‘Restore tropical forests’ to address climate change

23/02/2022 0 Comments read Environment & Development, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 23.02.2022 (SciDev.Net): Restoring biodiverse tropical forests could be a nature-based solution to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and address climate change, scientists show in a study that simulates how forests will respond to future climate scenarios on earth.

According to the study, limiting global warming caused by human activity to less than two degrees Celsius requires rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as well as reduction of carbon in the atmosphere.

Peter Talaas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, says that sea level rise and the melting of glaciers may continue until 2060 because of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “Of course, if we had carbon removal techs we could change the big picture, but so far that’s not the case,” Talaas said at a meeting ahead of the 28 February release of a section of the sixth report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Big rigs and the open road: women in driver’s seat

14/02/2022 0 Comments read Business and Trade, Gender

A triple road train. Photo Credit: Pilbara Heavy Haulage Girls

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney/Melbourne, 13.02.2022 (The Sun Herald and The Age): As a seven-year-old, sitting high on the passenger seat with her younger sister, Kersti Jones would observe her mum, Heather, drive a 53-metre triple road train. She would imagine being behind the wheel as she looked below at other cars whizzing by on the highway.

The truck was their mobile home for seven years as they crisscrossed the resource-rich and rugged landscape of Western Australia.

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Micro-estimates of wealth data ‘can help tackle poverty’

26/01/2022 0 Comments read Environment & Development, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 25.01.2022 (SciDev.Net): A data project charting poverty levels in detail across the global South could help policymakers better target social assistance and humanitarian aid, researchers say.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened poverty globally, with an estimated 97 million more people, most of them in LMICs, pushed into extreme poverty in 2021, according to the World Bank. But a dearth of reliable and up-to-date poverty data in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) poses a major challenge for governments and civil society.

To bridge this data gap, researchers at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and the Data for Good programme, which collates data from Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, have developed a public data set of Relative Wealth Index (RWI), which provides micro-estimates of wealth of all populated areas in the 135 LMICs. The study was published in PNAS on 18 January.

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