The MHREC volunteer team met in January for an interactive session to discuss and learn more about climate change. Before the workshop, each volunteer had completed a United Nations course on different issues related to climate change. The volunteers were given the opportunity to discuss and explain what they had learned from their individual courses, as well as to reveal a summary to the other volunteers.
One of our volunteers took the “Children and Climate Change” course. This program discussed how climate change affects children and youths and how to strengthen their resilience if this issue is addressed. The training emphasized that the key climate-related hazards that can have a significant impact on children include drought and water stress, floods and severe storms, heat stress, air pollution, and changes in disease incidence and geographic distribution. Adaptation and catastrophe risk reduction strategies can boost children’s resistance to climate change. They can be for children, where the caregiver’s ability is to focus on the children’s needs and capacities, ensuring that they are increased, or with children, where the children are integrally involved in decision-making, planning, and execution of adaptation at all levels.
Another volunteer took the course “Climate Change International Law Regime,” which focused on how the UNFCCC went into operation in 1994, requiring Member States to act in the interests of human safety in the face of scientific uncertainty. The Convention’s ultimate goal is to keep greenhouse gas concentrations constant at a level that prevents harmful human-induced interference with the climate system. It then delves into the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This Protocol puts the UNFCCC into action by committing industrialized nations and economies in transition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with agreed-upon individual objectives. The Protocol is based on the Convention’s principles and provisions and follows its annex-based structure. It exclusively binds wealthy nations and imposes a higher cost on them under the premise of shared but differentiated responsibility and respective capacities, recognizing that they are principally responsible for the current high level of greenhouse gas emissions in the environment. Lastly, it focuses on the Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 nations during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris and went into effect in 2016. This agreement aims to keep the global average temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels and to pursue measures to keep the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Another volunteer enrolled in the “Climate Change Negotiations and Health” course, which investigated the growing evidence that environmental issues have an influence on human health, amplifying existing risks.
Climate change, for example, is anticipated to cause 250,000 more fatalities per year between 2030 and 2050, due to concerns ranging from starvation to heat stress, with direct health expenditures expected to be between USD 2-4 billion per year by 2030. The COVID-19 epidemic has also exposed the critical interconnections between human health, the status of our environment, and the situation of our economy.
The volunteers strongly advise individuals to take advantage of these free courses to expand their knowledge as well as grasp the global challenges that we face today and how they influence our lives from many viewpoints.
Please get in touch and we can guide you on your journey to contribute more sustainably in your everyday life.
MHREC 
You must be logged in to post a comment.