Promoting sustainability has never been more urgent than when EU climate monitors marked 2023 as the hottest recorded year. Earth's surface temperature neared the critical 1.5 C threshold, posing grave threats to sea levels, coastal lands, and biodiversity, to name a few.
Due to climate change brought about by human activities, catastrophes including wildfires, droughts, and heatwaves have heightened more in 2023. These climate related disasters pushed the global thermometer to 1.48 C above the preindustrial benchmark, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Despite the planet's grim conclusion last year, various eco-initiatives and green forums have flourished in 2023, one being Manila Bulletin’s Sustainability Forum, which, in its second run, under scored the urgency for sustainability.
"We brought these different companies together to generate a conversation on sustainability and create a new mindset that sustainability is something we could live by even on a soft impact basis," said project lead Philip Cu-Unjieng.
With the theme “If Not Now, When? Addressing the Urgency to Go Sustainable,” the two-day forum took place at Malcolm Theater, UP College of Law in
Quezon City on Nov. 21, 2023.
It covered four categories from the UN's Sustainable Development Goals: clean energy, innovation, sustainability, and responsible production and consumption. Ultimately, the forum pooled numerous Filipino companies to showcase their ESG initiatives, yielding hopeful news.
Apart from the 2nd Sustainability Forum hosted by the Manila Bulletin, let’s delve into five other environmental stories that shaped 2023: COP28, Earthshot Prize, reclamation, Youth4Climate, and the “Dauin” frogfish, providing timely insights on the planet as we progress further.