Thursday, November 28, 2024

Norway faces WWF in court over deep sea mining

By AFP
November 27, 2024

Protesters hold placards during a demonstration against seabed mining outside the Norwegian Parliament building in Oslo - Copyright NTB/AFP Javad Parsa

The World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Norwegian chapter will have its day in court Thursday, after it sued Norway for opening up its seabed to mining before performing sufficient impact studies.

Already Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, Norway could become one of the first countries to authorise seabed mining, arguing the importance of not relying on China for minerals essential for renewable technology.

While deep-sea mining is contentious due to its potential impact on vulnerable marine ecosystems, Norway’s parliament in January formally gave its green light to open up parts of its seabed to exploration.

“We believe the government is violating Norwegian law by now opening up for a new and potentially destructive industry without adequately assessing the consequences,” Karoline Andaur, CEO of WWF-Norway, said in a statement.

Norway “must halt the rushed process, must actively support a national and global moratorium — a temporary ban on seabed mining until there is sufficient knowledge,” Andaur said in an online meeting earlier in November.

With their lawsuit, WWF-Norway is also calling on the Norwegian government to stop giving public support to mining companies for the exploration phase and to allocate these funds to independent research institutions.

That would help “to close the many knowledge gaps about marine life”, Andaur said.

The trial will run until December 5.

– Possible dangers –

On April 12, Norway’s Ministry of Energy announced that it was opening up an area of the Norwegian Sea and Greenland Sea to exploration, with the aim of awarding the first licences in the first half of 2025.

Within the area, which is the size of the United Kingdom, it has designated locations covering 38 percent of the area suitable for exploration for a first licensing round.

“Before any exploitation can begin, it has to be shown that the proposed exploitation can take place in a sustainable and responsible manner,” Astrid Bergmal, state secretary at the energy ministry, told AFP in an email.

The first projects will also have to be approved by parliament, Bergmal added.

“The first phase will consist of mapping and exploration, which has little environmental impact,” she said.

But critics see this stage as a first step towards exploitation.

According to several NGOs, opening up the seabed poses an additional threat to an ecosystem that is little-known and has already been weakened by global warming.

Possible dangers include the destruction of marine habitats and organisms, noise and light pollution, as well as the risk of chemical leaks from machines and species being displaced.

Norwegian authorities meanwhile stress that by allowing the prospecting they want to fill in the gaps in knowledge.

In early 2023, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate published a report concluding that “substantial resources are in place on the seabed” including minerals such as copper, zinc and cobalt.

COP16 biodiversity talks to restart in February: UN

By AFP
November 28, 2024

Bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, in April 2024 - Copyright AFP/File Joe Klamar

Crunch United Nations talks to find funding to curb the destruction of nature will resume in Rome in February, the UN said on Thursday, after negotiations this month in Colombia ended without a deal.

The largest summit yet on biodiversity — the so-called COP16 talks in Cali, Colombia — were aimed at boosting efforts to protect nature from deforestation, overexploitation, climate change and pollution.

But the meeting, which stretched hours into extra time, ended on November 2 with no agreement on a roadmap to ramp up funding for species protection. Many delegates had already left for home by then, meaning the Colombian presidency was unable to establish a quorum.

The new round of talks will be held at the headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization from February 25 to 27 to tackle issues “left unresolved following the suspension of the meeting”, the UN said in a statement.

“In the weeks to come, and during our meeting in Rome this February, I will work alongside parties to build the trust and consensus needed to achieve Peace with Nature,” said Colombia’s Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, the COP16 president.

She added that securing a key financial accord “will be central to our efforts”.

Money has been a particularly thorny subject at recent UN environment negotiations, as nations face global political and economic uncertainties.

Negotiators at fractious UN climate talks were able to approve a deal in the early hours of Sunday morning after two weeks of chaotic and bitter wrangling, but the $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters was immediately dismissed as insultingly low by many poorer nations.

– Deadlocked –

The Cali summit, which drew an unprecedented 23,000 participants, was tasked with assessing, and ramping up, progress toward reaching a range of targets set in Canada two years ago to halt humankind’s rapacious destruction of the natural world by 2030.

They include placing 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection, reducing pollution, and phasing out agricultural and other subsidies harmful to nature.

