Climate Watch: Countries must deliver ‘real world’ outcomes at COP29, says Simon Stiell

Climate change directly affects our communities, health, and livelihoods. Yet, media coverage often prioritises politics and business over climate-related stories, leaving crucial environmental news underreported.

Climate Watch seeks to bridge this information gap, ensuring that important climate change stories and mitigation efforts never slip under your radar. 

Here is a round-up of last week’s climate stories:

• Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the United Nations, says countries must deliver great results at the 29th edition of the conference of parties (COP29). In a message posted on social media on October 10, Stiell said countries must translate their climate pledges into practical and “real world” outcomes. The COP29 is scheduled to be held from November 11 to 22, in Baku, Azerbaijan. “The upcoming COP29 climate conference must be an enabling COP,” Stiell wrote. “Delivering concrete outcomes to start translating the climate pledges made by countries in last year’s #COP28 UAE Consensus into real-world, real-economy results. It is time to get the job done.”
• The French embassy has awarded prizes to five tertiary institutions in Nigeria for fighting plastic pollution on campuses. In June, the embassy launched a plastic waste management project worth €753,000 to help universities across Nigeria develop innovative, adaptive, and sustainable project ideas addressing plastic pollution. The prize remittance reception was held at the embassy in Abuja on October 9. Awarded institutions included OAU, YabaTech, Alex Ekwueme Funai University, the University of Calabar, and the University of Delta. Read more here.
• The Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) programme has announced the recipients of its £2.2 million funding initiative to support 14 companies across sub-Saharan Africa. Selected from over 240 applications spanning 29 countries, each company will receive between £86,000 and £237,000 over one to two years, along with technical support. The funding targets diverse sectors, including agri-processing, cooling, solar irrigation, e-waste recycling, e-mobility, healthcare, and education, ensuring that all aspects of the economy are involved in the transition to renewable energy. Read more here.
• A new report has indicated that there has been a 73 percent decline in wildlife populations over the last 50 years due to global warming. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet’s report, published on Thursday, said the decline was observed between 1970 and 2020 and measured by the living planet index (LPI). The report said the LPI monitored nearly 35,000 population trends across 5,495 species and found that the planet’s biodiversity is under immense threat, with severe consequences for ecosystems and human survival. The report identified climate change as the primary driver of biodiversity loss in the Arctic region. It revealed that the region is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, adding that if global temperatures rise beyond 1.5°C, the Arctic will lose its summer sea ice by 2050. Find out more here.