IHDP (GEC): Shades of Green Global Perspectives on the Green Economy The capitalist system has since its emergence as a dominant economic model faced scrutiny and scepticism, which has in many parts of the world reached a zenith in the wake of a global economic crisis and after decades of environmental degradation. Some would consider [...]

RECOFTC (A Grassroots Capacity Building document for REDD+ in the Asia-Pacific Region): This publication serves as a resource for community level facilitators to provide explanations about the basics of climate change and the role of forests. It aims to raise the awareness of grassroots stakeholders for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) through [...]

National Geographic: “REDD is the new beast in the forest,” said Patrick Anderson of the Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia here at Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous peoples workshop in Cairns, Australia. Deforestation gobbles up an area the size of Greece (13 million hectares) every year. As if that loss wasn’t bad [...]

Nature-Jeff Tollefson: Round-table talks aim to slow climate warming by transforming agriculture. The principle is seductively simple: to reduce carbon emissions, leave tropical forests standing. But a widely heralded approach in which rich nations would pay poorer ones to keep their forests intact has proved trickier to deploy than many had hoped. Now a consortium [...]

Many of the world’s rarest and richest forests, located in high-altitudes, could be all but wiped out by the combined impact of man-made climate change and habitat destruction. An international scientific team has warned of the near-total loss of one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, the Mexican cloud forest, along with 70 percent of [...]

RECOFTC: At Durban’s Forest Day 5, the resounding message was that REDD+ will not work if people are hungry. How can we expect the poor to conserve forest resources if their food security – their very survival – rests on the use or consumption of those resources? Part of the problem is a perceived trade-off [...]

Business Green: Support for $100bn Green Climate Fund will help overhaul the UN’s carbon market and financing for forestry projects While reactions have been mixed as to the overall success of the Durban climate summit, some progress has been made in terms of agreeing a fund to help poor countries combat climate change, reform of [...]

K N Vajpai: This UN conference on climate change (COP) remained a place where the people from around the world discuss, debate and come to a conclusion on various confronting issues our communities  face around the world on climate change. In this note I am  trying to discuss three important aspects of this conference on [...]

Durban Post by Dr.C. S. Silori*: This note is on the major happening during COP 17 at Durban in South Africa during UN Climate Change Conference on December 4-5, and how the ‘equity’ issues has emerged as major challenge for the world leaders in context to future development and climate change.  December 4, Sunday, was [...]

IPS News-DURBAN: Global climate change can now be observed from space. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a new technology that can survey the world’s forests via satellites and provide a more accurate, global picture of common threats to the environment, such as deforestation, degradation or illegal logging. Using a remote sensing surveying [...]

Durban Post: Dr. C. S. Silori* writing from Durban on Day-II & III, 29-30 November 2011 I had promised to come back, and here I am again with a short report of what happened on day 3 of the ongoing conference of the parties (COP 17) in Durban. It was a hectic day, as I [...]

World Agro-Forestry: How trees and people can co-adapt to climate change: reducing vulnerability through multifunctional agroforestry landscapes. Climate changes, especially increased variability, affect landscapes, human livelihoods and trees in many ways. They are the consequence of a wider set of global change issues, including population increase, more consumption per capita and trade globalisation. Both people [...]

CNN: Bhutan is the last of the Himalayan kingdoms. The small country is situated in the nooks and crannies of the highest mountain range on earth. It’s a special place that didn’t have paved roads until the 1960s, was off-limits to foreign tourists until the 1970′s, and didn’t have television until 1999, the last country [...]

Hindustan Times: India will engage 100,000 educated youths to execute an ambitious Green India Mission (GIM) which seeks to increase the country’s forest cover to 33% from 20% within 10 years. According to top forest official, PJ Dilip Kumar, director general of India’s forest department, in order to copewith climate change threats, the central and [...]

Times of India: Janez Potocnik is the European Union’s commissioner for the environment. Visiting India in the run-up to Rio+20, Potocnik spoke with Srijana Mitra Das about ways to develop a green economy and the importance of the world uniting to preserve its shared resource – the environment: What are our biggest environmental challenges today? [...]

Indian Express: After getting the Mid-Himalayan Watershed Development Project registered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Himachal Pradesh has become the first state in India to implement the clean development mechanism (CDM) project. Under the project, world’s largest, the World Bank will buy carbon credits from the new forests being developed [...]

CCAF has just published under CCAFS a paper in the journal Environmental Science and Policy which outlines the entry points for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture.  The paper essentially presents the CCAFS research for development framework, consisting of adaptation to short- and long- term climate variability and mitigation opportunities for smallholders.  Some of the key [...]

Sudhirendar Sharma: Writes about the potential of mountain states in India in terms of their natural wealth and kind of benchmark for the services provided by them. By taking examples from developed countries his doubts are about insignificant valuation of tangible ecosystem services, therefore the unlikely transaction of such payments in near future. His discourse [...]

UN-REDD Drafting Committee invites you to comment on a new version of the UN-REDD Programme Draft Social and Environmental Principles and Criteria. REDD+ has the potential to deliver substantial benefits beyond carbon. However, fulfilling this potential depends on careful planning and implementation that effectively address such issues as monitoring, transparent and effective governance, participation, inclusiveness [...]

Shalini Dhyani: Writes about the increasing pressure on the Himalayan ecosystem in Indian Himalayan region due to tourist influx, immigrants from neighboring country, environmental degradation and increasing population pressure. She suggests Payment for Environmental Services- PES a way forward through appropriate planning.   “The most striking feature of earth is the existence of life, and the [...]

Two Circles: India will engage 100,000 educated youths to execute an ambitious Green India Mission (GIM) which seeks to increase the country’s forest cover to 33 percent from 20 percent within 10 years, says a top forest official. P.J. Dilip Kumar, director general of India’s forest department, says that in order to cope with climate [...]

Alertnet: Much has been written about the global land rush –the trend in which investors, eager to establish plantations to produce food or biofuel at a discount, buy up or lease vast swaths of farmland in the developing world. In the process they often uproot entire villages, reducing small indigenous farmers to legions of landless [...]

IGREC: The forests of Hindu Kush Himalayan region present an opportunity for both enhancement of carbon and extraction of timber and energy biomass by managing its internal dynamics adopting the most suited silvicultural practices to keep these forests young and vigorous. Community institutions are an asset in the region which enhances the value of total [...]

UNEP: New UNEP Report Spells Out Green Economy Benefits for Indonesia’s People and Biodiversity. Conserving key rainforests in Indonesia could generate revenues three times greater than felling them for palm oil plantations.  In doing so, such actions can also deliver multiple Green Economy benefits from combating climate change, securing water supplies and improved livelihoods while [...]

E-Pao: The two-day national workshop on the “Impact of climate change on biodiversity management in northeast India with particular reference to Manipur” concluded here at Classic Hotel today with the pronouncement of several key recommendations. Northeast India has to take a very important and strategic role in combating climate change and preserving its biodiversity because [...]

Bhutan Times: Bhutan didn’t bag the much coveted Future Policy Award (FPA) 2011 on environment conservation, but its forest policy did receive an ‘Honorable Mention’ during the international award ceremony at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Thursday.Honorable Mention was bestowed to Bhutan for the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, especially Article [...]

Recalling the recognition of 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, and realising the need to revisit the mountain agenda in the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012 (commonly [...]

ICIMOD: At a technical and professional gathering in Kathmandu this week, 150 policy makers,  scientists,  and development experts from the world’s mountain regions drafted the Kathmandu Declaration on Green Economy and Sustainable Mountain Development, hoping  to ensure the place of mountain systems, in particular in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, in current global discussions on the environment, [...]