For this purpose, it was agreed in 2022 that $200 billion per year be made available to protect biodiversity by 2030, including the transfer of $30 billion per year from rich to poor nations.

The Cali meeting did make advances on Indigenous representation and gene profit sharing.

But negotiators, largely split between poor and rich country blocs, were deadlocked over the biggest ask — to lay out a detailed funding plan.

That was despite new research showing that more than a quarter of assessed plants and animals are now at risk of extinction.

Only 17.6 percent of land and inland waters, and 8.4 percent of the ocean and coastal areas, are estimated to be protected and conserved.

Air pollution from fires linked to 1.5 million deaths a year

By AFP
November 28, 2024

The study was released a week after Ecuador declared a national emergency due to forest fires - Copyright AFP GREG BAKER

Air pollution caused by fires is linked to more than 1.5 million deaths a year worldwide, the vast majority occurring in developing countries, a major new study said on Thursday.

This death toll is expected to rise in the coming years as climate change makes wildfires more frequent and intense, according to the study in The Lancet journal.

The international team of researchers looked at existing data on “landscape fires”, which include both wildfires that rage through nature and planned fires such as controlled burns on farming land.

Around 450,000 deaths a year from heart disease were linked to fire-related air pollution between 2000 and 2019, the researchers said.

A further 220,000 deaths from respiratory disease were attributed to the smoke and particulates spewed into the air by fire.

From all causes around the world, a total of 1.53 million annual deaths were associated with air pollution from landscape fires, according to the study.

More than 90 percent of these deaths were in low and middle-income countries, it added, with nearly 40 percent in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The countries with the highest death tolls were China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria.

A record amount of illegal burning of farm fields in northern India has been partly blamed for noxious smog that has recently been choking the capital New Delhi.

The authors of the Lancet study called for “urgent action” to address the huge death toll from landscape fires.

The disparity between rich and poor nations further highlights “climate injustice”, in which those who have contributed the least to global warming suffer from it the most, they added.

Some of the ways people can avoid smoke from fires — such as moving away from the area, using air purifiers and masks, or staying indoors — are not available to people in poorer countries, the researchers pointed out.

So they called for more financial and technological support for people in the hardest-hit countries.

The study was released a week after UN climate talks where delegates agreed to a boost in climate funding that developing countries slammed as insufficient.

It also came after Ecuador declared a national emergency over forest fires that have razed more than 10,000 hectares in the country’s south.

The world has also been battered by hurricanes, droughts, floods and other extreme weather events during what is expected to be the hottest year in recorded history.

Air pollution linked to longer duration of long-COVID symptoms

New study explores the association between different environmental exposures and Long-COVID in a Catalan population cohort

Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)

Exposure to air pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10) is associated with an increased risk of persistent long-COVID symptoms, partly due to its impact on the severity of the acute infection. This is the main conclusion of a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), and published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Long-COVID is a heterogeneous condition in which symptoms like fatigue, breathlessness, and cognitive issues persist for months after a COVID-19 infection and cannot be explained by other diagnoses. The real burden of long-COVID remains unclear, but millions of people are estimated to be affected worldwide. Its risk factors are also not well understood, since even people with mild or no symptoms during acute infection can develop long-COVID.

“We previously found that air pollution exposure is linked to a higher risk of severe COVID-19 and a lower vaccine response, but there are very few studies on long-COVID and the environment,” explains Manolis Kogevinas, ISGlobal researcher and senior author of the study. In this study, he and his colleagues investigated whether air pollution and other environmental exposures such as noise, artificial light at night, and green spaces, were associated with the risk- or persistence- of Long-COVID.

The study followed over 2,800 adults of the COVICAT cohort, aged 40- 65 years living in Catalonia who during the pandemic completed three online questionnaires (2020, 2021, 2023). These surveys collected information on COVID-19 infections, vaccination status, health status, and sociodemographic data. Researchers estimated residential exposure to noise, particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, green spaces, and light at night for each participant.

Long-COVID risk factors

The analysis showed that one in four people who contracted COVID-19 experienced lingering symptoms for three months or more, with 5% experiencing persistent symptoms for two years or more. Women, individuals with lower education levels, those with prior chronic conditions, and those who had severe COVID-19 were at highest risk of long-COVID. Vaccination, on the other hand, made a positive difference: only 15% of vaccinated participants developed long-COVID compared to 46% of unvaccinated ones.

