This Earth Month, we asked our team to share what they are doing to celebrate and honor the Earth. We’re focused on learning together, taking collective action, and finding joy outdoors, and we hope you’ll join us!
How are you celebrating Earth Month?
Prep the garden for planting season, spend time alongside Mama Mississippi, and have morning conversations with the cardinals and the crows in the neighborhood. – Susan Phillips
I will be beginning my wildflower seedlings! – Gigi Kreibich
Picking up trash, writing my representatives, sending funds to front line protest groups, deepening my understanding of local Land Back movements, talking about Zero Waste – Lee Petre
Reconnecting with nature and the people that I do this work for. I think connecting with my purpose for this work is really critical for me to keep me going since I do this work year-round. I think I will also take the opportunity to talk with others about how we can work together to move beyond the climate crisis. This is something I think about a lot but not something people always want to talk about. Earth month allows for an easier entry point, a way for me to share my knowledge and get people excited about the work – hopefully. I think it is also a good time to show people that there are so many different ways to engage with this work and help people find something that fits them. – Claire Cooke
Prepare for gardening season, start composting, bike more places! – Trevor Cobb
Plant seeds, get my hands in the soil, admire my bird friends – Danielle Hefferan
I’m always looking for fun ways to pass on the tradition of knowing natural history and practicing land stewardship to my young children. We spend time on walks looking for and identifying birds, plants, and insects; we work in the garden; we talk about the changing seasons and what crops will be coming into season; and we give gratitude to the earth and the people who tend it. – Lindsey Kirkland
I live in a neighborhood very close to Lake Michigan. Every day, I take a walk to watch how the lake changes. Nature unfolds so quickly when you take the time to witness it! – Zoe Redfern-Hall
What books, movies, podcasts, or music would you recommend people enjoy this month?
Books: What if we get it right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Podcasts: We are the Great Turning, For the Wild, How to Save A Planet. TV/Movies: Extrapolation (AppleTV), Youth VS Gov (documentary on Netflix) – Susan Phillips
I am reading “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World” – Gigi Kreibich
The Red Nation podcast and the book The Red Deal; Podcast series with Timothy Morton through BBC “The End of the World has Already Happened” – Lee Petre
I really like the Local Energy Rules podcast by the Institute for Local Self Reliance. I love this active hope training: https://activehope.training/. Of course, Braiding Sweetgrass, Tending the Soil, and Undrowned are all great for books. – Claire Cooke
I’m reading What If We Get It Right by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson with my book club! – Danielle Hefferan
A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel, Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner, Christopher Silas Neal, Mud by Mary Lyn Ray – Lindsey Kirkland
I’m reading Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I also must recommend A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. – Zoe Redfern-Hall
Who are some climate leaders, artists, activists, or creators that keep you inspired during Earth Month?
Ayisha Siddiqa, Mitzi Jonelle, Dallas Goldtooth, Leah Penniman, Favianna Rodriguez – Susan Phillips
Rebecca Lee Kunz is an indigenous artist and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Her mediums are printmaking, paint, and natural materials – Gigi Kreibich
Stop Cop City movement, including forest defender Tortuguita, who was murdered by police – Lee Petre
Local activists working at the community scale in MN that I got to hear speak at MN lobby days at the capital this year. I think it is more critical than ever to be working at this local scale to protect each other and help the planet, so I found that really inspiring. – Claire Cooke
My current favorite follow on social media is @esthernewyork on Instagram! They are a drag queen that posts well-researched videos about the histories of colonization, capitalism, and exploitation of the environment. Super well-made informative content that I love sharing and recommending to people. – Trevor Cobb
I like to think about the movement history behind our celebration of Earth Month and Earth Day. I’m also inspired by the leaders in the food sovereignty and food justice space. In my local community, I’m inspired by leaders like Anton Seals Jr., the founder of Grow Greater Englewood, who I got to hear from at a recent food justice summit I attended. Learning the unique threads of the movement ecosystem and leaders like Anton who have been doing local-level, long-term organizing work inspires me and roots me during these times. – Zoe Redfern-Hall
Do you have any favorite Earth Month traditions?
Getting the garden ready for pollinators! – Gigi Kreibich
I love to write poems about Spring and the Earth and spend the whole month making art to celebrate her. – Trevor Cobb
See the birds come back! – Danielle Hefferan
Going outside daily on my lunch breaks from my home office to see what’s blooming. – Lindsey Kirkland
Every year, I love to document with photos the new flowers popping up whenever I see a new one on my walks through the neighborhood. During spring, I am constantly swiveling my head to search for flowers or interesting plants when I’m outside. It’s one of my most favorite things I do every year. – Zoe Redfern-Hall
The post Your 2025 Earth Month List appeared first on Climate Generation.
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.