“What now? Next steps on climate change” with Christiana Figueres

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The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, was a seminal moment in the world’s struggle to fight climate change. 197 countries agreed to limit the rise in global average temperature to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. But Christiana, who led those global climate negotiations as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, says the climate agreement was just a staging post in what remains a long, hard process. So what are the next steps?

Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican citizen and was the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-2016.

During her tenure at the UNFCCC Ms Figueres brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and NGOs to jointly deliver the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, in which 197 sovereign nations agreed on a collaborative path forward to limit future global warming to well below 2C. For this achievement Ms Figueres has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy.

Ms. Figueres is a founding partner of Global Optimism Ltd., a purpose driven enterprise focused on social and environmental change. She is currently a member of the The Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School; the Convenor of Mission 2020, Vice-Chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, World Bank Climate Leader, ACCIONA Board Member, WRIBoard Member, Fellow of Conservation International, and Advisory Board member of Formula E, Unilever and ENI.

The Insect Apocalypse

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfTNeXOMyvY&feature=youtu.be
The world’s insect population has declined by three quarters in the last 30 years and many species have become extinct. And it’s all man’s fault. This documentary looks at the dramatic consequences of this hitherto unrecognized catastrophe.

The results of long-term monitoring published in 2017 have confirmed that as much as 75 percent of the world’s insect population has disappeared in the last 30 years. The extent of species extinction is so vast that many researchers fear that it will knock the entire natural cycle of life out of balance. Not only the decline of the bee population but mass insect mortality as a whole will have devastating consequences for all the Earth’s inhabitants. Top scientists from around the globe are warning that the developments are much more widespread and serious than anyone had realized. Many animals feed on insects. Insects also help to convert dead tissue into nutrient-rich soil. In addition, they even regulate each other. Species that humans see as pests are often the preferred prey of useful predators. But massive human intervention has thrown the functioning balance in the insect world out of whack. Chemical poisons, the progressive sealing of soils and the widespread use of fertilizers are affecting the world’s most species-rich animal class. This documentary looks at current studies and explains what is going wrong and where urgent action is needed. There’s still some hope: although many species have been irrevocably lost, mass extinction in the insect kingdom could still be stopped – but only if humans finally begin to act against it. And we’re running out of time.