Maria Alejandra Escalante

First day, first actions, first signs of hope

Lucas Burdick November 12, 2013 0 Comments

by Lucas Burdick This is a late post, and very much a developing story. “Climate change means we face a future where super typhoons will no longer be one-in-one hundred year events…” said head negotiator for the Philippines, Yeb Sano, at the opening plenary of the COP. You could hear the tiredness in his voice and as he spent much of...

LOSS AND DAMAGE MUST BE ADDRESSED NOW: WE DEMAND A STRONG MECHANISM

Maria Escalante November 11, 2013 0 Comments

by Katie O’Brien & Maria Alejandra Escalante What is Loss and Damage? In the climate negotiations, the focus is often on mitigation and adaptation, but these two alone cannot fully address the impacts of climate change. Some climate change impacts have already been locked in from historical emissions and many countries do not have the capacity to adapt to the oncoming effects, especially...

COP19 Warsaw: The Big Fights, Red Lines and Initial Predictions

aodell November 10, 2013 3 Comments

by Anna Odell and Maria Alejandra Escalante Thousands gather in Warsaw as typhoon Yolanda (internationally named typhoon Haiyan) ravages the Philippines, leaving up to 10,000 people dead, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and destroying entire communities and towns. This catastrophe, the largest typhoon in recorded history, cannot go unacknowledged, and those parties responsible for...

Industrial agriculture ought to move away: agroecology is the only safe option

Maria Escalante October 31, 2013 0 Comments

by Maria It is pretty clear that the planet is increasingly warming up as we keep emitting carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and extracting natural gas from the ground. Or at least it is pretty clear to more than half the world’s population who in recent decades have been dealing with periods of abnormal rainfall, intense floods and droughts, heat waves, and loss of biodiversity. While...

The Point of It All

mcalderon June 25, 2012 0 Comments

Point of No Return By Mariana Calderon Sitting back in a bed in a hostel in Rio de Janeiro, trying to regain some sense of normalcy through regular sleep and regular meals, I hardly dare to think back on the last two weeks - or the last 20 years - just yet. Some time to recover, please. Unfortunately, time is something we don’t have much of anymore. In the halls of the Rio Centro convention...