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AGENDA 2030 BEFORE US THERE IS A BETTER BALANCE We have 11 years to make it |
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Climate Change and Land. An IPCC Special ReportSince the pre-industrial period, the land surface air temperature has risen nearly twice as much as the global average temperature. Climate change, including increases in frequency and intensity of extremes, has adversely impacted food security and terrestrial ecosystems as well as contributed to desertification and land degradation in many regions .Many land-related responses that contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation can also combat desertification and land degradation and enhance food security. The potential for land-related responses and the relative emphasis on adaptation and mitigation is context specific, including the adaptive capacities of communities and regions. While land-related response options can make important contributions to adaptation and mitigation, there are some barriers to adaptation and limits to their contribution to global mitigation. Summary IPCC report says Download Resport The chapters posted |
• Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) activities accounted for around 13% of CO2, 44% of methane (CH4), and 82% of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from human activities globally during 2007-2016, representing 23% (12.0 +/- 3.0 GtCO2e yr) of total net anthropogenic emissions of GHGs. The natural response of land to human-induced environmental change caused a net sink of around 11.2 GtCO2 yr during 2007-2016 (equivalent to 29% of total CO2 emissions); the persistence of the sink is uncertain due to climate change. If emissions associated with pre- and post-production activities in the global food system are included, the emissions are estimated to be 21-37% of total net anthropogenic GHG emissions
• Changes in land conditions, either from land-use or climate change, affect global and regional climate. At the regional scale, changing land conditions can reduce or accentuate warming and affect the intensity, frequency and duration of extreme events. The magnitude and direction of these changes vary with location and season. • Climate change creates additional stresses on land, exacerbating existing risks to livelihoods, biodiversity, human and ecosystem health, infrastructure, and food systems. Increasing impacts on land are projected under all future GHG emission scenarios. Some regions will face higher risks, while some regions will face risks previously not anticipated. Cascading risks with impacts on multiple systems and sectors also vary across regions. • The level of risk posed by climate change depends both on the level of warming and on how population, consumption, production, technological development, and land management patterns evolve. Pathways with higher demand for food, feed, and water, more resource-intensive consumption and production, and more limited technological improvements in agriculture yields result in higher risks from water scarcity in drylands, land degradation, and food insecurity. |
Combating desertification in the EU: a growing threat in need of more action
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Desertification is a form of land degradation in drylands. It is a growing threat in the EU. The long period of high temperatures and low rainfall in the summer of 2018 reminded us of the pressing importance of this problem. Climate change scenarios indicate an increasing vulnerability to desertification in the EU throughout this century, with increases in temperatures and droughts and less precipitation in southern Europe.
Desertification-related EU projects are spread across different EU policy areas – mainly rural development, but also environment and climate action, research, and regional policy. These projects can have a positive impact on combating desertification, but there are some concerns about their long-term sustainability. Europe is increasingly affected by desertification. The risk of desertification is most serious in southern Portugal, parts of Spain and southern Italy, south-eastern Greece, Malta, Cyprus, and the areas bordering the Black Sea in Bulgaria and Romania. Studies have reported these areas to be often impacted by soil erosion, salinisation, loss of soil organic carbon, loss of biodiversity and landslides1. The long period of high temperatures and low rainfall in Europe in the summer of 2018 reminded us of the pressing importance of this problem. |
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Agenda 2030:
Goals Sustainable cities and communities
• In 2018, 4.2 billion people, 55 percent of the world’s population, lived in cities. By 2050, the urban population is expected to reach 6.5 billion. • Cities occupy just 3 percent of the Earth’s land but account for 60 to 80 percent of energy consumption and at least 70 percent of carbon emissions. • 828 million people are estimated to live in slums, and the number is rising. • In 1990, there were 10 cities with 10 million people or more; by 2014, the number of mega-cities rose to 28, and was expected to reach 33 by 2018. In the future, 9 out of 10 mega-cities will be in the developing world. • In the coming decades, 90 percent of urban expansion will be in the developing world. • The economic role of cities is significant. They generate about 80 percent of the global GDP. |
PRESENTATIONSee UN News See Video |
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| STOP CLIMATE CATASTROPHE BEFORE NO MORE CAN COME BACK | |
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July 2019 was the hottest July and the hottest month on record globally
