Swiss organic farmer Ambros Walker plays the alphorn next to his farm in Erstfeld, central Switzerland, 28 April, 2010. (Keystone/Urs Flueeler)

👩🏽‍🌾 ✊ The answer to our food problems? With preparations for the UN Food Systems Summit underway, rights groups are calling for a paradigm shift, with agroecology at the forefront. As a practice that seeks to protect biodiversity while allowing small farmers to be in control of food production, agroecology is believed by many to be the only way to address the underlying problems of our food systems.

🌏 🗝️ Putting carbon away. A study has measured for the first time the carbon storage potential in Eastern Europe, in the Caucasus and Central Asia. According to the findings by the UN Economic Commission for Europe, oil reservoirs could store up to 62,000 million tonnes of CO2, with 56,410 million tonnes in Russia alone. UNECE has been calling for countries in the region to scale up carbon capture, use and storage as a way towards reaching net-zero emissions.

⚡❄️ Lightning in the icy north. As the Arctic continues to warm up twice as fast as the rest of the world, unusual warm-weather phenomena in the far north are also becoming more recurrent. According to researchers, lightning, which is most common in the tropics, is now striking near the region and could more than double by 2100, sparking wildfires that will release 100-years old greenhouse gases previously stocked in the frozen soils that will in turn heat up the planet.

(European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery)

Europe pollution back to normal. Despite a decline during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, air pollution levels in Europe have rebounded as governments loosen sanitary restrictions and restart their economies. The nitrogen dioxide concentration above Brussels, for example, saw a 36 per cent drop in March 2020, only to bounce back last month to pre-pandemic levels, according to the European Earth observation programme Copernicus.

📌 9 April | Introducing PLASTEAX. The founders of the Swiss plastic data platform introduce their tracking tool and discuss the importance of having valuable data on waste management.

📌 15 April | Chemicals of concern in building materials. A webinar in collaboration with the University of Cape Town brings representatives from different sectors together to create a learning network around issues related to addressing chemicals in products. SAICM

Connect with us. Get the latest Geneva Solutions news updates on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.