the biggest threat to our way of life this century: climate change. Notably, this conference is the last before the Paris Agreement comes into force next year, 2020. 2020 is also the year the United States will officially be able to leave the agreement signed in 2015. The meet will also be the last before signatories of the agreement issue new nationa...

I n the month of August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the IPCC in short, released a report on climate change and land . The IPCC is the body whose scientific work guides policy around climate change.   In this report, scientists assessed a wide range of material concerning the interplays between land and climate change. In it, the IPCC starts by noting that only a quarter to a third of land’s potential net primary production is being utilized. It observes that ‘land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods and well-being including the supply of food, freshwater and multiple other ecosystem services, as well as supporting biodiversity’. Now, land is both a source of emissions where it releases greenhouse gases, as well as a sink, where it absorbs them. It is important to note that all aspects of the physical environment are interconnected. Land therefore plays a huge role in the exchange of energy, the hydrological, nitrogen and carbon cy...

T he Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month released a new report, one of three special reports, the other being the land and climate report and the special report on 1.5 degrees as decided upon in 2016.   The report titled The Oceans And Cryosphere in a Changing Climate examines the effects of climate change on the world’s oceans and the cryosphere. The cryosphere is the frozen component of the earth i.e. mountaintop glaciers, polar ice caps, sea ice and icebergs as well as permafrost. An iceberg I t starts by noting that 71% of the Earth surface is covered by oceans which also hold 97% of all the water on the planet. Now, oceans have a huge role in supporting life on Earth. They regulate gases, regulate heat and regulate climate. They also support a huge number of species and biodiversity, a good number of which are still undiscovered. They provide food and water, support tourism, trade and culture among other myriad uses. A ccording to the ...

Now, the era we are living in, climate is changing dangerously as a result ofthe discovery and exploitation of coal which started in the year 1750, the beginning of the Industrial Age. In the eighties, it was noticed that global climate was changing that is was warming up. So in the year 1988 Anno Domino, the powers that be decided to do something appropriate to show that they are doing something. So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization. This is the body tasked with finding scientific, technical evidence of climate change, making predictions etc. It is made up of scientists who know their stuff. They have no other goal or purpose apart from scientificallyexamining the issue of climate change and also making predictions on adaptation and mitigation. The reason why the IPCC is so important is because it provides actual data with which the rest of us can work with. In...