Climate Treaties - Inside Climate News

The Chesapeake Bay Program Isn’t Likely to Hit Its 2025 Cleanup Goals. What Happens Next?

By Aman Azhar — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A new paper pegs the success of cleanup efforts to recommendations spelled out in the original documents decades ago and the EPA’s willingness to use the enforcement powers of the Clean Water Act.

By Aman Azhar

Agriculture and stormwater runoff from developed land—key reasons the Chesapeake Bay is not on target to meet 2025 cleanup goals—will continue to limit pollution reduction efforts until federal and state agencies come up with new approaches to tackle these longstanding problems.

Developing Countries Say Their Access Difficulties at Bonn Climate Talks Show Justice Issues Obstruct Climate Progress

By Bob Berwyn — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Growing fossil-fueled authoritarianism in Azerbaijan and other COP host nations undermines climate action and human rights, researchers and policy experts report.

By Bob Berwyn

This year’s annual United Nations climate talks in Bonn started the way COP28 in Dubai ended last December, with some representatives from developing countries in the Global South feeling excluded from the process and even unwanted.

Europe’s Swing to the Right Threatens Global Climate Policy

By Bob Berwyn — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 09:10:00 +0000

Many populist, nationalist and far-right parties have attacked environmental, climate and clean energy policies during the campaigns for this week’s EU parliamentary election.

By Bob Berwyn

In 2019, when the 450 million citizens of the European Union’s 27 member states last went to the polls to choose a parliament for the continent, youth-led climate activism was cresting. Hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets of Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris and Vienna during the campaigning helped turn the EU parliamentary election into a referendum on climate action and preserving nature.

La otra disputa fronteriza es sobre un tratado de aguas de 80 años

By Martha Pskowski — Wed, 29 May 2024 21:57:23 +0000

Con otro verano caluroso asomándose, México está retrasado con sus entregas de agua a los Estados Unidos, provocando cortes en el sur de Texas. Una agencia federal poco conocida ha llegado a un bloqueo en sus esfuerzos para hacer que México cumpla.

By Martha Pskowski

Read this article in English.

The Other Border Dispute Is Over an 80-Year-Old Water Treaty

By Martha Pskowski — Tue, 28 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

With another hot summer looming, Mexico is behind on its water deliveries to the United States, leading to water cutbacks in South Texas. A little-known federal agency has hit a roadblock in its efforts to get Mexico to comply.

By Martha Pskowski

Lea este artículo en español.

‘Historic’ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change Says Countries Must Prevent Greenhouse Gases From Harming Oceans

By Katie Surma — Tue, 21 May 2024 17:52:52 +0000

The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea’s opinion said that greenhouse gases are a form of marine pollution and laid out governments’ legal obligations to reduce that contamination and limit global warming.

By Katie Surma

An international tribunal said on Tuesday that countries have binding legal obligations to prevent greenhouse gases from harming the world’s oceans in a landmark opinion that experts say could strengthen climate-vulnerable countries’ efforts to hold major polluters accountable and drive action to fight climate change.

Loss and Damage Meeting Shows Signs of Giving Developing Countries a Bigger Voice and Easier Access to Aid

By Bob Berwyn — Sat, 04 May 2024 09:05:00 +0000

The first meeting of the board of the new climate finance fund sought to finalize operations and its partnership with the World Bank. But who will pay?

By Bob Berwyn

If the new United Nations loss and damage fund lives up to the promise of its first full board meeting, it could be a game-changer for climate finance by speeding relief money to areas hit by fossil-fueled global warming disasters like floods, heatwaves and droughts.

Historic Agreement with the Federal Government and Arizona Gives Colorado River Indian Tribes Control Over Use of Their Water off Tribal Land

By Noel Lyn Smith — Thu, 02 May 2024 09:05:00 +0000

The deal will help the tribe raise money for infrastructure and services for its members while the water could ease the drought in the Southwest.

By Noel Lyn Smith

PARKER, Ariz. — Against a backdrop of the Colorado River, members of the Colorado River Indian Tribes watched Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Amelia Flores, the tribe’s chairwoman, sign a historic agreement on April 26 that asserts the tribe’s right to lease portions of their allocation of the river’s water to users away from the tribal land.

Headed Toward the Finish Line, Plastics Treaty Delegates ‘Work is Far From Over’

By James Bruggers — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:35:01 +0000

Some environmental groups see the United States, the global leader in oil production, as an obstacle to a robust plastics agreement.

By James Bruggers

The United States and other leading oil and gas producing countries that resist caps on future plastic production had a powerful effect on the latest round of United Nations talks aimed at achieving a global agreement to end plastic waste, observers said Tuesday.

In Coastal British Columbia, the Haida Get Their Land Back

By Serena Renner, Hakai Magazine — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

By affirming Indigenous land ownership, British Columbia and the Haida Nation are signaling a new era for Indigenous relations.

By Serena Renner, Hakai Magazine

This story was originally published by Hakai and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.