East Africa Climate Action Network

09/01/2022

COP26 energized the global effort to halt global warming. Research is now crucial to monitoring progress and creating solutions. Devastating floods that hit Germany last July were made more likely by the warming climate.Credit: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Late last year, the major climate summit in Glasgow, UK — the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations climate convention (COP26) — injected much-needed momentum into the political and business community in the fight to stop climate change....

10/11/2021

The numbers of people in regions across the world affected by extreme heat stress – a potentially fatal combination of heat and humidity – could increase nearly 15-fold if the world’s temperature rise reaches 2°C. At the new temperature - according to new figures and a map from the Met Office - the number of people living in areas affected by extreme heat stress rises from 68 million today to around one billion....

The numbers of people in regions across the world affected by extreme heat stress – a potentially fatal combination of heat and humidity – could increase nearly 15-fold if the […]

30/09/2021

Women's Climate Centers International, led by a partnership of women development professionals in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and the United States. Introduction What rural women have now is infrequent access to training, often without needed follow up and support, and the inability to leverage women’s collective strength in the region for economic, cultural and political change for real solutions to climate change impacts....

30/09/2021

Climate Adaptation Training Annotation Level: Introductory Time commitment: 10-12 hours Learning product: Online course (MOOC) Sector: Multi-sector Language: English Certificate available: No The human rights online course will encourage more environmental practitioners to integrate a rights-based approach into their operations. Photo: Aaron Thomas/Unsplash Introduction The absence of a globally recognized right to a healthy environment has not stopped the development of human rights norms relating to the environment....

30/09/2021

Introduction The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and partners developed a guide website introducing multiple dimensions of the climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach to food security and sustainable development. The website aims to help practitioners, researchers and decision-makers working with or interested in CSA. It provides guidance on how to get started, as well as all the resources you need to dig deeper....

30/09/2021

Members of the Future Climate for Africa project teams meet to share findings on generating decision-relevant climate information Introduction Adaptations and strategies to build resilience are needed to manage current impacts and will be increasingly vital as the world continues to warm. But making adaptation decisions can be complex, requiring careful consideration of multiple factors and perspectives, and balancing different priorities over different timescales....

30/09/2021

Introduction Distillation: The extraction of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something (from the Oxford Dictionary of English) We are continually engaged in processes of distillation. The outcome of distillation depends on who is doing it. What conclusions I draw from reading a scientific paper often differ from what a colleague concludes. This is because distillation is part of a broader cognitive process that involves our existing beliefs, our knowledge and experience, our values (what is intrinsically important to us), and our interests (externalities that are important to us)....

30/09/2021

The health and well-being of future generations are bound to the fate of the planet. A 4°C warmer world will have catastrophic and wide-ranging effects on social, ecological and economic systems, and impacts will be disproportionately felt in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the ‘Global South’. Young people are already having to cope with the impacts of climate change and global heating, with unequal impacts on young women, girls, the urban poor and other marginalised and minoritised young people....

27/09/2021

UNSW Engineering graduates swap silver for copper to set a world record for efficiency in silicon solar cells. Today, almost 95% of all photovoltaic panels are based on mono- or polycrystalline silicon cells, which use precious silver to conduct electricity. Now, an Australian solar company, SunDrive, has created super-efficient and cheap solar panels that use more sustainable copper to pull the electrical current from the cells rather than silver....

25/09/2021

CEOs don’t need to be convinced that sustainability is important; they need to be convinced that now is the time to act. As the recent UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study on Sustainability found, the majority -- 84 percent -- of CEOs believe that business should lead efforts to define and deliver sustainable development goals. An overwhelming majority -- 93 percent-- view sustainability as important to the success of their business....

12/09/2021

Endless energy? It might be possible with solar panels made from ferroelectric crystals instead of silicon. Aerial view of a Solar Thermal Power Station The energy generation of ferroelectric crystals in solar cells can be increased by a factor of a thousand, thanks to a new innovation involving the arrangement of thin layers of the materials, according to a statement from…...

Endless energy? It might be possible with solar panels made from ferroelectric crystals instead of silicon. Aerial view of a Solar Thermal Power Station The energy generation of ferroelectric crystals […]

03/09/2021

Introduction Inequalities in climate change adaptation have long been on the radar of international institutions. Inequality shapes climate change adaptation and, if it is not accounted for in adaptation design, implementation or evaluation, interventions may either be ineffectual or – worse – increase the vulnerability of those they seek to aid. Identifying the mechanisms through which negative effects can unfold in adaptation interventions must inform future adaptation policy....