Regions across the world experienced record-breaking temperatures; the continent of Africa experienced its hottest month on record, and countries across Europe — including France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, and Luxembourg — experienced the hottest days in their nations’ history. The hot temperatures had a particularly grave impact on sea ice. Urban areas around the world experienced record temperatures this summer. After France experienced record temperatures in late June, about 4,000 schools closed and traffic restrictions were put in place to help the country cope with pollution, according to French news. City residents in Russia’s Siberia region and in Anchorage, Alaska have also been forced to cope with plumes of smoke from major wildfires. In Russia, more than 17 million acres were scorched over two months. In Alaska, 2.4 million acres have burned. Researchers determined that was no sea ice within 125 miles of the Alaskan coast, and there were reports of malnourished animals — including birds, seals, and walrus — washing up in the western part of the state. Burn the largest lung on the planet At a time when the world needs billions more trees to absorb carbon and stabilise the climate, the planet is losing its biggest rainforest. But Brazil won international kudos after that by slowing deforestation by 80% between 2005 and 2014. This was done with strict monitoring, better policing and stiffer penalties. But that system has been eroded in recent years and many fear a return to the alarming levels of forest loss that occurred two decades ago. Oxygen is released by plants during the process of photosynthesis, where sunlight and carbon dioxide are converted into energy in the form of carbohydrates. A large proportion of the world's oxygen is produced by plankton of oceans. The oxygen produced by land-based plants, about 16% comes from the Amazon. In the long run, the Amazon absorbs about the same amount of oxygen as it produces, effectively making the total produced net zero. Professor Jon Lloyd from Imperial College London says although the Amazon produces a lot of oxygen during the day through photosynthesis, it absorbs about half of it back through the process of respiration to grow. Further oxygen is used up by the forest's soil, animals and microbes. The fires are also emitting carbon monoxide - a gas released when wood is burned and does not have much access to oxygen. Everyone on the planet benefits from the health of the Amazon. As its trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, the Amazon plays a huge role in pulling planet-warming greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Without it, climate change speeds up. But as the world’s largest rainforest is eaten away by logging, mining, and agribusiness, it may not be able to provide the same buffer. And if the Amazon as we know it dies, it wouldn’t go quietly. As the trees and plants perish, they would release billions of tons of carbon that has been stored for decades — making it nearly impossible to escape a climate catastrophe. Fires that have been intentionally set, as we’re seeing in Brazil, can be even more difficult to control compared to a sudden wildland fire. Controlled burns are also a popular deforestation technique in other countries where the Amazon is burning, including Bolivia. There, the government brought in a modified Boeing 747 supertanker to douse the flames. Illegal land-grabbers also destroy trees so they can raise the value of the property they seize. But they are manmade and mostly deliberate. Unlike the huge recent blazes in Siberia and Alaska, the Amazon fires are very unlikely to have been caused by lightning. The Amazon River stretches across several of these South American countries, but the majority -- more than two-thirds -- of the rainforest lies in Brazil. A PLANETARY WARNING: Huge wildfires in the Arctic and far North This summer, over 600 wildfires have consumed more than 2.4 million acres of forest across Alaska. Fires are also raging in northern Canada. In Siberia, choking smoke from 13 million acres – an area nearly the size of West Virginia – is blanketing towns and cities. Recent fires are too frequent, intense and severe. They are reducing older-growth forest in favor of young vegetation, and pouring more carbon into the atmosphere at a time when carbon dioxide concentrations are setting new records. Angola had last week, according to NASA satellite imagery, around 6,000 fires in Angola and more than 3,000 in Congo. In US large fire activity continues in 14 states where more than 448,000 acres have burned. Six new large fires were reported yesterday in Arizona, California, Idaho, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Utah. Fire has scorched over 14,000 acres in northeastern California, quickly becoming the largest California fire of the year. About 2 million acres have burned and only nine fires are currently contained. A quarter of the world’s population in a water crisis Of the 17 nations, 12 are in the Middle East and North Africa, according to an analysis based World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas. Two countries–India and Pakistan–are in Asia. The remaining hotspots are San Marino in Europe, Botswana in Africa and Turkmenistan in Central Asia. Qatar, the most at risk from water scarcity, depends heavily on seawater desalination systems to supply drinking water to people and industries. India, which is ranked 13th on the list of countries with extremely high water risk, has more than three times the population of the other 16 countries in this category combined. Scroll down for full list. |
Brazil’s indigenous peoples, already targeted by loggers, face a powerful foe in the new president
The Kawahiva’s territory lies near the town of Colniza, one of the most violent areas in Brazil, where 90% of income is from illegal logging. Survival International, the global movement fighting for the rights of tribal people, has recently called for increased police protection for the team responsible for protecting the Kawahiva’s land. FUNAI, Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, has been prevented from properly carrying out its work in the area due to violence from illegal loggers and ranchers, leaving the tribe exposed. Indigenous peoples are frequently regarded as obstacles to the advance of agribusiness, extractive industries, roads and dams. As more rainforest is invaded and destroyed in the name of economic “progress” and personal profit, uncontacted tribes become targets – massacred over resources because greedy outsiders know they can literally get away with murder. These are silent, invisible genocides, with few if any witnesses. The news often only emerges months, if not years, later. Siberian Wild fires and Heatwaves in Alaska: How the Arctic Is Nearing a Point of No Return Warm air from Europe’s heat wave reached Greenland on July 29 and 30, setting temperature records at Summit Station and melting about 90 percent of the ice sheet surface from July 30 to August 3. Melt runoff was estimated at 55 billion tons during the interval, or about 40 billion tons more than the 1981 to 2010 average for the same time period. Overall, melting this July was much higher than average, leading to more extensive bare ice and flooded snow areas. In Alaska, 2.4 million acres of wildfire have burned through July. In the northern Russian province of Siberia, more than 7 million acres have burned. Greenland has also seen several wildfires in July, but the largest threat to Greenland is a heatwave that spread from Europe to the