Media category: Non German

BONN, Germany (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – People are hungry for news about the risks of climate change but experts are alienating them with boring, technical jargon, the United Nations top environment official said on Tuesday.

Erik Solheim, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said one of the most searched terms on the Internet this year was “Hurricane Irma”, a powerful storm that devastated parts of the Caribbean.

Bonn, Alemanha – O ano de 2017 viu ocorrerem graves incêndios florestais pelo mundo, furacões arrasarem as ilhas do Caribe e uma seca que rareou a produção de alimentos na porção oriental da África. Em termos de florestas, 2017 foi um ano mais do mesmo, do “business a usual”, admitiu o engenheiro florestal Robert Nasi, que lidera o Centro Internacional de Pesquisa Florestal (CIFOR).

Um mês depois da Conferência da ONU sobre Mudança do Clima (COP23) em Bonn, a mesma cidade alemã acolheu um fórum internacional para pôr em pauta projetos de conservação ambiental, restauração de florestas com gestão comunitária e uma abordagem mais holística sobre as paisagens naturais.

Bioversity International participated in several activities during this year’s Global Landscapes Forum held in Bonn on 19-20 December, where the President of Mauritius emphasized the need for an Agrobiodiversity Index.

While Christmas spruces, firs and pines may decorate the festive center of Bonn, their future with that of other trees as well as water, soils and agriculture was being carefully discussed just a few kilometers away, at the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF).

Bonn, Germany

A Brazilian activist who helped thousands of people in the Amazon rainforest to use their land sustainably won an international environmental award on Wednesday.

Despite threats from logging companies, Maria Margarida Ribeiro da Silva, from the northern state of Pará, has been campaigning for more than a decade for the right of local people to use land for hunting, fishing and harvesting wild plants.

BONN, Germany — Nearly 1,000 members of the development, environment, and finance communities gathered in Germany this week for what is being hailed as a “new phase” of the Global Landscapes Forum as it breaks away from the United Nations climate conference.

Experts in the forestry, food security, sustainable agriculture, and finance sectors as well as politicians, indigenous leaders, and even actor Alec Baldwin via video link, were among those taking part in the two-day GLF, which opened in Bonn on Tuesday.

BONN, Germany — This year’s Global Landscapes Forum aimed to launch a revitalized “movement,” bringing together a range of actors under one banner to drive progress toward the climate change and sustainable development agendas.

But as the dust settles on the conference, attendees have expressed mixed views about the new platform.

What links climate change, poverty and migration? The Global Landscapes Forum addresses how land-use is central to global challenges that are more interconnected than many of us realize.

What does the politics of how we use land have to do with climate change? And with poverty, conflict and migration? These are the questions being addressed this week at an international conference focused on a more sustainable future for our planet.

19-20 December 2017. Bonn. The Global Landscapes Forum brought together 1000 attendees from 103 countriesin the World Conference Center in Bonn. In total, 21,610,513 people were reached across social media and fully 51,000 people tuned in live from 114 different countries to connect, learn, share and act around our planet’s greatest climate and development challenges.

Despite pressing environmental problems such as pollution and the extinction crisis, there are still plenty of reasons to be optimistic, UNEP chief Erik Solheim tells DW.

DW: What would you say are the greatest environmental problems we’re currently facing?

Erik Solheim: One is pollution, and pollution of course is the key also to climate change; if we really fight pollution, we will solve the climate problem. And the other is the decline in so many of the most iconic species, and the beauty of the nature — the elephants and the rhinos, and of course a huge number of animals here in Germany.

The language of environmentalists are boring and uninspiring; people cannot be bored into action, only excitement and inspiration can create action and change people’s behaviour, Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says Erik Solheim, has said.

People are hungry for news about the risks of climate change but experts are alienating them with boring, technical jargon, the United Nations top environment official said.