The Climate Action Summit 2019 has concluded — the UN world climate summit, held from 21 to 23 September in New York. The aim of the meeting, ahead of COP 25 to be held in December in Chile, was to push countries to do more to meet their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. Several G20 countries proposed additional commitments, but the measures put forward are often still insufficient to tackle the climate crisis and limit the rise in global temperature. The summit did, however, produce some good news capable of giving us a little hope for the future of our species and the others with which we share the planet. We have selected five.

Pakistan will plant 10 billion trees

Pakistan has a limited environmental impact — it ranks 135th on the list of the most polluting countries — yet it is the seventh most climate-vulnerable country in the world. To counter the severe impact of climate change, Pakistan, which has already planted one billion trees over the past five years, has committed to planting a further ten billion by 2025. The Asian state, Prime Minister Imran Khan announced at the summit, has set up a $50 million ecosystem restoration fund aimed at preserving biodiversity, generating green jobs and alleviating poverty. The rise in temperature in Pakistan, Prime Minister Khan stated, has been around one degree above the global average, and its glaciers "are retreating faster than anywhere else in the world."

Read also

• From Greta Thunberg to Donald Trump via Giuseppe Conte, how the Climate Action Summit went
• Towards the third global climate strike. The Climate Action Week has begun
• "How dare you? You have stolen our dreams and our childhoods." Greta Thunberg's words at the Climate Action Summit
• Stories of countries fighting desertification
• ForestaMi: three million more trees in Milan by 2030, for an ever greener city

The Great Green Wall of cities

The role of trees in the fight against climate change is of crucial importance — forests absorb a quarter of our emissions every year. Cities and peri-urban areas are in particular need of trees, being more vulnerable to heatwaves, extreme weather events and hydrogeological risk than rural areas. Reforesting cities is precisely the objective of the Great Green Wall of Cities project, presented by Stefano Boeri, architect and urban forestry expert, at the Climate Action Summit. The aim of the initiative is to extend to all the cities of the planet the Great Green Wall, a project launched in 2007 that seeks to restore a vast degraded area of Africa by creating a wall of forest stretching for nearly 8,000 kilometres. The Great Green Wall of Cities instead proposes to create, near 90 cities from Africa to Central Asia, 500,000 hectares of new urban forests and 300,000 hectares of natural forests to be maintained and restored by 2030. The stated goal of the project is to extend the initiative to European cities as well, giving rise to a great continental green infrastructure that would integrate metropolitan areas into the broader mosaic of the planet's protected areas.

Restoring 30 million hectares of degraded ecosystems

To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, it is now widely accepted that degraded and deforested ecosystems must be restored. In this regard, during the climate meeting, an initiative was announced that provides for the restoration of thirty million hectares of degraded ecosystems in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia by 2030. The project, called Ecca30, will serve as a regional initiative to secure further commitments and accelerate the implementation of the Bonn Challenge, a global plan to restore degraded natural areas. According to the Economics of land degradation, the cumulative cost of soil erosion, forest loss and other forms of environmental degradation over the next thirty years could reach $288 billion in Central Asia, while investments in restoration and sustainable land management will cost only $53 billion over the same period. Ecosystem restoration, in addition to mitigating the effects of climate change, improves livelihoods, counters desertification and is fundamental to the conservation of biodiversity.

IUCN Forest and Grasslands ✓ @IUCN_forests

𝕏

Read on what #ECCA30 will mean for Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia forests landscapes bit.ly/2kTRuai

♥ 2 24 set 2019 · Apri su X →

Fiji Islands: a moratorium to protect the sea

The world's oceans, already extensively devastated by human impact, must contend with a growing mining industry that aims to extract metals and minerals from deep waters, threatening not only certain crucial ecosystems but also the global fight against climate change by reducing the ocean's capacity to store CO2. For this reason, the Fiji Islands, after presenting the proposal to the Pacific Islands Forum, reiterated at the New York summit the need for a ten-year moratorium on seabed mining activities. "We call on other island states to support a moratorium, from 2020 to 2030, which would allow a decade of adequate scientific research into marine ecosystems," declared the Prime Minister of Fiji, Voreqe Bainimarama.

Finland carbon neutral by 2033

The Scandinavian country has further strengthened its commitments by promising to reach the goal of zero emissions by 2033 and to phase out fossil fuels for domestic heating by 2030, making it in this respect one of the best nations in the world. It is time to "invest in the future," explained the Finnish Prime Minister, Antti Rinne. Unlike neighbouring Norway, which aims to achieve neutrality even earlier, in 2030, Finland does not intend to rely on the purchase of carbon credits to offset its own emissions. To reach its ambitious target, Finland will need to gradually phase out fossil fuels and peat, which account for 40 per cent of energy consumption, reduce deforestation, increase wind, solar and biomass energy production — primarily from agricultural waste and forest residues — and invest in public transport.