Climate Stories

Oysters, in all their stunning variety and storied reputation for pearls and elegant cuisine, play an exemplary–if often unacknowledged–role in mitigating the effects of our warming planet.

In these strange days of summer, we witnessed an extreme climate high and an extreme climate low. Both have significant implications for the planet’s health and for confronting climate change moving forward.

A new report by an international body of scientists exposes the sheer gravity of climate change and the increasingly severe climate impacts facing people and nature. To drive home the impacts on nature, WWF created a new version that incorporates plants and animals to highlight how climate change affects generations across all species on the planet.

WWF-Myanmar has installed three automatic weather stations in climate-vulnerable areas of the country, providing communities a way to better predict, track, and plan for natural disasters.

Green hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize heavy industry, a sector whose emissions have proved to be some of the most difficult to tackle. Equitable development and deployment of hydrogen energy could make a real impact toward combating the climate crisis while supporting a just energy transition for communities.

Here are five ways that WWF helped to fight climate change in 2022.

Though the world faces two existential crises—a rapidly warming planet and declining biodiversity—and continues to battle a global pandemic, conservation still made major strides toward protecting wildlife, wild places, and people in 2022.

Combatting climate change helps save wildlife populations around the globe, but the reverse is also true: Wildlife conservation plays an essential role in regulating our climate. By saving wildlife, we help save the planet, including ourselves.

Ambitions and promises need to translate into action. At this COP, we must set the stage to begin the real work and challenges around decarbonization.

Climate Week is finally back at full force this year. Here’s what I’m looking for during this moment when the bright lights of the big city of New York are trained squarely on the climate crisis.

Countries have a long way to go in reducing carbon emissions to curb the worst impacts of global warming. Fortunately, climate action works, and evidence of it can be seen in the elimination of several gigatons of emissions per year.

The planet has experienced five previous mass extinction events, the last one occurring 65.5 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs from existence. Experts now believe we’re in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.

Increases in extreme weather events are surpassing the resilience of some human and natural systems. Here’s a look at some of the takeaways from the report—and what we can do to address the climate emergency.

Laila Sanjida of Bangladesh, Pragya Motiwal of India, and Ruwanthi Jayasekara of Sri Lanka all experienced devastating floods in their home countries that inspired them to enter the field of flood management.

The Renewable Thermal Collaborative (RTC) seeks to slash carbon emissions from industry and other large energy buyers by scaling up renewable alternatives for providing thermal energy.

Mangroves, with their incredible ability to capture and store carbon, can be a solution to climate change.

As climate change fuels more intense disasters, environmental issues and humanitarian needs are growing increasingly intertwined. WWF's Anita van Breda takes some time to reflect on the past and look toward the future.

Wildfires are growing increasingly devastating and are both contributing to and being exacerbated by the worsening climate change. But there are ways that we can better manage fires so to mitigate their damage and protect communities and wildlife. 

Living in a ger, meaning 'home' in Mongolia, and more commonly referred to as a 'yurt' in English, has grown popular in many places around the world. But its origin lies in central Asia, particularly across the steppes of Mongolia. Set up to be a portable home, the ger has been a traditional part of the life of nomadic herders here for millennia. But this way of life is threatened by climate change.

My hope for the future is we look back and see the summer of 2021 as the turning point in climate change—the moment when humanity took account of what we are doing and changed course.

A new comprehensive report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessing the latest state of global climate science reveals that global temperatures now hover around 1.1°C above preindustrial levels and our actions have already irreversibly altered the Earth.

WWF is launching a new project to make wildlife like tapirs less vulnerable to drought during the dry season by installing and monitoring artificial water sources in Mexico’s Calakmul Biosphere Reserve through the Wildlife Adaptation Innovation Fund.

Sixty percent of Fortune 500 companies have set goals to act on climate change and address energy use, yet those ambitions vary dramatically—and are not happening at the speed or scale needed to stave off the worst impacts of a warming planet, according to a new WWF report.