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Vote for the climate?

From the United States to the United Kingdom, India and Indonesia, national elections will have big ramifications for global climate action in 2024, with polls taking place in several powerful large-emitting countries in a year when scientists expect temperatures to hit the 1.5C warming ceiling for the first time.

The countries holding 2024 elections are home to some two billion voters and are responsible for more than 40% of the world's planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. They also include some of its most climate-vulnerable countries like Tuvalu and Pakistan.

For those reasons, we'll be covering how green policies play out in their electoral campaigns - and whether climate change and nature loss are rising up the list of the public's priorities as awareness grows of how those issues affect other spheres of life including health and jobs. Here's a preview from our correspondents.

And this comment piece from the head of journalist programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism explains why the media’s reporting of elections will be critical in informing voters and policy signals on climate change.

A recent study by the institute found an appetite for objective, independent spokespeople commenting on the climate crisis across the board, with scientists viewed as the most trusted sources of climate information, and politicians and governments the least.

Women come in from the cold

In the Swiss ski resort of Davos last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tried to paint a positive picture of the opportunities for moving forward on the climate challenge, in contrast to the dire state of geopolitics around the world.

At the same time, he stressed the need for international financial reforms to get more money flowing to developing countries so that they can access those opportunities. His mantra of needing to tip the balance towards a fairer system to tackle the world’s problems applies on all levels - not least to gender.

After Azerbaijan appointed a COP29 organising committee with no women, there was an outcry, pushing the president to add 12 senior female officials who now account for just under 30% of the 41-strong body.

In Bangladesh, meanwhile, we reported on how an expected surge in solar power capacity could create thousands of new jobs, with women starting to make their mark when equipped with the right skills.

"These days women are also showing interest in tech-based work," said Farzana Akter Isha, 24, a supervisor at SOLshare, which has an all-female production team. She told our correspondent how she mentors her female colleagues to take on more technical challenges.

Leave no one behind

And as winter brings hopes of freezing fun on the northern hemisphere's ski slopes, it’s fortunate the World Economic Forum wasn't being held in the Indian Kashmiri mountain town of Gulmarg, where snow is in short supply due to El Niño and global warming.

With snowfall in this part of the western Himalayas down by nearly 80% this season, Gulmarg's ski slopes are bare and largely deserted, slashing the incomes of people who depend on winter tourism. Local sledge-drivers and tea-sellers talked of a bleak future if things get worse.

This is just one small example of the injustice of the climate crisis, which is deepening as governments and businesses lag in their efforts to rein in warming and help people adapt. The impulse to expose this unfairness has been the driving force of the climate coverage I started at the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the mid-2000s and then developed over the years with our climate editor Laurie Goering.

The time has now come for me to move on - but I shall continue to work on journalism that shows how and why we must tackle inequality if we're to achieve a just green transition that leaves no one behind. There's no alternative if we're serious about making the world a better place.

Thanks for reading,

Megan