The international community recognized the importance of mountains at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 through adoption of Chapter 13 in Agenda 21, the often referred to so-called “mountain agenda”. Chapter 13 underscored the role of mountains in global sustainable development. So far, the Alpine

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The Hindu: The veil of mist hiding the Macico da Tijuca, the mountains that guard the Brazilian city of Rio, lifted as the Rio+20 summit concluded on Friday with the adoption of the outcome report on sustainable development. The report had been finalised by the heads of states and thousands of delegates after prolonged deliberation

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The Hindu: There is an urgent need to study the impact of climate change on water and protect water sources A new report on water sector options in the face of changing climate has called for fresh approach to studying alterations in the patterns of rainfall and snowfall, availability of surface and ground water and

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Scidevenet: The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) ended last Friday (22 June) with an international agreement on the need for all countries to commit themselves to achieving sustainable development. The agreement immediately came under fire from several quarters for its lack of detail about how this will be done, and the absence of

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Nature: The vagaries of South Asian summer monsoon rainfall on short and long timescales impact the lives of more than one billion people. Understanding how the monsoon will change in the face of global warming is a challenge for climate science, not least because our state-of-the-art general circulation models still have difficulty simulating the regional

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SciDevnet: Botswana urgently needs policies to facilitate climate change adaptation to protect the Okavango Delta, the country’s most lucrative tourist attraction, according to a new study.   Recent statistics from the Bank of Botswana show that tourism is the country’s second largest source of income, contributing US$753 million to GDP in 2011. The Delta is

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