Air pollution and persistent long-COVID

Exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) in the air was associated with a slight increase in the risk of persistent long-COVID (i.e. people who reported long-Covid in 2021 and whose symptoms were still present the last week before the 2023 interview). The risk of persistent long-COVID increased linearly with greater exposure to particulate matter in the air. In contrast, factors such as nearby green spaces or traffic noise showed little impact on long-COVID.

The researchers note that while air pollution may not directly cause long-COVID, it could increase the severity of the initial infection, which, in turn, raises the risk of long COVID. “This hypothesis is supported by the association between particulate matter and the most severe and persistent cases of long-COVID, but not with all cases of long-COVID,” says Apolline Saucy, first author of the study.

Further research is needed to break down the different types of long-term symptoms and get a more detailed picture of how environmental factors might play a role. “This type of studies is particularly relevant as more people continue to recover from COVID-19 and deal with its potential long-term effects,” says Kogevinas.

About COVICAT

The COVICAT cohort is a COVID-19-population-based cohort designed to characterize the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the population in Catalonia, Spain. Baseline data originates from the GCAT (Genomes for Life) project of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP).

Reference

Saucy A, Espinosa A, Iraola-Guzman S, Castaño-Vinyals G, Harding BN, Karachaliou M, Ranzani I, De Cid R, Garcia-Aymerich J, Kogevinas M. Environmental exposures and Long-COVID in a Prospective Population-Based Study in Catalonia (COVICAT study). Environmental Health Perspectives. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP15377

Journal

Environmental Health Perspectives

DOI

10.1289/EHP15377

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Environmental exposures and Long-COVID in a Prospective Population-Based Study in Catalonia (COVICAT study)

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2024

Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings

By AFP
November 28, 2024

The International Court of Justice in The Hague - Copyright AFP Nick Gammon
Jan HENNOP

The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.

From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organisations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.

Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.

But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.

The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.

Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.

– ‘No distant threat’ –

The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.

First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?

Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?”

The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.

This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.

“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.

“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.

Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.

Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.

– ‘Legal blueprint’ –

Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers”.

Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.

The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”

“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.

“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.

Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organisations and groups expected to make submissions.

On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.

At the end of the two-week hearings, organisations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.

“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.

“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.

Contentious COP29 deal casts doubt over climate plans

By AFP
November 28, 2024

The $300 billion a year pledged by wealthy countries for climate finance at COP29 was slammed as too little, too late - Copyright POOL/AFP Sarah Meyssonnier

Kelly MACNAMARA

A bitterly-fought climate finance deal reached at COP29 risks weakening emissions-cutting plans from developing countries, observers say, further raising the stakes for new national commitments due early next year.

The UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, which concluded last Sunday, were considered crucial to boosting climate action across huge swathes of the world after what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.

Beginning days after the re-election of climate sceptic Donald Trump as US president, and with countries weighed down by economic concerns, the negotiations were tough-fought from the start and at one point seemed close to collapse.

Wealthy polluters ultimately agreed to find at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer nations transition to cleaner energy and prepare for increasing climate impacts such as extreme weather.

But it was slammed by developing nations as too little, too late.

Taking the floor just after the deal was approved, Nigeria’s representative Nkiruka Maduekwe dismissed the funding on offer as a “joke”, suggesting it would undermine national climate plans due early next year.

“$300 billion is unrealistic,” she said. “Let us tell ourselves the truth.”

Current climate plans, even if implemented in full, would see the world warm a devastating 2.6 degrees Celsius this century, the United Nations has said, blasting past the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C since the pre-industrial era.

A next round of national pledges is due in February and will cover the period to 2035, which scientists say is critical for curbing warming.

Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, a Kenya-based think tank, said the COP29 talks produced not just a “low-ball” figure, but a delivery date of 2035 that falls at the end of the range for climate plans.

This “will certainly constrain the ability of developing countries to pledge ambitious emission cuts”, he told AFP, calling for an improved goal and other measures, like debt relief and technology support.

– ‘Our only chance’ –

Global emissions need to be reducing by more than seven percent every year “to avoid unmanageable global outcomes as the world breaches the 1.5C limit”, said Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

“Our only chance is full focus on financing and implementing emission cuts now.”

Yet carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming — are still rising, according to the Global Carbon Project.

