This op-ed is part of a series published by The Dallas Morning News Opinion section to explore ideas and policies for strengthening electric reliability..
Africa s development must be based on resilient approaches with nature and people at the center
By Kester Kenn Klomegah
Professor Patrick Verkooijen, Chief Executive Officer of Global Center on Adaptation
In this insightful and wide-ranging interview, Professor Patrick Verkooijen, Chief Executive Officer of Global Center on Adaptation discusses the organization s establishment, its main objectives, challenges and the plans for the future.
The Global Center on Adaptation in Africa (GCA Africa), based at the African Development Bank (AfDB), has launched the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program to mobilize US$25 billion to scale up transformative actions on climate adaptation. It hopes to mobilize funds and bridge the financing gap for climate adaptation across Africa. Here are the interview excerpts:
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Everyone who has ever built anything a model, a birdhouse, or small pieces of furniture has a clear sense of the amount of things that can go wrong during the construction process. A screw that is impossible to tighten fully, a warped wooden board, an inattention or a miscalculation that can frustrate plans instantly. When we transport these small inconveniences to a building scale, with countless processes and many different people involved, we know how complex a work can become and how many things can get out of control, taking more and more time and requiring more and more resources to finish. And when we talk about a building that needs to float, be completely self-sufficient, and, after fulfilling its useful life, be completely reused could you imagine the technical challenges of building something like this?
Financing a resilient recovery: Applications to cities and beyond
Fri, Feb 19, 2021 11:00 AM
The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance and the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center recently released their brief, An Analysis of Urban Climate Adaptation Finance, that focuses on urban dwellers and aims to assess the volume and quality of finance that currently exists to address climate risk in cities.
As the global community continues to grapple with the coronavirus (COVID-19), the Atlantic Council is open for business. Our business, meetings, and events, however, are occurring virtually. For more information, please read an update from our President and CEO.
The COVID-19 crisis has been a wake-up call that our social and financial systems must be better prepared for the climate crisis. Building resilience to climate impacts will be critical to the efficacy of response and recovery efforts, yet climate-adaptation finance flows are at risk of falling sharply in
1. United States
Harbor porpoises have made a comeback after the banning of gill netting in key coastal communities of California, new research shows. Gill nets are a cheap and effective way for commercial fishers to catch loads of sea bass and halibut by the gills, but they also wreak havoc on other species, including sea otters, some sea birds, and the lesser-known harbor porpoise. The latter exclusively lives in shallow waters. Being unable to detect the nylon mesh using echolocation, the porpoises would frequently drown after getting tangled in gill nets. Aerial surveys for harbor porpoises, which began in 1986, allowed researchers to identify and track four distinct porpoise populations off California’s coast as gill netting bans rolled out over the following decade. The latest assessment of that data shows the groups affected by gill netting have doubled their populations since the bans were put in place, and are now beginning to stabilize. It’s the first documented case