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Sept, 26-27 Vienna, Austria
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IMPACT DAYS 2024
5-7 June, 2024
Hofburg Palace, Vienna
Impact Days has continuously evolved to meet the changing needs and challenges of our time. It brings together investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and thought leaders to tackle societal issues. Through the collective efforts of the impact ecosystem, Impact Days has influenced policies, inspired investments, and empowered ideas and communities to thrive.
More than third of Amazon rainforest struggling to recover from drought, study finds
‘Critical slowing down’ of recovery raises concern over forest’s resilience to ecosystem collapse
More than a third of the Amazon rainforest is struggling to recover from drought, according to a new study that warns of a “critical slowing down” of this globally important ecosystem.
The signs of weakening resilience raise concerns that the world’s greatest tropical forest – and biggest terrestrial carbon sink – is degrading towards a point of no return.
It follows four supposedly “one-in-a-century” dry spells in less than 20 years, highlighting how a human-disrupted climate is putting unusually intense strains on trees and other plants, many of which are dying of dehydration.
In the past, the canopy of the South American tropical forest, which covers an area equivalent to about half of Europe, would shrink and expand in tandem with the annual dry and rainy seasons. It also had the capacity to bounce back from a single drought.
But in recent times, recoveries have become more sluggish because droughts are growing more intense in the south-east of the Amazon and more frequent in the north-west.
The new paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines satellite images of vegetation activity from 2001 to 2019. Tens of thousands of pixels, each covering a 25-sq km (9.65-sq mile) area, were analysed on a month-by-month basis and correlated with local rainfall data.
The authors’ goal was to investigate how “the frequency, intensity, or duration of droughts contributes to stability loss of Amazon vegetation”.
They found 37% of the mature vegetation in the region exhibited a slowing-down trend. While the patterns varied from area to area, they concluded that the highly deforested and degraded south-eastern Amazon was most vulnerable to a “tipping event”: in other words, a calamitous decline of the tropical rainforest to a different, drier state.
Their research found drought intensity was a more significant factor than drought frequency, though a combination of the two was most destabilising.
The paper’s lead author, Johanna Van Passel, said the satellite images only showed part of the true picture, and the situation below the canopy could be more severe. “Trees are the last part of the ecosystem to show tipping points because they have the longest life cycle and are most able to cope,” she said. “If we are already seeing a tipping point getting closer at this macro forest level, then it must be getting worse at a micro level.”
This is dire news for the Amazon and the world. The rainforest is home to 15,000 tree species, which help to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But this ability – and the forest’s overall resilience – is being weakened by climate chaos caused by human burning of trees, gas, oil and coal. The paper says the slowing recovery rate of the forest may be an “early indicator” of large-scale ecosystem collapse.
“It makes me very worried about the future of the Amazon,” Van Passel said. “It is a warning sign that a tipping point can be reached in the future if these droughts continue to increase and get more intense.”
The Amazon, which is normally home to the biggest body of freshwater in the world, suffered a devastating drought last year that left its once-mighty rivers at record low levels, worsened forest fires and led to the mass die-off of more than 100 river dolphins. This was a continuation of a broader trend. The paper notes that the Amazon areas that had the lowest rainfall since the early 2000s suffered the largest decline in stability.
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It’s easy, it’s everywhere: the simple solution improving mental health around the globe
As our year-long series on the community-led projects boosting mental health across the globe nears an end, series editor Daisy Greenwell reports on the remarkably simple solution that is saving lives
Mental illness can sometimes seem like an intractable, unsolvable problem. When we first began researching our Developing Mental Wealth series last May, the data showed the enormity of the issue. One in every eight of us lives with a mental disorder – 970 million people worldwide. Some 700,000 people die due to suicide each year and it’s projected that by 2030 mental health problems will be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally. In low-income countries where spending on mental health is tiny or non-existent, and one psychiatrist often serves a population of millions, the prognosis looked particularly bad.
