Since May 2017 the Natural History Museum of Berlin, Germany, showcases a special exhibition focusing on Macaws (Aras). Right after passing by gigantic dinosaur skeletons in the entrance of the museum, the visitor enters a room with a South American atmosphere and dozens of colorful specimens of Macaws.

From fact sheets pinned to the walls we learn that macaws face several threats. Habitat loss due to the clearing of woodland for the means of tropical wood harvesting, grazing grounds, arable land, and mining, is the most severe threat. Especially in the Amazonian and Cerrado region, where the natural habitat of the birds is lost at an immense speed. Being highly adapted to certain trees for feeding and nesting, macaws cannot easily find new homes.

Another reason for the decline in macaw populations is illegal trade and poaching. The pretty birds are very popular as pets, especially because of their intelligence and social personality. Sadly, the typical human friendly behavior of macaws is based on the lack of alternatives after the birds are taken away from their families.

As a result, many of the macaw species are listed in the IUCN red list of threatened species. The Blue-throated Macaw and the Spix’s Macaw for example are categorized as critically endangered.

Threatened macaws: How does this relate to us – to you?

The destruction of the Ara’s habitat is largely triggered by the global need for soy. Germany, for example, imports more than 6 million tonnes of soy each year and the vast majority is grown in South America where the macaws live. An estimated 2.2 million hectares of land is dedicated to the production of soybean for Germany.

Now, people assuming only vegans with their tofu and other soy based items are responsible for this high demand, are wrong. In fact, soy for tofu comes mainly from organic productions from within the European Union.

The quoted number is used to feed pigs, cows and poultry. One meal of traditional roast pork alone destroys two square metres of potential macaw habitat. According to the fact sheets at the exhibition, the entire German Federal State of Thuringia would need to be converted to arable land with soybeans to satisfy the meat industry’s demand for this fodder.

As a logical conclusion, less meat in your daily life helps to protect the lives of the beautiful macaw species in South America!

More information on the exhibition can be found here. The Natural History Museum in Berlin is definitely worth a visit. It showcases earth history, evolution, dinosaur skeletons, minerals and much more in a very informative way – and with special student price of only 5 €.

The post Macaws in Berlin: how our food choices threaten the popular exotic birds appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

“I hear no objections, it is so decided.”

As observer in the Bula zone, this sentence was the most heard during the first days of the 23^rd Conference of the Parties . Most meetings in the first days of the COP23 still dealt with organizational matters, such as agreeing on the structure of following meetings. The interventions by parties appeared rather repetitive to me, which is probably caused by the diplomatic character of the sessions. Almost everybody started their comments by thanking Fiji and Germany for hosting this year´s COP and stressing out how much they appreciate the previous work and look forward to fruitful discussions with tangible outcomes.

The negotiations in the Bula zone are carried out in many parallel meetings of the following working groups/ bodies:

• Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA),
• Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI),
• Conference of the Parties (COP),
• Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA),
• Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP),
• Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA)

Each group has a long list of agenda items that they work on during the two weeks in Bonn. For more detailed information on what the COP23 is all about, read this GCE post. Due to the vast number of parallel meetings and increasing restrictions for observer presence in sessions, it was impossible for us four observers from the Global Change Ecology programme to get a full overview of what´s going on each day in the negotiations at Bula zone. Luckily, there are many media teams, climate activists and other NGOs who provide very helpful daily briefings, such as the Climate Tracker.

I mainly attended informal consultations of the SBSTA, e.g. on systematic observation and research, and the big COP plenary meetings. In the course of the first week, I could observe how the negotiations went from structural issues to more technical, content-based discussions. Some of the bodies already produced informal notes and draft texts which ultimately will lead to the creation of a rulebook for the
implementation of the Paris Agreement.

According to the big COP stock-taking plenary on Saturday and an overview article by Climate Tracker, the main points being discussed in the different bodies in the first week of COP23 have been:

Pre-2020 actions
The Paris Agreement commitments only begin in 2020. However, as the COP president Frank Bainimarama says: “We must not waste time”. For this reason, especially developing countries, demanded pre-2020 actions to already get started with mitigation activities to combat climate change and have a chance at limiting global warming to below 1.5°C in comparison to pre-industrial levels. This is very crucial for island states, for example in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, so far the pre-2020 ambitions have not been assigned to any working group or official agenda item of this year´s COP.

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
One of the main points being discussed in this context is how and when the reporting and updating of the NDCs should take place. Developing countries and developed countries might face differentiated processes here.

Loss and Damage
As nicely explained by Climate Tracker: “loss and damage is a concept where rich countries, who have historical responsibility for climate change, are asked to be liable to developing countries, who are already facing climate change impacts.” Unfortunately, negotiations on this topic ended in controversial discussions when some developed countries questioned the scientific evidence necessary to correlate extreme weather events/natural disasters with climate change.

Finance
One of the crucial issues for the implementation of the Paris Agreement is the finance of all required measures, e.g. in form of an Adaptation Fund which can help the developing countries to tackle climate change impacts.

Talanoa dialogue
Also known as Facilitative dialogue, the Talanoa dialogue has been introduced by the Fijian COP presidency to have inclusive, participatory and transparent conversations in which people listen to each other and respect the other one´s perspective. It is supposed to be held in 2018.

Other important topics covered in the meetings were the reporting guidelines/ implementation for adaptation and mitigation, the global stock-take, a gender action plan and features, such as transparency, equity, capacity building and technology transfer.

The parties still have a lot of work ahead and with ministers arriving in the second week of COP23, one can hope that negotiations progress faster and that the delegates agree on how to implement the different components of the Paris Agreement.

