Este artículo fue publicado originalmente por Climate Home El pasado viernes, cuatro millones de personas salieron a las calles para exigir acciones climáticas. Greta Thunberg, la activista sueca, tenía razón: la gente defiende el clima en todos los continentes, incluso en la Antártida.
As summer draws to a close in the northern hemisphere, we should ask ourselves a question--besides the white sands and the blue sea, what else are we leaving behind? On this month we mark International Coastal Cleanup Day with a call to action—we should be mindful of how much the ocean means to us and of the alarming rise in the number of tiny particles that are creating one of the biggest environmental problems ever faced by our marine ecosystems at global level: microplastics pollution.
Why is the ocean important? The ocean covers three quarters of the Earth’s surface and plays a crucial role in supporting an enormous variety of life. The ocean helps regulate the climate by absorbing excess carbon dioxide and heat. The ocean is also important for the global economy. According to the OECD (2016), its economic contribution was valued at US$1.5 trillion in 2010, a contribution that could increase to 3 trillion by 2030.
Can you even have sustainability and hydropower in the same sentence? It’s a question that for years has challenged development practitioners (and bolstered critics) of this renewable source of energy. But the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is taking steps to help answer this question. Hydropower can be massive in scale. In 2018, electricity generation from hydropower reached an estimated 4,200-terawatt hours (TWh), setting the highest ever contribution from a renewable energy source (International Hydropower Association, 2019).
Climate change is not only an environmental challenge, but also a political, economic and social one. Projections indicate that, if the current emissions trajectory continues, the global average temperature of the planet will exceed by 3°C the average temperature observed at the beginning of the 19th century, generating an unprecedented impact on the history of humankind.