Eco Minute 13:30

BULLETIN 3 September 1:30 pm

Good afternoon, here is your Eco Minute:

# The South African Weather Service says the extremely dangerous veld fire conditions being experienced in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng are expected to continue. It says conditions are such that the Fire Danger Index is above 75. The Tshwane Emergency Services’ spokesperson, Lindsay Mnguni, says the very hot and windy conditions may result in the development of runaway and veld or bush fires and strengthen existing fires in Gauteng:

# The Southern African Trees for Climate Adaptation and Resilience is building an open-access toolkit based on bioinformatics to guide smarter use of indigenous trees in Southern Africa. This is in partnership with Stellenbosch University. The university’s Guy Midgley says the digital toolkit will draw on climate, soil and environmental data, along with detailed species traits, to help policymakers, farmers and urban planners identify which endemic African tree species are best suited for reforestation:

# And finally: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal is urging over 700 global finance, investment and government stakeholders to fund coal fairly and equally. Global coal demand increased to a new all-time high of around 8.8-billion tonnes last year, up 1.5-percent from 2023. FutureCoal chairperson Mike Teke says despite the significant role played by coal, many policy and investment frameworks still exclude or treat coal unfairly. He says the reality is that coal cannot be excluded from just energy transition or global growth and economic development discussions.

Stay tuned for more news………….