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Water is the lifeblood of our planet and freshwater ecosystems play a key role in sopping up planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions and making our societies resilient to climate disasters. But the delicate balance of water availability and the habitats that keep it clean and supply it are under mounting pressure from climate change and often receive short shrift during international climate talks. 

World leaders will gather next week in Baku, Azerbaijan for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP29, where they are expected to discuss how to channel billions of dollars to developing countries grappling with the climate crisis.  

For Ahumwire Justine, a banana farmer from Shuku, in Uganda’s southwest, a day last October brought home just how vulnerable her plantation was to extreme weather.   

That day, a devastating rain and hailstorm destroyed 300 of her banana trees and killed two of her cows. The damage was so bad, she and her family considered leaving their two-hectare plot, which was not insured.   

Azima Magonde Giston is walking through his cacao plantation, which sits on the fringes of a lush rainforest in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He scans the trees for ripe cacao pods and, spotting one, uses a long bamboo pole with an axe-like tip to knock it down, leaving the surrounding foliage untouched. 

For much of his life, cattle farmer Asherly William Hogo was consumed with finding water for his herd. Hogo, who is in his early sixties, still has vivid childhood memories of rising in the middle of the night, gathering his animals and setting out across Tanzania’s parched central rangelands in search of water.  

For billions of people across the developing world, particularly children and women, mealtime starts by firing up a kerosene stove, lighting a charcoal grill or setting some logs ablaze.  

Hassaan Mohamed, the Deputy Minister of Climate Change, Environment and Energy of Maldives, knows what runaway climate change would mean for his country.  

And he is worried. 

A combination of rising seas and water shortages poses what has been called an existential threat to the Indian Ocean archipelago, the lowest-lying country on Earth.  

Countries most affected by climate change—as well as citizens and non-profit groups—are increasingly turning to courts to compel governments and fossil fuel producers to address the climate crisis. 

A couple of years ago, in the turquoise waters off the coastal village of Mahébourg in Mauritius, a Japanese oil tanker ran aground.  

As the world bakes under record heat, the nearly 200 parties to the Paris Agreement are developing new national plans to counter climate change.

Songdo, 18 July 2024 – The Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board has today approved a significant new project in Jordan to increase adaptation efforts, supported by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).