Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Store and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry launch The Green Shipping Challenge. The Challenge seeks to complement broader work on ocean and climate action such as the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy and the UNFCCC Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue.

Emissions from the shipping sector are significant, rising, and on a trajectory that is incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. If shipping were a “country,” it would be the eighth largest emitter.

At COP 26, many Parties began to focus on tackling emissions from the sector through various initiatives such as the Clydebank Declaration on green shipping corridors and the Declaration on Zero Emission Shipping by 2050. COP 27 will be an opportunity to build on this work and demonstrate practical implementation on the ground. There is no way of staying within 1.5 without decarbonizing shipping and it is now imperative that shipping is put on a 1.5 aligned trajectory with ambitious 2030 and 2040 targets.

The Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership

Reducing deforestation, restoring, conserving and better managing natural and productive landscapes are crucial strategies to reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and store carbon in the land. In addition, it supports livelihoods and protects ecosystem biodiversity while boosting agricultural productivity for low-carbon and climate-resilient economies and societies at large.

At COP 26, more than 140 countries with over 90% of the world’s forests committed to working together to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. This was backed by US$19.2 billion in public and private funds. Today, that commitment is enhanced by the launch of The Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP). 

With the first meeting of the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership taking place at COP 27, member countries representing a range of regions, forest areas, and economic and financial centres will focus their combined support on transformational areas of action. These include cooperation related to high-integrity carbon markets for forests, building robust forest economies that contribute to a net-zero world, securing and protecting applicable forest tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, and scaling efforts to conserve and sustainably manage high-integrity forests.

Members will work closely with the private sector, civil society and community leaders to implement and rapidly scale up solutions on deforestation, reforestation and sustainable forest and land use management, that reflect each members’ national context and priorities as well as the urgency of the global climate crisis.

Mark Carney is calling on all members of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, financial institutions with $135 trillion assets under management, to embed tackling deforestation into their transition planning by developing policies to identify and curtail financing of such activities, and to increase investment in nature-based solutions.

Today leading financial institutions from Japan to Norway to Brazil are showing that it is possible to do this. Signatories of the Commitment on Eliminating Commodity Driven Deforestation have been moving forward with implementation as the Finance Sector Deforestation Action (FSDA) initiative. FSDA members have shared investor expectations for companies, are stepping up engagement activity and working with policy makers and data providers. New members joining FSDA in 2022 include SouthBridge Group, the first African financial institution to join the initiative, Banco Estado de Chile, London CIV and GAM Investments.

The Regional Conference of Youth – Africa took place on the 14 -16 October in South Africa. The primary objective of the RCOY-Africa was to strengthen the capacity and policy advocacy of African youth ahead of the 17th Conference of Youth (COY17) and COP 27. One of the key outcomes of the RCOY-Africa was the development of the African Youth Position Paper presents today.

This position paper has been informed by various youth stakeholder engagements and these include:

This extensive stakeholder engagement process was required to develop a statement that reflected the voices of many young Africans across the different regions and working in various sectors. Based on the input received, the calls for action included the following: Climate Policy and Governance, Action for Climate Empowerment and a focus on the Green Economy.

The Resilience Hub is once again acting as the home of the Race to Resilience and kicked off on Sunday with the launch of a new round of catalytic grant funding for organisations to deliver resilience action in their communities and sessions from youth and indigenous leaders from Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

The Resilience Hub’s full agenda is here. The Hub is accessible in-person in Area C and virtually with over 3,000 registered to participate on the virtual platform. Register here.

Stay inspired by reading today’s story drawn from an anthology of short stories written by a variety of authors, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi and others. These stories present positive visions of what a sustainable society might look like and how we might get there.

Each story links to a webpage where readers can see how they can help to make the story a reality. Compiled by the Green Stories Project, in association with Herculean Climate Solutions.