During their Global Town Hall on 29 January, UNEP experts shared insights that promise to shape the environmental agenda in 2025.?
Take a closer look at the predictions ranked by staff from the most likely to happen.
1.?Misinformation?and disinformation will be one of the top environmental scientific risks
The rise of fake news, the decline of fact-checking on social media, and the growth of deepfakes generated by AI threaten to erode trust in environmental scientific information.
Carlos Gomez del Campo, Regional Information Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean
2. Global climate-related litigation will increase by 50%
The is expected to clarify what constitutes unlawful climate conduct, which can increase global climate-related litigations and shape the legal obligations of states and corporations under international environmental law.
Yassin Ahmed, UNEP Environmental Governance Sub-Programme Coordinator?
3.?East Africa will transition to electric vehicles
Ethiopia has been the first country to ban new petrol and diesel vehicles, and Rwanda banned new petrol motorcycles.?In Kenya, several major car brands will offer electric vehicle models at the same price or almost the same as petrol and diesel vehicles.
Rob De Jong, Head of the Sustainable Mobility Unit
4.?The UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) will adopt at least one milestone resolution
Member States will look at new and emerging issues, such as critical minerals following the?report of?the Secretary-General's?Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals.
Radhika Ochalik, Director of Governance Affairs Office (GAO)?
5. Global oil demand will peak, coinciding with explosive and sustained growth in renewable energy capacity
While?the oil industry is facing its limits with maturing oil fields, aging infrastructure, and high extraction costs, China is leading the way in renewable energy by deploying ultra-high-voltage lines that can move energy from remote wind and solar farms to urban areas with 40 per cent?greater efficiency.
Jason Jabbour, Senior Programme Coordinator at Chief Scientist Office
6. Large Language Models (LLM), the technology behind AI models, will die
Large models require immense energy for training and inference and transitioning to smaller and more efficient models could significantly lower the environmental footprint and costs for companies.
Golestan Sally Radwan, Chief Digital Officer
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