I feel honored to be given the unique opportunity to observe the negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference 2017. I felt overwhelmed by the number of events taking place at the same time and also by the engagement and interest that NGOs demonstrated at Bonn zone and within negotiations.

The post COP23: Wrap-up first week appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

The “Fossil of the Day” Awards exist since 1999 and are an initiative of the Climate Action Network (CAN) to ironically honor those parties, countries or organisations which act in a bad manner, hindering the progress of the negotiations at COP and counteracting the common will to achieve the climate target set in the Paris Agreement. Aiming for the attention of delegates and directly pointing fingers at the “bad ones”, the Award “winner” of every conference day is announced at 6 pm in the Bula zone in the foyer of the
World Conference Center.

“To those who are the best at being the worst, to those who do the most to do the least”

In the first week of the COP23 the following bodies have been awarded with the ironic “Fossil of the Day” price:

Day 1:

• United States “We are still in” movement as exceptional non-ironic “Ray of the Day” for giving hope for the continuation of joint climate action

Day 2:

• Australia for approving and funding fossil fuel mines which threaten habitats, such as the Great Barrier Reef, and increase emissions
• Poland for trying to convert the EU Emissions Trading Scheme into a coal power subsidy scheme instead of phasing out from fossil fuels

Day 3:

• France for postponing their nuclear energy phase down target (to reduce nuclear energy in the national energy mix from 75% to 50% by 2020)

Day 4:

• Developed Countries for refusing to include pre-2020 actions into the COP23 agenda
• Japan for promoting nuclear and coal technologies in developing countries within the Japan-United States Strategic Energy Partnership
• Kuwait for voting to exclude observers from a session on Loss and Damage within the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI)

Day 5:

• International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for negotiating on carbon offsets and biofuels for this sector in private

Day 6:

• Australia, Canada, European Union and United States for forgetting about the solidarity principle when it comes to loss and damage finance

The post COP23: Fossil of the day appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

On the third day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2017, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) hosted several side events on forest landscape restoration in their pavilion at the Bonn zone.

An analysis conducted by the IUCN and Climate Focus revealed that only 8 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have unconditional concrete targets related to the forest sector, although 77% of the NDCs mention the importance of forests to achieve the Paris Agreement target. As stated in the sessions, mangrove restoration, reforestation, afforestation and agro-forestry, among others, have the potential to reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations. Nevertheless, pledges made under the Bonn challenge remain unconnected to the NDCs of each country and metrics are heterogeneous. Some national targets are measured in sequestrated tones of carbon, others in hectares of forest conversion. Emphasis is put on the various numbers of advantages to be gained from forest restoration, for example increased resilience to climate change, provision of water and biodiversity conservation.

“Make our communities safer, healthier and more prosperous.” – Bianca Jagger, IUCN Bonn Challenge Ambassador

An evening reception was accompanied by high-level keynote speakers, including the State Secretary of the German Ministry for Environment, the Deputy Minister of the Mahaweli Ministry for Development and Environment and the IUCN Bonn Challenge Ambassador. They reported on the journey of the Bonn challenge and proudly announced that the 2020 goal of restoring 150 Mio. hectares of forests was achieved already this year, according to promises given by participating nations.

As an important feature of the Bonn challenge ecological integrity, carbon sequestration and the needs of local communities are taken into account at the same time.

The post COP23: Bonn Challenge appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

After yesterday’s touching opening ceremony, which was enriched by performances by children and indigenous Fijian people as well as motivating speeches, the second day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2017 continued with the central agenda: preparing the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

First, some good news: observers are generally welcome in most of the sessions and the Fijian COP presidency seeks an open dialogue with non-parties to the convention, as their contributions will be crucial to achieving the climate target set in the Paris Agreement.

“We are all in the same boat.” – COP president Frank Bainimarama

The statements given during the first two conference days emphasized the urgency of our situation and called out for solidarity as well as effective, efficient, and immediate climate actions.

This year’s natural disasters, like South Asian monsoons or hurricanes in the Caribbean, have demonstrated that humanity is already facing impacts of climate change. In one of the side events, a Fijian woman narrated on how the Pacific small island states are suffering from the consequences of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which they themselves did not cause. For that reason, Frank Bainimarama, the newly elected COP president, stressed that: “We are all in the same boat.”

This metaphor is visualized in the World Conference Center in the form of a Fijian canoe.

“We need to have a collective response to loss and damage, especially for these developing countries.”
– Timor-Leste delegate

In one of the negotiations, the Palestinian delegate underlined this moral attitude by stating: “No one should be left behind”; this sentiment is supported by the least developed countries’ (LDCs) representative.

 “Climate change, if we do not act immediately […], there will be no return.”
– Ambassador Aziz Mekouar

A recently published report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) explains how urgent the demanded joint climate action is. 2017 will be among the three hottest years on record, even though we are no longer witnessing El Niño conditions. The temperatures in January to September were 1.1°C warmer than the 1880-1900 average.

Even more alarming, our recent efforts have not been sufficient. According to a UN Environment report the pledges made in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) only fulfill one-third of the Paris Agreement target and would lead to 2 to 3°C warming in comparison to pre-industrial temperatures. Petteri Taalas from the WMO warns that time is very limited to change our behavior.

I leave the second day at COP23 overwhelmed by the amount of people attending this conference and the common will to combat climate change. I hope that within the upcoming days, the delegates will find consensus on how to implement and finance the ambitious goal that they agreed upon in Paris, 2015.

The post COP23: “Science is not negotiable” appeared first on Global Change Ecology.