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Business Standard
3 days ago
- Health
- Business Standard
Aravalli Green Wall Project: India's theme for this World Environment Day
Aiming to fight climate change, India will promote the Aravalli Green Wall project this World Environment Day to encourage tree plantation, combat land degradation and desertification, and create green corridors. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will officially inaugurate the project on June 5. Last year's theme, 'Ek Ped Maa ke Naam', continues this year. The Aravalli Green Wall Project seeks to revive the Aravalli range through various initiatives such as banning single-use plastics, promoting water conservation, and protecting natural resources. It also aims to combat land degradation and desertification by creating green corridors across 29 districts in four states: Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Delhi. The Aravalli hills landscape spans over 6 million hectares. At the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in Riyadh, India introduced the Aravalli Green Wall Project, which was launched in 2019. In March, the Environment Ministry released the project's action plan. The project involves planting native species of trees and shrubs on scrublands, wastelands, and degraded forest lands. It also focuses on rejuvenating and restoring surface water bodies such as ponds, lakes, and streams. Additionally, it emphasizes agroforestry and pasture development to enhance the livelihoods of local communities. Through this initiative, India aims to achieve its national goal of creating an additional 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon sink by 2030, as committed in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Under the project, 1,000 nurseries will be established across the 29 districts, with funding from CAMPA, MNREGA, and other state green initiatives to ensure the survival of planted saplings. The green wall will contribute to carbon sequestration and help mitigate climate change, while enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Aravalli range. Planting native tree species will provide wildlife habitat and improve water quality and quantity, contributing to reduced air pollution in India. There will also be socio-economic benefits, according to an official from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The project will be executed by various stakeholders, including central and state governments, forest departments, research institutes, civil society organizations, private sector entities, and local communities. Success will require adequate funding, technical expertise, policy coordination, and public awareness.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New arena, new attitudes? Cash spat in spotlight at UN nature talks
The world's biggest nature conservation conference resumes in Rome next week for an urgent attempt at overcoming a deadlock between northern and southern countries over funding for nature protection. Countries meeting at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters must agree on how nature funds should be governed -- a key step towards the goal of halting destruction of nature by 2030. Their last attempt, in November, ended in disarray: the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16), held in Colombia, broke down due to a spat between poor and rich country blocs. But with up to a quarter of assessed plants and animals now at risk of extinction, the world could not afford simply to wait for the next nature talks in 2026. Instead, the 196 signatory countries to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) were invited to three days of overtime negotiations in the Italian capital, starting Tuesday, February 25. They will begin where they left off -- amid an ever more challenging geopolitical context. - 'Signals not good' - Arnaud Gilles, of WWF France, told AFP he was not optimistic positions have changed in four months. "At the moment, there is no more reason for us to get a result in Rome than there was in Cali" in Colombia, he said. "The international diplomatic signals are not good," he said, citing US President Donald Trump's re-election in particular. While the United States is not a signatory to the convention, the return of climate change denier Trump is expected to weigh on efforts. So will stalled negotiations on a plastics pollution treaty, and a disappointing financial deal from a climate summit in Azerbaijan in November. What is more, "some countries... are in a torpedoing climate and environmental ambitions mindset", Gilles said, pointing to Saudi Arabia's battle against phasing out climate-wrecking fossil fuels. - 'Wake-up call' - Delegates in Colombia had been supposed to ramp up progress towards 23 targets set in Canada in 2022, aimed at saving the planet from threats including deforestation, pollution and climate change. Those targets came with a pledge to make $200 billion a year in funding available, including the transfer of $30 billion per year from rich to poor nations. The squabble in Cali centred on the funding mechanism. Developing nations -- led by Brazil and the African group -- insist on the creation of a new, dedicated biodiversity fund, saying they are not adequately represented in existing mechanisms. Wealthy nations -- led by the European Union, Japan and Canada -- say setting up multiple funds fragments aid. Negotiations among the nearly 154 countries confirmed for Rome so far will start from a compromise text. That suggests laying the groundwork for a new development aid financing instrument to be set up at COP17 in Armenia in 2026, which would be overseen by the UN and give poor countries a greater voice. Observers will be watching closely to see if developed countries, including those in budgetary crises like France and Germany, can be persuaded to agree. Brian O'Donnell, director of the NGO Campaign for Nature, said he was "cautiously optimistic". The failure on finance in Cali "was a wake-up call" and "led a number of countries to reassess their positions" ahead of Rome, he told AFP. - 'Very contested' - The president of the COP16 negotiations, Susana Muhamad, has feverishly been carrying out regional consultations and liaising with influential ministers ahead of Rome. The proposals are "very contested by the countries of the North, but more or less accepted by the countries of the South", and "it is this divide that the COP presidency is trying to overcome", according to Daniel Mukubi, negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo. To break the impasse, "we have to hope countries with a constructive approach form an alliance", said Juliette Landry, from French think tank IDDRI. The Rome meet is also tasked with adopting reliable indicators to verify by COP17 how countries are performing on nature protection, and prepare for a probable push to set more ambitious targets. COP16 was successful in some areas. Delegates approved the creation of a permanent body to represent the interests of Indigenous people under the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity. And they managed to coalesce around the creation of a fund to share the profits of digitally sequenced genetic data taken from plants and animals with the communities they come from. Just how effective the so-called Cali agreement will be remains to be seen, however, with critics slamming a lack of obligations to ensure countries comply. bl/ide/ar/giv
