Posts tagged with 'carbon'
1.5 Degrees C: Understanding World’s Critical Warming Threshold
1.5 Degrees C: Understanding World’s Critical Warming Threshold
Nearly a decade ago, the world rallied around the Paris Agreement on climate change and the goal of holding global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Since then, the “1.5C goal” has become the world’s North Star ...
Financing Urban Resilience: Making Nature-Based Solutions Central to Africa’s Development Agenda
Financing Urban Resilience: Making Nature-Based Solutions Central to Africa’s Development Agenda
Despite accounting for less than 3% of global terrestrial area, cities have had an outsized impact on our approach to planetary boundaries, affecting biodiversity and consumption of materials and energy. Studies show that cities have become responsible for 78% of carbon emissions, ...
The Compelling Business Case for Climate Adaptation
The Compelling Business Case for Climate Adaptation
Extreme weather events like floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and intense around the globe, disrupting communities and the infrastructure they rely on. In 2024 alone, the world endured 58 disasters that wreaked over a billion dollars in damages each. Yet ...
How Cities Are Placing People at the Center of Urban Mobility Transformations
How Cities Are Placing People at the Center of Urban Mobility Transformations
What does it take for cities to create a true systems change that creates a holistic, positive shift of the entire urban system? Finding and celebrating examples of this feat is at the heart of the WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities. Since ...
The Most Impactful Things You Can Do for the Climate Aren’t What You’ve Been Told
The Most Impactful Things You Can Do for the Climate Aren’t What You’ve Been Told
The message is everywhere: You (alone) can save the planet. Choose a veggie burger instead of beef. Book this flight, not that one. Buy thrift over fast fashion. Shrink your “carbon footprint.” But here’s what most people don’t know: The ...
On the Road to Sustainable Transport, Climate Finance Can Speed Progress
On the Road to Sustainable Transport, Climate Finance Can Speed Progress
Transport is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 24% of carbon emissions worldwide. Nearly three-quarters of those emissions come from road vehicles. Solutions like electrification and increased public transport can reduce the transport sector’s emissions, but they ...
Countries Have Been Overlooking Their Biggest Climate Allies: Local and Regional Governments
Countries Have Been Overlooking Their Biggest Climate Allies: Local and Regional Governments
Cities are home to more than half the world’s population: 4.4 billion people commuting, working, eating, shopping, and using light, heat and air conditioning. As a result, cities collectively produce over 70% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions warming the planet. They ...
Building for People: Towards an Equitable Transition in the Built Environment
Building for People: Towards an Equitable Transition in the Built Environment
The built environment is not on track globally to achieve its sectoral climate targets. Accounting for over a third of total energy system emissions already, the continued use of carbon-intensive materials paired with inefficient energy use throughout the built environment ...
Lessons from China’s Growing Adoption of Zero-Emission Trucks
Lessons from China’s Growing Adoption of Zero-Emission Trucks
Getting more zero-emission trucks on the road is an important transportation shift that is needed to reduce air pollution, protect public health and curb climate-harming emissions. But transforming the entire trucking industry is a challenging feat that will require the ...
Better Buildings Are Taking on the Climate Challenge 
Better Buildings Are Taking on the Climate Challenge 
In March 2024, the inaugural Buildings and Climate Global Forum convened more than 1,000 participants to spur action towards built environment decarbonization and resilience. The first-of-its-kind forum was welcome, as the sector needs a shakeup.   The big issue on the table was ...
Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization
Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization
City officials tasked with reducing and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from their communities face a tricky task in estimating building emissions as they work to prevent the most harmful impacts of climate change. The biggest challenge is that there isn’t consensus ...
What to Watch at the First Africa Climate Summit
What to Watch at the First Africa Climate Summit
Climate change is already having a significant impact on Africa’s ecosystems, economy and society. This year alone, 1.8 million Africans were displaced during a prolonged drought, the Democratic Republic of Congo experienced catastrophic flooding, and Cyclone Freddy left a trail of destruction in Malawi and Mozambique. ...
A Roadmap to Achieving 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy
A Roadmap to Achieving 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy
Over the past 10 years, large energy buyers including corporations and cities have taken major strides to reduce energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by setting 100% renewable energy targets and then purchasing renewable electricity to demonstrate progress on an annual basis.  ...
Poor Air Quality Isn’t the Only Way Wildfires Affect Cities
Poor Air Quality Isn’t the Only Way Wildfires Affect Cities
Thousands of people in Quebec, Canada evacuated their homes this month due to raging wildfires. More than 400 miles away, New York City experienced its worst air quality in history, and briefly had the worst air quality of any city in the ...
Restoring Degraded Forests Could Bring Back Lost Rainfall, Cooler Temperatures
Restoring Degraded Forests Could Bring Back Lost Rainfall, Cooler Temperatures
Many people point to forest restoration as a way to curb climate change, where replanted forests sequester carbon in trees and soils. But emerging evidence shows that restoration can provide non-carbon climate benefits, too — in particular, reducing heat and regulating rainfall. Here’s what ...
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