Beyond Magazine

The 2030 challenge for a liveable planet

“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.” Joel Arthur Barker, American futurist Soon after I joined the RSPB (BirdLife’s UK partner) in 2004, I was invited to a discussion about a 200-year vision for a nature reserve. Initially, this felt a bit mad because who on Earth could foresee what would happen in 50…

UN Climate Change Annual Report Demonstrates Growing Climate Action

UN Climate Change today launched its Annual Report, highlighting the progress made on tackling climate change in 2018 and the ways in which the international community can raise ambition and achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“Stepping up action has never been more urgent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the impacts of global warming at 1.5 °C,…

Epargnez le Liban et les Libanais et craignez Dieu !

  Au lieu d’essayer de trouver une solution au problème de la répartition des rôles au sein du gouvernement, certains irresponsables ont été préoccupés par une rumeur qui augmente les inquiétudes populaires sur un futur qui ne supporte plus les instabilités, et les indices qui apparaissent tous les jours comme témoins. Il n’est plus besoin de guide pour affirmer ou réfuter ce que reflète la…

Save Lebanon and the Lebanese and fear God!

  Instead of trying to find a solution to the problem of the distribution of roles within the government, some irresponsible people have been concerned by a rumor that increases popular concerns about a future that no longer supports instabilities. There is no need for a guide to affirm or refute what reality reflects. Instead of dealing with custom files, or at least trying to speed up the…

Progress Urged As Bangkok Climate Talks Open To Prepare Paris Agreement Implementation

Against the backdrop of severe and record heatwaves, bushfires, droughts and floods across the world, governments are convening a supplementary meeting in Bangkok to prepare the implementation guidelines of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The guidelines are needed to make the Paris Agreement work fairly and transparently for all.

Following a two-year negotiation process, the implementation…

It’s time we all recognise the human right to a healthy environment

Speaking ahead of World Environment Day on 5 June, the head of UN Environment* and the Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment** issued a statement urging the United Nations to recognise the human right to a healthy environment.

“We believe that the historic moment has arrived for the United Nations to recognise the human right to a healthy environment at the global level.

The…

Dinosaurs’ deaths may be guide to today

Evidence from the dinosaurs’ deaths 65 million years ago might just provide a lesson to learn about the lasting damage now being done by humanity.

US geologists have identified the moment of the dinosaurs’ death in the Earth’s deep past as the time when the climate changed, even faster and more severely than it is changing as a consequence of human action.

That fateful moment occurred on the day…

World Environment Day 2018: Joining forces to beat plastic pollution

World Environment Day 2018 is taking place on 5th June, and this year’s hosts are India.

The global celebrations were created by the UN in 1972 as a way of raising environmental awareness and action. While 2017’s event, hosted by Canada, was on the theme of ‘connecting people to nature’, this year is all about plastic waste and pollution.

The issue has gained significant traction in the past year…

Mediterranean Environments Regional Academy 2018

From 2 to 11 November 2018, Global Diversity Foundation (GDF) will organise the first Mediterranean Environments Regional Academy (MERA). This regional academy is an event of the Global Environments Network, a transformative action network created in 2012 to connect and support emerging environmental changemakers. This is our third regional academy and our first academy in the Mediterranean…

Earth bears massive human load

Gross up the mass of all life on Earth, with its disproportionate human load, and the answer is staggeringly heavy. But the uncertainties are huge.

The human load on the Earth, an audit of all life on the planet shows, is out of kilter with our numbers: we constitute a hugely heavier presence than all wild mammals together.

Israeli and US researchers found the whole package of living tissue –…

Small global warming cuts offer huge savings

Everybody profits from a world that cuts global warming to only another half a degree. The challenge is to persuade nations to act.

Californian scientists have worked out how to reduce global warming so as to make the world 20 trillion US dollars better off. It’s simple. Just stick to the spirit of an international agreement that the American President Donald Trump has already broken.

The…

Insects face calamitous habitat loss

Unless nations act fast, habitat loss could rob half of all insects of over half their habitat. Other creatures, too, could suffer in a 3°C warmer world.

Habitat loss may soon mean half the world’s insects, and many plants and animals as well, could find themselves without their familiar home ranges.

Right now, climate scientists warn, global planetary temperatures are on course to rise 3.2°C…

Record climate heat means fiercer hurricanes

Fiercer hurricanes are rapidly becoming more frequent than they were 30 years ago. The cause may be entirely natural, scientists say.

But Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 assaulted the Gulf of Mexico and dumped unprecedented quantities of rain to cause devastating floods in Texas, happened because the waters of the Gulf were warmer than at any time on record. And they were warmer because of…

Tourism ‘s climate footprint is formidable

Previous estimates of tourism’s climate footprint have fallen far below the mark. Between 2009 and 2013 it increased four times more than earlier estimated, according to a comprehensive new study.

By 2013 the worldwide tourism industry was spilling an estimated 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributing about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. World tourism is now…

Global Forests Expanding: Reflects Wellbeing, not Rising CO2, Experts say

Study find virtually no correlation between higher levels of  atmospheric CO2 and nations’ forest expansion / decline;  difference mirrors the UN Human Development Index The surprising, steady expansion of forests in many countries is a reflection of national well being and does not constitute a benefit of rapidly rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, experts say.

 On the planet as a…