Dear readers,
With much attention on the UN conference on Climate Change, COP21, and countries enthusiastically celebrating their joint agreements, I thought it would be appropriate to quickly recap on the conference outcomes, and share some additional information.
I hope to use this as a door to open a discussion for later posts on resilience and aspects of long-term sustainability– particularly related to development work, city planning/building and addressing urban informality.
HISTORIC PARIS AGREEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Paris, 12 December 2015 – A historic agreement to combat climate change and unleash actions and investment towards a low carbon, resilient and sustainable future was agreed by 195 nations in Paris today.
The Paris Agreement for the first time brings all nations into a common cause based on their historic, current and future responsibilities.
The universal agreement’s main aim is to keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a significantly safer defense line against the worst impacts of a changing climate. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability to deal with the impacts of climate change.
To reach these ambitious and important goals, appropriate financial flows will be put in place, thus making stronger action by developing countries and the most vulnerable possible, in line with their own national objectives.
Some of the main outcomes/agreements include the following:
* Mitigation – reducing emissions fast enough to achieve the temperature goal
* A transparency system and global stock-take – accounting for climate action
* Adaptation – strengthening ability of countries to deal with climate impacts
* Loss and damage – strengthening ability to recover from climate impacts
* Support – including finance, for nations to build clean, resilient futures.
More information: http://newsroom.unfccc.int/
NOW, FOR A BIT OF KNOWLEDGE
UN CC has a quick 6 module course on climate change, ranging from basics, to mitigation, adaptation, preparedness, financing, etc. The course is open to everyone (should take around 2h total) . Though I should share:
http://unccelearn.org/index.php?
{FAVEL issues} 
Good !