In today’s edition:

📊 Africa’s data gap

🧪 World's first lab-grown blood trial

🤝 Dividing lines at COP

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💼 Big Business (1-minute read)

Microsoft bridging the data divide

Challenge: There are approx. 5 data scientists in the Global North for every 1 in the Global South, demonstrating the scale of the “data divide”. A dearth of reliable climate data and data scientists is hampering governments’ efforts to make informed decisions regarding climate policy.

Mind the gap: Microsoft has unveiled a wave of initiatives to fill this data gap. One initiative involves expanding its “AI for Good Research Lab” to Egypt and Kenya to get more local data scientists working in Africa. The tech giant is also expanding its collaboration with Planet (an earth imaging company) to help Africa-based data scientists leverage the continent's satellite imagery to address climate adaptation challenges through a more informed early-warning sign system for extreme weather.

Why? The “data divide” is another example of a gap that needs closing between richer nations and countries heavily impacted by climate change - a topic looming large during the ongoing COP27 Summit.

TNFD launches the latest framework for nature-related financial disclosure

In March 2022, The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) unveiled the first iteration of its framework to help corporates disclose reports on nature-related risks and impacts of their business operations.

Why is TNFD important? It helps move businesses and finance to take action on nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities sooner rather than later.

What's new? Recommendations about developing and reporting on transparency throughout the supply chain and attempts to better align nature with climate targets from corporations.

What we like: Ongoing iteration incorporating feedback from businesses, governments and indigenous communities most vulnerable to nature-related risks.

Amazon Female-Backed Climate Fund

Amazon has unveiled plans to directly invest $50m from its $2bn Climate Pledge Fund in cleantech companies founded or run by women to address gender inequalities in climate finance.

Why it's important: Previous UN research has revealed that less than 3% of venture capital flows to cleantech went to women-led companies in 2019 and only 11% of seed funding capital in cleantech in emerging markets went to companies with women on their founding teams.

🤖 Future of Tech (1-minute read)

Turning up the heat on seagrass

The situ: Europe has lost one-third of its seagrass areas since 1860. German scientists are working on ways to restore seagrass in the Baltic Sea, which is being damaged by global warming, falling water quality and disease.

The restoration process: Scientists are testing new cultivation methods to explore the most effective for creating new seagrass fields. They’re also exposing existing seagrass to artificial heatwaves to improve their resilience to warmer temperatures/global warming.

The importance? Seagrass accounts for 10% of the ocean’s capacity to store carbon and can capture carbon 35x faster than tropical rainforests. The Baltic region contains around 300km of seagrass, storing the equivalent carbon footprint of around 1mn people from the UK annually.

In a world-first, lab-grown blood given to people in trial

The bulk of regular blood transfusions relies on people physically donating blood to treat conditions such as sickle cell anaemia. Also, if blood is not a precise match between donor and recipient, the body will reject it, and treatment fails. Some blood groups are extremely rare, meaning finding individuals with the matching blood type is difficult.

Enter lab-grown blood: Blood is grown by extracting stem cells from a normal blood donation, which are then encouraged to grow into many red blood cells. 50 billion red blood cells are then grown (taking 3 weeks) under favourable conditions in a lab.

The aim… is to prove that lab-grown blood is safe and effective. If so, manufactured blood cells could revolutionise treatments for people with blood disorders through the need for fewer, more effective transfusion treatments.

💡 Deep Dive (1-minute read)

COP27 - Dividing lines taking place

Day 3 of ‘Implementation COP’ is about to kick off - it aims to make progress on transforming pledges into action on the ground. We got a grim reminder of the urgency of this year's event: on Sunday, new data from the World Meteorological Organization said the planet had likely witnessed its warmest eight years on record. Here are the highlights of the first two days:

• The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Announced $2.5 Billion for the Middle East Green Initiative, which aims to reduce carbon emissions from regional hydrocarbon production by more than 60 per cent and restore an area equivalent to 200 million hectares of degraded land.

• The World Meteorological organisation launched a $3 bn global early warning system for increasingly extreme and dangerous weather for everyone on earth to allow - critical as Countries with limited early warning coverage have disaster mortality eight times higher than those with high coverage

• For the first time, a COP agenda was approved that included the fiercely controversial subject of Loss and Damage - see our article last week for more.

• The Bezos Earth Fund - set up by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos - has pledged $1bn (£882,509,000) by 2030 to help protect carbon reserves and biodiversity

What to watch out for the next few days

• 8th November: More plenary sessions from senior officials from nations - expect a few more pledges to trickle through

• 9th November: Finance Day - the conversation evolving from mitigation – reducing total greenhouse gas emissions – to financing adaptation and resilience in vulnerable nations

• 10th November: Science and Young people. Discussion over how best to direct scientific research to help the world mitigate the effects of climate change and a panel on African youth-led activism

💭 Little Bytes

Quote:  "Unless we price carbon predictably on a trajectory that gets us at least to $75 average price per ton of carbon in 2030, we simply don't create the incentive for businesses and consumers to shift." IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva

Stat: A survey of some 2,000 UK-based adults has found that 61% fear that they will not be able to make the choices they previously had to consume more sustainably due to rising costs. Edie

Watch: High-resolution satellite data pinpoints a methane release in New Mexico that @ghgsat attributes to the coal sector - Bloomberg Green

🗞 In other news…

• British Airways applies for funding for large-scale sustainable aviation fuels production in UK - edie

• Spain releases new dietary guidelines recommending a maximum consumption of 3 proportions of meat per week

• Over 50 top firms pledge to align lobbying activity with Paris Agreement

• China on Sunday said it would take the necessary steps to safeguard its companies' rights and interests after last week, Canada ordered three Chinese companies to divest their investments in Canadian critical minerals.

Written by Colin and Ollie - Drop us a message!