📚A paper on Observational Evidence for a Regime Shift in Summer Antarctic Sea Ice issued on 6 April in the Journal of Climate shows an abrupt transition with extremely low sea ice cover in multiple summers, point towards a critical transition, or regime shift.

📚The Unjust Climate report published in March by the FAO highlights that in low and middle-income countries, women in rural areas suffer significantly greater financial losses than men. On average, female-headed households lose 8% more of their income due to heat stress and 3% more due to floods compared to male-headed households.

📚The UNEP Global Resources Outlook 2024 launched on 1 March 2024 during the sixth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-6), shows that resource use is projected to go up 60% from 2020 levels by 2060 and recommends to “bend the trend” on material extraction and use.

📚The UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 launched on 27 March revealed that one fifth of all food was wasted in 2022 (over 1 billion meals a day), while an estimated 783 million people experienced hunger that year, and a third of humanity faced food insecurity.

📚A report released on 26 march by the Food and Land Use Coalition, “Future Fit Food and Agriculture”, shows how mitigating the huge impact of food and land use systems on GHG emissions, biodiversity loss and water withdrawals can be achieved, by reducing deforestation and supply chain food loss, improving soil health, promoting agroforestry and alternative proteins. This would represent USD 205 billion investments per year (2025-2030) – less than 2% of the total food sector revenues.

📚Global emissions from livestock must drop by 61% by 2036 to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a report published in March by Harvard University and other universities.

📚An article in Nature Food of 18 March shows how the FAO global roadmap for 1.5°C threshold agrifood systems omits the potential of meat reduction, by focusing mostly on techniques to reduce livestock methane emissions. Yet, analysis shows that technological improvements would not be sufficient to meet the methane reduction targets for agriculture. Emissions could be cut by between 0.19-0.36°C by 2100 by adopting of healthy plant-rich diet globally. Researchers also point out that animal farming intensification increase the risk of infectious diseases and pandemics, while contributing to antimicrobial resistance.

📚A new study published on 19 March by the French national institute for agricultural research and environment INRAE shows how agroecology can increase the sustainability of agricultural and food systems, especially agroforestry, with 53% positive outcomes.

📚A report published on 9 April by the non-profit organisation Oil Change International & Friends of the Earth showed that multilateral development banks and G20 development finance institutions international public finance still backed at least USD 47 billion per year to fossil fuels by from 2020-2022, mostly to fossil gas. Support for coal dropped from USD 10 billion from 2017 to 2019 to USD 2 billion annually from 2020 to 2022, following the coal exclusion policies that came into effect in 2021.

📚A paper published in Science Advances reveals that up to a third of Africa’s great apes are threatened by a boom in mining projects for critical minerals required for the renewable energy transition.

📚The UN Institute for Training and Research revealed in its fourth Global E-waste Monitor released on 20 March that electronic waste is rising five times faster than documented e-waste recycling, with a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022.

📚Of 134 countries and regions surveyed in the 2023 IQAir World Air Quality Report, released in March, only seven countries (Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand) meet WHO guideline limit for tiny airborne particles expelled by cars, trucks and industrial processes.

📚According to a report by the Climate Action against Disinformation coalition, AI electricity demands will require a doubling of data centres, which will cause an 80% increase in GHG emissions.