Eco Minute 13:30

BULLETIN 20 November 1:30 pm

Good afternoon, here is your Eco Minute:

# Greenpeace Africa says with COP29 in its final week, it continues to call for an ambitious loss and damage fund, as well as a new collective goal that reflects Africa’s climate finance needs. The conference currently being held in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, is seeking to agree on deals across a range of different issues including finance, carbon markets, and the future of fossil fuels. Greenpeace Africa says every moment of inaction costs lives and deepens the climate injustice faced by Africa.

Meanwhile, United Nations climate chief, Simon Stiell, says leaders of the world’s largest economies have committed to driving forward financial reforms to put strong climate action within all countries’ reach. Talks on the need to rapidly and substantially scale up climate finance have ramped up at the conference. Stiell says countries need to move much faster to a clean-energy and climate-resilient global economy:

# And finally: The University of Witwatersrand lecturer, Shannon Conradie, has been named as the 2024 recipient of the Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer research grant, valued at approximately 2.6-million-rand. Ward’s research uses scenario modelling to understand and predict changes in desert birds’ behaviour as they respond to global temperature change. Ward says by the end of this century, the maximum air temperatures in some desert zones will increase by up to five degrees Celsius, pushing way beyond the upper limits of tolerance of desert birds. 

Stay tuned for more news………….