We, The Youth Cafe, recognise the urgency of addressing climate change, with Africa facing heightened vulnerability to its devastating impacts. The latest findings from the IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming reveal that our planet is now 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels, with projections indicating a potential 1.5-degree threshold as early as 2040. Disturbingly, each successive decade since 1850 has been more generous than the last. The escalating temperature trend driven by human-induced greenhouse emissions threatens health, food security, and economic stability. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 250,000 deaths per year may be directly linked to climate change-related issues such as heat stress, malnutrition, vector-borne diseases and water-borne diseases.
Global Recovery From COVID-19 Pandemic | Solving Climate Crisis
“There is no vaccine for the planet. Nature needs a bailout,” warned UN Secretary-General António Guterres, describing the state of the planet in a speech at Columbia University in New York in December 2020. He identified global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to solve the climate crisis and make peace with nature, using the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change as a blueprint.
Key Green Transitions: How Systems Are Changing For People And Planet.
There is a need to have global cooperation; working together to create a future that is green, resilient and inclusive for everyone. Looking at records, 2020 tied with the warmest year ever, broke the record for the most wildfires and the most hurricanes in the Atlantic and linked to the desert locust outbreak that hit Africa, Middle East and parts of South Asia with severe implications for food security and livelihood.