Yet even in the UK, where our government spends around £13bn on mental health services annually, psychiatrists and psychotherapists are in (relatively) plentiful supply, and medication is available for free on the NHS, one in six adults polled had experienced symptoms of common mental health problems in the past week.
As our year-long series on the community-led projects boosting mental health across the globe nears an end, series editor Daisy Greenwell reports on the remarkably simple solution that is saving lives
Mental illness can sometimes seem like an intractable, unsolvable problem. When we first began researching our Developing Mental Wealth series last May, the data showed the enormity of the issue. One in every eight of us lives with a mental disorder – 970 million people worldwide. Some 700,000 people die due to suicide each year and it’s projected that by 2030 mental health problems will be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally. In low-income countries where spending on mental health is tiny or non-existent, and one psychiatrist often serves a population of millions, the prognosis looked particularly bad.
Yet even in the UK, where our government spends around £13bn on mental health services annually, psychiatrists and psychotherapists are in (relatively) plentiful supply, and medication is available for free on the NHS, one in six adults polled had experienced symptoms of common mental health problems in the past week.
So, we were intrigued when we heard about a project in Zimbabwe that was having significant success in improving people’s mental health. Without the help of medical professionals or drugs, and with very little money, peer-reviewed trials had found that it was easing the depression and anxiety of Zimbabweans. The secret? Grandmothers, trained briefly in CBT counselling skills and deployed in the community to help anyone who needed it. We knew there must be more, so we set about finding other community-led projects that were easing the mental distress of people living in tough circumstances in low-income countries.
It turns out there are plenty. In Yemen, amid war and famine, a free, daily sports club brings men together to keep fit and boost mental health in parks across the country. In the Guatemalan highlands, Indigenous women are leading women’s circles, improving wellbeing for all by empowering women to overturn generations of embedded marginalisation. In Peru, a movement supporting the neurodivergent citizens of the country has been born in the last year, giving voice to a previously marginalised community and providing a network of support. In the Ivory Coast, hairdressers are being trained to recognise the symptoms of mental illness and given guidance on how to talk to, and improve the wellbeing of, their customers.
These projects are all run on shoe strings, by a small number of active citizens, who, having recognised a problem in their communities, have come together to do something about it. Their common tool – one that is low cost, simple, and everywhere – is each other. People talking to one another, supporting one another, being there to listen, encourage and advise.
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Ships in some UK port cities create more air pollution than cars
Milford Haven, Southampton and Immingham top the list for emissions of gases and particulates
Ships calling at the UK’s most-polluted ports produce more nitrogen oxides than all the cars registered in the same cities or regions, analysis has shown.
A report from Transport & Environment (T&E) said that ships were continuing to discharge huge quantities of air pollutants at ports, with Milford Haven, Southampton and Immingham topping the list for emissions of harmful sulphur oxides and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as well as nitrogen oxides (NOx).
The NGO said the data underlined the urgent need for government action to ensure ships used cleaner fuels and that ports enforce more zero-emission technology such as shore-side electricity.
Shipping and ports representatives said the report used “flawed methodology” and disputed the comparisons, but said they supported moves to reduce pollution.
The report found that in the top 10 NOx-polluted ports, about 4,000 ships produced an estimated 1.75 times as much NOx as almost one million cars registered to the same areas.
Ships calling at Southampton, a major cruise ship port, produced four times more NOx than cars in the city, T&E said. Southampton was also the worst for PM2.5, with cruise ships responsible for more than half the particulate pollution.
Jonathan Hood, the UK sustainable shipping manager at T&E, said: “The awful levels of pollution revealed in this analysis demonstrate how the UK’s port cities are being choked by the harmful fumes caused by a shipping industry that, thanks to years of government inaction, has no impetus to change.
“The government has its last chance to chart a better course for the industry with the updated clean maritime plan and it must not waste this opportunity. We need to see a rapid switch away from filthy fossil fuels, and ports must set binding targets to implement zero-emission technologies. These must include shore side electricity, which would ensure ships can plug in at port and switch off their polluting engines.”
