Brazil's Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva Thursday highlighted the BRICS group's potential to lead a just global ecological transition. She made those remarks during the bloc's 11th ministerial meeting in this regard, where issues like desertification, ecosystem preservation, plastic pollution, and climate action aligned with the UN's Agenda 2030 were discussed.
The world has lost 5% of its ice volume over the past 20 years, with an annual melt of 273 billion tons, according to a recent study by the United Nations (UN) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Regions like Europe (39% loss), the Caucasus and Middle East (35%), and New Zealand (29%) were heavily impacted as all 19 glacier regions globally lost mass in 2024 for the third consecutive year, with the 2022-2024 period marking the largest three-year loss ever, including 450 billion tons in 2022 alone.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a report on Friday stating that global coffee prices hit a 13-year high in December last year, driven by reduced production in major exporting countries due to adverse weather.
Brazil published this week a letter signed by Ambassador André Correa do Lago and Ana Toni, president and executive director of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), unveiling the South American country's vision for the upcoming gathering in Belem.
January 2025 was the hottest month ever recorded by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which detected the planet's temperature to be 1.75 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels and 0.79°C above the 1991-2020 average for the month, with a surface air temperature of 13.23°C.
A23a, arguably the world’s largest and oldest iceberg which has been wandering through the South Atlantic and headed for the British Overseas Territory of the South Georgia Islands since last month, has been reported not to have changed course this week nor upped nor melted, thus posing a serious threat to the local fauna. Earlier this week, it was spotted 173 miles (280km) away.
Last year was the hottest on record and it even surpassed the global warming limit, the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Program and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concurred. In addition, 2023 and 2024 saw average global temperatures exceed the internationally agreed 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold
Meteorologists foresee that the La Niña weather phenomenon will not go unnoticed in the Southern Cone next year after the Brazilian agency Metsul reported signs of unusual activity in the Pacific Ocean. The main impact will be reflected in mercurial temperatures, MetSul's warning noted.
The first International Soil and Water Forum opened this week in Bangkok to map out concrete measures to boost global efforts in managing water scarcity and reversing soil degradation – both critical for global food security and environmental health.
The fifth and intended final meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on plastic pollution in Busan, South Korea, concluded with negotiators unable to reach a deal on a new global treaty to curb plastic pollution. The failure of this fifth session of the INC, or INC-5, to deliver on its mandate highlights the persistent challenges of reaching a consensus to solve the growing issue of global plastics pollution.