Author: Una Kliemann

Every year on 22 May, the United Nations celebrate The International Day for Biological Diversity to commemorate the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Jean Carlo Rodríguez de Francisco and Ina Lehmann explain why the CBD and its state parties should urgently address economic growth and why the resetting of economies after the COVID-19 pandemic and the UN Biodiversity conference in October might provide an important window of opportunity.

In the run-up to the federal elections, the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) will be publishing a special series of the Current Column under the title “Impulses for the Bundestag Elections” over the next few months. To kick off the series, Prof. Dr Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Prof. Dr Imme Scholz outline guidelines for German development policy in the 21st century.

Food insecurity and hunger continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. In the context of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021, BICC researchers published a briefing paper that looks at the multiple dimensions between current food crises and violent conflicts and identifies four key areas for a comprehensive response that addresses food insecurity and violent conflict.

This paper reviews the evidence on slow-onset events presented in the Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) and the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), both published in 2019. It analyses how the reports, and recent literature cited in them, deal with the eight types of slow-onset events, specified by the UNFCCC.

Mountains are highly sensitive to climate change. Their elevated areas provide essential ecosystem services both for the surrounding mountainous regions and particularly for adjacent lowlands. Impacts of a warmer climate affect these services and have negative consequences on the supply of water, on biodiversity and on protection from natural hazards.

With climate change and socioeconomic trends expected to exacerbate the risk of urban heat stress, implementing adaptation measures is paramount to limit adverse impacts of heat on urban inhabitants. Identification of the best options needs to be based on sound, localised assessments of risk, understood as the interaction of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Yet a review of the literature reveals that minimal research to date considers the perceived impacts of heat among urban residents.