The COP29 deal acknowledged that lower income countries will need some $1.3 trillion annually to pay for their energy transition and build up their resilience to future climate impacts.

Details of how to bridge the $1 trillion funding gap remain vague, but it would likely require a major effort to attract money from private investors, development banks and other sources.

Other ideas include raising money through pollution tariffs, a wealth tax or ending fossil fuel subsidies.

Friederike Roder of campaign group Global Citizen said discontent over COP29 piles pressure on countries to come up with concrete suggestions before the next climate meeting in Brazil in November 2025.

That would “help rebuild some of the trust and give confidence to countries to come forward with ambitious targets”, she told AFP.

– EU-China ‘momentum’ –

So far only a handful of countries — recent and future COP hosts Britain, the UAE and Brazil — have unveiled new climate plans.

Observers say many other nations are now unlikely to meet the February deadline, as governments grapple with shifting political and economic situations.

The new year will see a new Trump administration in the White House, with potentially sweeping implications for international trade and US climate policy.

Germany, Canada and Australia will all hold elections in which conservatives less supportive of green policies stand a chance of victory.

With the United States retreating from climate diplomacy, the relationship between China and the EU will likely become “the best source of momentum” on climate, said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

One positive takeaway from COP29, he added, was early evidence of a willingness to work together, despite the trade rivalry between Beijing and Brussels.

A lack of progress on emissions at COP29 has also caused alarm over stalling efforts on curbing warming.

But Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, said the rejection of a watered down text on the subject this year meant national climate plans should still reflect last year’s COP28 pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.

It is small consolation.

“Here we are in the hottest year on record. The impacts are enormous,” she said.

Annual COP-out

Mahir Ali

Published November 27, 2024

EVEN the low expectations that preceded the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29), which concluded in the early hours of Sunday, turned out to have been too high.

After the gavel came down in Baku on a deal proposing $300 billion in financial assistance by 2035 to developing nations struggling to decarbonise and cope in other ways with the swiftly mounting consequences of climate change, Indian representative Chandni Raina justifiably decried a “stage-managed” process that had produced “nothing more than an optical illusion”.

A week earlier, Pakistan’s former climate change minister Sherry Rehman had declared: “We’re here for life and death reasons”, demanding “internationally determined contributions” from the biggest historical contributors to global heating, and pointing out the pitfalls of leaving too much to the private sector.

Inevitably, given the timing of the conference, the malevolent spectre of Donald Trump hung over the proceedings. Even at the best of times, the US has hardly stood out as a leader in the combat against devastating climate change, with the majority of its legislators — all too many of them addicted to contributions from fossil fuel firms and lobbyists — turning pale at the prospect of a Green New Deal. But Trump and some of his closest associates are seemingly determined to pump up the volume of oil and gas extraction because all the hullabaloo about climate change is, after all, no more than a hoax.

He may well agree with Argentina’s Javier Milei, a kindred spirit from the loony right who claims to have been hailed by Trump as his “favourite president” — and who withdrew his nation’s delegation from Baku after the first three days — that the climate crisis is just a “socialist lie”.

Can humanity recover from the bungle in Baku?

What is a little more perturbing is that Azerbaijan’s leadership appears to be on more or less the same page, with President Ilham Aliyev hailing oil and gas as a “gift from God”, with no acknowledgement of the various other natural wonders that are at risk because humans insist on burning fossil fuels for energy. Besides, aren’t alternative sources of energy such as sunshine and wind equally gifts from the same source?

There’s no dearth of sunlight in Azerbaijan, but 90 per cent of its foreign income comes from fossil fuel exports — which include nearly 40pc of Israel’s oil imports, currently facilitating a genocide. The quid pro quo is weapons supplies from Israel, which may well have facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. It certainly might be worthwhile conducting such conferences in oil- and gas-producing nations genuinely interested in reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. But this year’s host appeared to be even less interested in investigating that path than last year’s previous petrostate venue.

COP28 in Dubai was presided over by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and swarmed with oil and gas lobbyists. The conference formally acknowledged for the first time the link between fossil fuels and climate change, something that was evident decades earlier. And it did so in the face of staunch resistance from Saudi Arabia, where the crown prince’s now diminished Vision 2030 excludes any inclination towards compensating the victims of its incredibly lucrative oil boom. By all accounts, the Saudis were again desperate to achieve the same outcome at Baku. Their ploy flopped again. But does it matter?