A UK Chamber of Shipping spokesperson said the report did not take account of shore-side power now being used in Southampton by cruise ships, improving the air quality, but admitted that the UK was “behind the curve” and that more facilities should be installed.
The spokesperson added: “The industry supports the ambition to reduce emissions and is investing billions worldwide to do so. A long-term plan, codesigned by industry and government, is the way to set out the clear roadmap for emissions reduction [and] unlock future investment.”
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Researchers studying ‘doomsday glacier’ make worrying discovery
(NEXSTAR) – Antarctica’s “doomsday glacier,” referred to as such for its potential to dramatically raise global sea levels, is melting faster than we thought thanks to warmer sea water passing below it, according to a new study.
The researchers, led by glaciologists with the University of California, Irvine (UCI), said in a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the Thwaites Glacier may be breaking apart “much faster” than previously believed.
The Florida-sized glacier, which faces the Amundsen Sea, has gotten the nickname the “doomsday glacier” because of how much ice it has and how much seas could rise if it all melts — more than two feet (65 centimeters) over hundreds of years.
Thwaites is on Antarctica’s western half, east of the jutting Antarctic Peninsula, which used to be the area scientists worried most about.
For years, experts have worried about the possible demise of the Thwaites Glacier, whether by ocean water melting it from below, the glacier unmooring from its attachment to the seabed or the ice mass cracking and breaking apart.
Using satellites and a technique called radar interferometry to track changes in surface elevation, the team found that the glacier appeared to be lifting several centimeters as pressurized tide water moved below the glacier across many miles, further inland than previously thought.
“There are places where the water is almost at the pressure of the overlying ice, so just a little more pressure is needed to push up the ice,” lead author and UCI Professor Eric Rignot said. “The water is then squeezed enough to jack up a column of more than half a mile of ice.”
Warmer seawater working its way under the glacier may help explain the “rapid, past, and present changes in ice sheet mass and the slower changes replicated by ice sheet models,” the study noted, adding that the pressurized seawater will create a “vigorous melt” that will further imperil the glacier.
New England’s solar capacity forecasted to double over the next 10 years
New England’s solar power capacity is expected to nearly double in the next 10 years, according to forecasts from New England’s independent system operator, ISO New England.
Growth projections for distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) installations are part of ISO New England’s 2024-2033 Forecast Report of Capacity, Energy, Loads, and Transmission (CELT Report) a planning document that aims to size up the region’s energy landscape for the next decade.
This year’s PV forecast uses the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Distributed Generation Market Demand (dGenT) model to make predictions about PV installations with nameplate capacity less than 1 megawatt (MW). The model simulates customer adoption of solar technology based on economic and other considerations.
ISO forecasters plan to take advantage of additional dGen capabilities in future reports, ISO New England said. The 2024 CELT continues to use existing methodology, based on state policies, to predict development of distributed PV installations greater than 1 MW.
Most of New England’s solar power installations connect to local distribution systems operated by utilities, rather than the regionwide transmission system operated by ISO New England. While some of these installations participate in the wholesale electricity markets, most do not. Those who do not participate are known in the ISO’s system planning studies as behind-the-meter (BTM).
The ISO anticipates distributed PV nameplate capacity to grow from 7,345 MW in 2024 to 13,466 MW in 2033. This growth includes a doubling in BTM PV capacity, from roughly 4,000 MW to 8,000 MW.
Output from BTM PV is expected to be 5,444 GWh in 2024. Without BTM PV, the region’s projected energy use for the year would be almost 5% higher, at 119,179 GWh. Meanwhile, BTM PV is expected to reduce this summer’s system peak electricity demand by about 4%, to 24,553 MW.
In 2033, the final year of the forecast, BTM PV is expected to reduce summer peak demand by a similar percentage, to 27,052 MW. That year’s projected energy use, 140,000 GWh, would be about 7% higher without BTM PV.
