Due to the undeniable threat of climate change to the entire human race, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13 was created to take urgent action to combat climate change and its lethal effects. According to the World Bank, climate change is the significant variation of average weather conditions becoming, for example, warmer, wetter, or drier - over several decades or longer. It is the long-term trend that differentiates climate change from natural weather variability. Climate change is caused by various human activities that directly affect atmospheric composition either directly (via the emission of greenhouse gasses or particles, deforestation) or indirectly (through atmospheric chemistry).

SDG 13 Targets

According to globalgoals.org, the following targets are used in creating actions to combat climate change:

Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related disasters
Integrate climate change measures into policies and planning
Build knowledge and capacity to meet climate change
Implement the UN framework convention on climate change
Promote mechanisms to raise capacity for planning and management

Effects of Climate Change

The following are the major effects of climate change on the environment;

Rising Sea Levels: This is caused by melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of oceans. This in turn threatens the coastal ecosystem and communities.
Extreme Weather Events: climate change results in frequent and intense floods, heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes, etc.
Human Health Risk: Increase in the case of reported and unreported heat stress, waterborne diseases, and air pollution.
Warming Temperatures: the global rise in average temperature by about 1℃ with the figure increasing geometrically.
Disrupted Ecosystem: changes in temperature and precipitation negatively affect plant and animal life. This results in disrupting the aforementioned biodiversity and food chains.

United Nations to the Rescue

To regulate the threshold of global temperature rise and adapt to impacts associated with climate change, the United Nations Climate Change Conference erstwhile known as the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) was created. The first annual conference (COP1) was held in Berlin, Germany from March 28 to April 7, 1995.

Presently, the conference (COP28) is being held in Expo City Dubai, United Arab Emirates from November 30 to December 12, 2023.

A Solution to the Global Disaster: Web3.0

The following are the current roles of Web 3 in curtailing the harmful effects of climate change on the environment:

Empowering Green Communities

Web3 has the prospect of empowering communities to build and manage their renewable energy grids, coordinate environmental initiatives, and share these resources. Powerledger and LO3 Energy are a few companies empowering green communities.

Decentralized Carbon Credit Market

Web3 enables the creation of a transparent and secured carbon credit market where individuals and companies can trade carbon credits and offset their emissions. The blockchain-powered web3 has the potential to track carbon credits from origination to retirement. This ensures their authenticity and prevents double counting. Solutions such as Moss Earth, Verra, Toucan, and DevvStream.

Green Finance

Web3 companies such as Climate Bond Initiative, and Regen Network helps to mobilize capital towards sustainable projects by facilitating the issuance and trade of climate-friendly financial instrument. It also opens funding opportunities for companies venturing into creating climate solutions.

Sustainable Supply Chain

Web3 is used to build solutions that are used to track goods and services while ensuring that they are obtained from sustainable sources. This helps in ensuring environmental conservation.

Sustainable Collaboration and Innovation

Various web3 platforms such as Climate TRACE and Ocean Protocol facilitate borderless collaborations between stakeholder from different sectors (these includes individuals, Non-Governmental Organizations, governments, and businesses) to pool resources to profer more efficient solutions to greenhouse warming. This also leads to a more coordinated stance to achieving climate targets.

Final thoughts

According to Reuters, COP28 is by far the biggest and largest UN climate summit ever held with an attendance of 84,000 registered attendees who are stakeholders in their respective domains. This is probably the most controversial conference held due to the mode of transit taken by the various stakeholders to the conference. However, ‘the world’ looks forward to seeing more climate-friendly innovations and policies as well as a Web3 virtual COP29 summit in 2024.

Cover image source: Pixabay