Climate change time bomb: The clock is ticking.

While counting down to a net zero post the climate emergency day, we have to recognize the fact that we don't have time and that business as usual is not a solution. 

With July, 2023 being the hottest month in record and being associated with severe wildfires, flooding and extreme temperatures, climate change adversities continue to intensify. Frontline communities especially indigenous peoples and local communities together with slum dwellers in developing countries are being impacted the most.

Climate related loss and damage is causing human mobility, biodiversity loss, tearing down of the social fabric, loss of cultural belonging and economic loss yet the loss and damage fund is not easily accessible by the affected communities.

The natural resources providing a livelihood to these communities are threatened too; especially the forests and fishing grounds. More so, agricultural land is becoming less productive thus compromising food security. The air we breathe is highly polluted especially in cities and industrialized areas yet adequate, clean safe drinking water is becoming more scarce and all these pose grave threats to human health and the natural environment itself.

However, if we act in time (now), we can still secure a livable planet. And we can do this by ensuring a just energy transition, scaling up nature based solutions and promoting ecosystem based adaptation, keeping the existing forests intact and establishing new ones, ensuring proper protected areas management and other effective area based conservation measures, creating green jobs, ensuring resource circularity and green economy, meeting State Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and most importantly collectively implementing the Global goals.