Arctic country, causing 197 billion tons of ice melt in July alone. In the past 30 years, plankton-eating baleen whales–humpbacks, fins and minkes–have begun to venture into parts of the Arctic such as the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Siberia, where sea ice has retreated and plankton are flourishing in the sunlit waters. According to one forecast, the waters off northern Siberia in particular may grow increasingly productive over the course of this century, as the planet continues to warm. A new satellite analysis reveals that between 2014 and 2017 sea ice extent in the southern hemisphere suffered unprecedented annual decreases, leaving the area covered by sea ice at its lowest point in 40 years. Melting Antarctic sea ice does not add to sea level rise because the ice is already in the water. However, it is bad for wildlife such as penguins that rely on it. It also contributes to global warming because sea ice reflects much of the sun’s energy back into space, while dark water absorbs it. Glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica have thinned and weakened dramatically over the past quarter-century, leaving 24% of the ice in the western part of the continent seriously weakened and in danger of collapse. In some places on Antarctica, glaciers have thinned by approximately 400 feet (122 meters). This staggering loss has little to do with weather fluctuations; rather, it unfolded over decades as Earth's climate warmed. Everywhere on Earth ice is changing. Everywhere on Earth ice is changing. The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80 percent since 1912. Glaciers in the Garhwal Himalaya in India are retreating so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could virtually disappear by 2035. Thawing permafrost has caused the ground to subside more than 15 feet (4.6 meters) in parts of Alaska. From the Arctic to Peru, from Switzerland to the equatorial glaciers of Man Jaya in Indonesia, massive ice fields, monstrous glaciers, and sea ice are disappearing, fast. In southern Louisiana coasts are literally sinking by about three feet (a meter) a century, a process called subsidence. A sinking coastline and a rising ocean combine to yield powerful effects. Rising sea level, sinking land, eroding coasts, and temperamental storms are a fact of life. More than a hundred million people worldwide live within three feet (a meter) of mean sea level. Vulnerable to sea-level rise, Tuvalu, a small country in the South Pacific, has already begun formulating evacuation plans. Megacities where human populations have concentrated near coastal plains or river deltas— Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta, Tokyo, and New York—are at risk. Waste in the oceans and the destruction of marine life Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles—twice the size of Texas—is a powerful image of our plastic problem. A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries. |
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ADAPTATION AND RECOVERY ACTIONS THEY WILL NOT BE SUFFICIENT TO GO BACK |
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ONU: Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
The degradation of land and marine ecosystems undermines the well-being of 3.2 billion people and costs about 10 per cent of the annual global gross product in loss of species and ecosystems services. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, declared by the UN General Assembly, aims to massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight the climate crisis and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity. . Currently, about 20 per cent of the planet's vegetated surface shows declining trends in productivity with fertility losses linked to erosion, depletion and pollution in all parts of the world. By 2050 degradation and climate change could reduce crop yields by 10 per cent globally and by up to 50 per cent in certain regions. The Decade, a global call to action, will draw together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration from successful pilot initiatives to areas of millions of hectares. Research shows that more than two billion hectares of the world's deforested and degraded landscapes offer potential for restoration. |
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"SISTEMA AMBIENTE" IS THE INFORMATION AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
TO CROSS THE CHANGE OF THE WAY OF PRODUCING |
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http://www.sistemaambiente.net/Tesi/Implementation_of_a_QHSE_management_system_FENG_Meng_Ting.pdf
To go on from the squandering management (with its high costs both for the company and for the system) to a circular economy, a functional tool is needed that, in the model of "Sistema Ambiente", it is the environmental balance fed by the environmental accounting (the relative quantitative values the progress and the destination of the resources along the cycle of the material and the impact that they have in the system in which the company is inserted) and the industrial accounting. The making at company level allows to begin the balances of area and sector with a compound method. |
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“Sistema
Ambiente”,the system of management of Digitalis, in addition to the utility of normal record and production of documents of treatment of residues, offers some important opportunities for a better waste processing organization. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/581913/EPRS_STU%282017%29581913_EN.pdf |
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The Environmental Balance also includes the calculation of the equivalent carbon: calculation that is prepared in every aspect of the cycle of production (the energy consumption in processes and products, the way of transport of the workpeople and the used one for materials and products, manufacture of the raw material, the residues produced by the processes and the end of the useful life of the products). The calculation is the base to understand how to modify the processes and to plan how to reduce the gas emission of greenhouse effect produced by the cycle. http://www.bilans-ges.ademe.fr/en/accueil/contenu/index/page/principles/siGras/0
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Link to the latest news letters: • A far-reaching transformation of the economy is coming • 2019: by 2030 to change development and to avoid disaster • TOGETHER WE CHOOSE HOW TO CHANGE DEVELOPMENT • THERE IS A LITTLE TIME TO CHANGE THE DEVELOPMENT • we must choose together |
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