The previous $100bn-a-year finance deal did not add up until well after its 2020 deadline. Its tripling (or doubling, if inflation is taken into account) is likely to meet the same fate. The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold might be breached as soon as this year, amid an increase in emissions notwithstanding previous COPs, and a near-consensus that 2024 will turn out to be the hottest year on record. Climate scientists are constantly being flabbergasted by what Harold Macmillan might have designated as “events, dear boy, events”. Who knows where the world might be in 2035, by when the $300bn level is supposed to be reached. That’s only a fraction of the notionally required resources, and it may even be too late to make much of a difference with the trillions that no one seriously expects to be doled out.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the UN’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency have been ineffective. But anyone who suggests that a failing process should be abandoned must present a viable alternative. That’s not easy, short of straying into fantasy world. It’s a small mercy that COP30 will take place in Brazil, whose present government is dedicated to thwarting climate change. Perhaps putting the remarkably astute Greta Thunberg and fellow young activists from around the world in charge of working out the way forward might be the ideal option. But I must be dreaming.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2024

Transformation of UN SDGs only way forward for sustainable development

University of Birmingham

Climate change is the single biggest threat to the global environment and socio-economic development – demanding an urgent transformation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a new study.

The UN SDGs were created to end poverty, build social-economic-health protection and enhance education and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and providing environmental protection.

Following last week’s COP29 environmental summit in Baku, University of Birmingham experts say that, as climate action is linked to sustainable development, systematic integration of climate resilience into every aspect of the SDGs is the only way of securing our planet’s future.

Publishing their findings today (26 Nov) in npj Climate Action, the interdisciplinary team of researchers, from across all five of the University's constituent Colleges, sets out a blueprint for transforming the SDGs by integrating climate action across all targets and indicators.

The researchers emphasise the need for sustainable agricultural practices, water management, and ocean conservation to mitigate climate impacts, with climate-resilient tools and policies helping to ensure food security and protect natural resources. Their five-point plan involves the following recommendations:

Align the Paris Agreement’s climate objectives with the SDGs to create a unified pathway for sustainable development.

Define clear short-term targets alongside long-term goals to provide a structured approach for achieving climate-resilient development.

Empower local communities to help develop and implement climate-focussed policies.

Establish a unified financial system to support climate-resilient sustainable goals, particularly in vulnerable regions.

Form an international panel to allow coordination and knowledge exchange between sectors.

Corresponding author Professor Francis Pope commented: “Climate change is the most significant contemporary threat to the environment, human well-being, and livelihoods. It impacts every one of the 17 SDGs, particularly through increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events.”

Lead author Dr Ajit Singh highlighted: “Embedding climate action within each SDG would ensure that climate resilience is a core component of sustainable development. If we fail to resolve tensions between development goals and climate action, we will find it impossible to secure the future of our planet and its people.”

The researchers note that climate change worsens poverty and inequality, as well as affecting health through disasters whilst influencing disease patterns and mental health. It reduces agricultural productivity and food security, whilst damaging water ecosystems and harming marine life.

They highlight the intricate links between climate change and poverty, health, education, and gender equality – calling for climate-resilient economic development and integration of climate education within school curricula to help communities to tackle climate challenges.

UN SDGs were developed through consultation with countries, international institutions and civil society. UN member states collectively agreed and formulated the global goals, but individual countries are responsible for reviewing and implementing progress towards SDG targets.

ENDS

For more information, interview requests, or an embargoed copy of the research paper, please contact Tony Moran, International Communications Manager, University of Birmingham, tel: +44 (0)7827 832312: email: t.moran@bham.ac.uk

Notes to editor:

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.

‘Delivering Sustainable Climate Action: Reframing the Sustainable Development Goals’ - Ajit Singh, Francis Pope, Jonathan Radcliffe, Carlo Lui, Hakeem Bakare, Suzanne Bartington, Nana O. Bonsu, John R. Bryson, Nic Cheeseman, Heather Flowe, Stefan Krause, Karen Newbigging, Fiona Nunan, Louise Reardon, Christopher D.F. Rogers, Karen Rowlingson, and Ian Thomson is published in npj Climate Action.