ATREE: The Himalayas are assumed to be undergoing rapid climate change, with serious environmental, social and economic consequences for more than two billion people. However, data on the extent of climate change or its impact on the region are meagre. Based on local knowledge, we report perceived changes in climate and consequences of such changes [...]
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Discovery News: As the climate changes this century, the ranges of most mammal species will shrink – in many cases because animals won’t be able to get to areas suitable for them, says new research. And while some animals will do just fine or even better than before, certain animals could face catastrophic losses of [...]
International Affairs review: The energy partnership between China and India could become a leading example of progress on climate change. China and India have positioned themselves as defenders of the global South in the international climate change arena. The climate change debate, meanwhile, is firmly centred on whose responsibility it is to clean up the [...]
Business Standard: It must reduce poverty and increase prosperity – all while leaving a smaller carbon footprint Asia-Pacific is large, diverse and growing fast. It contains more than half of humanity, and 30 per cent of the global land mass. It has made great progress in reducing poverty. Yet, with two-thirds of the world’s poor, [...]
The Tribune: A collective scientific approach is required for mitigating the impact of climate change which is one of the most serious social, economic and environmental challenges facing humanity. This was discussed at an international conference on “Climate Change: Opportunities and Challenges” held at the National University of Science and Technology here on Wednesday. The [...]
Scidevnet: The multi-billion dollar cassava industry of South–East Asia may already be suffering from multiple pest and disease outbreaks triggered by climate change, cassava researchers have told a conference in Bangkok. Although the crop can thrive in hotter and dryer conditions in the region, an increase in pests and diseases could easily wipe out recent [...]
Bangkok (UN ESCAP Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section) – Climate change mitigation and adaptation must go hand in hand with efforts to make development more inclusive and sustainable in Asia-Pacific countries, the top United Nations official in the region said here today. As the world’s most natural disaster-prone region and with climate change adding to [...]
Hill Post: Ignorance is not always bliss; not when the climate and pristine ecology is at stake. A change in the climate that has served millions of life forms from the beginning of time does not just affect our surroundings. It ropes in our future generations too. 2 years ago, I crossed the Rohtang Pass [...]
The News Pakistan: A Bangladeshi disaster management expert, Khurshid Alam, on Friday emphasised the need for training the local community in playing an effective role in recovering from natural calamities and minimising the adverse effects of an emergency. Local knowledge should be incorporated in designing a disaster management plan. It is very important to learn [...]
Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma: I’m indeed grateful to all the members who made written submissions to the discussions on ‘rewriting mountain perspective‘. At bilateral level, many others have contributed their unwritten thoughts and reflections. While many have gone public with their inputs, others have restricted themselves to drawing-room conversations such that they remain ‘unidentified’ in the [...]
Alertnet: At present, close to one billion people suffer from hunger. Experts agree that there is a high risk of climate change affecting food security at the global level, with the most negative impacts in the poorest and most vulnerable countries. The additional risk of climate change could put several hundred million at risk of [...]
WRI Publication: This report introduces the National Adaptive Capacity (NAC) framework, a tool to help governments bring institutional capacity development into their adaptation planning processes. The NAC framework enables its users to systematically assess institutional strengths and weaknesses that may help or hinder adaptation. National adaptation plans may then be better designed to make best [...]
Times of India: When biologist Kamal Bawa talks of global well-being on a sunny April morning in Bangalore, he draws attention to how every human, animal and tree in the ecosystem is enmeshed in the rhythm of life. The recent Gunnerus Sustainability Award from the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS) and election [...]
Dawn Pakistan: Speakers at a workshop here on Thursday said that glacier lake outburst floods (GLOF) were posing threat to Hindukush-Himalya region that could play havoc with human settlements. They stressed the need for taking steps to reduce the risk. The workshop titled ‘Reducing risks and vulnerabilities from glacier outburst floods in northern Pakistan’ was [...]
IPS News: As a result of climate change-related extreme weather events like a rise in the sea level and increasingly intense storms alternating with drought, Caribbean island nations are facing the challenge of adopting adaptation measures that could be too costly for their budgets. One important message from the report is that costly investments are [...]
CDKN [Sam Bickersteth, CEO]: The Government of Vietnam, IIED and BCAS (Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies) have just hosted the Sixth annual Community Based Adaptation (CBA) conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, 16-22 April. I participated, together with CDKN’s Asia Director, Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, many members of CDKN network and some 300 others from 61 countries: it [...]
Yale 360: With soaring human populations and rapid climate change putting unprecedented pressure on species, conservationists must look to innovative strategies — from creating migratory corridors to preserving biodiversity hotspots — if we are to prevent countless animals and plants from heading to extinction. By Lee Hannah Throughout much of the Pleistocene era, which began [...]
PNAS: All human–environment systems adapt to climate and its natural variation. Adaptation to human-induced change in climate has largely been envisioned as increments of these adaptations intended to avoid disruptions of systems at their current locations. In some places, for some systems, however, vulnerabilities and risks may be so sizeable that they require transformational rather [...]
IHDP: Prof. Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University on the challenges of measuring the true costs and benefits of economic development. DIMENSIONS: Professor Dasgupta, how would you define the Green Economy in your own words? Prof. Partha Dasgupta [PD]: By a “Green Economy” we mean an economy where Nature’s worth is included in the reckoning when [...]
Yale Environment 360: Large-scale industrial agriculture depends on engineering the land to ensure the absence of natural diversity. But as the recent emergence of herbicide-tolerant weeds on U.S. farms has shown, nature ultimately finds a way to subvert uniformity and assert itself. In its short, shameless history, big agriculture has had only one big idea: [...]
Kashmir Life (Srinagar, India): Tonnes of trash dumped in Indian Kashmir during an annual religious pilgrimage pose a serious threat to the region’s water supplies and flora, environmental groups warn. The trash is dumped during an annual trek to a shrine in the Amarnath cave, 3,800 meters (12,800 feet) up in the Himalayas, which is [...]
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 [...]
National Geographic: A recent study may warn of more widespread threats to water quality. As global warming triggers heavier rainfall and faster snowmelt in the Arctic, Inuit communities in Canada are reporting more cases of illness attributed to pathogens that have washed into surface water and groundwater, according to a new study. The findings corroborate [...]
Telegraph Nepal: The Nepalese Ministry of Environment launched the Nepal Climate Change Support Programme at the International Conference of Mountain Countries on Climate Change in Kathmandu, April 5, 2012. The first phase of this Euro 16.5 m (NRs 1,800,000,000) programme aims to reduce the vulnerability of 2 million women and men in the Mid and [...]
BANGKOK—India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate-change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterized by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s “The State of Asian Cities 2010-11.” By 2020, of the projected [...]
Glacial melt. Invasive species. Mudslides. Erosion. Mountains around the world are seeing major changes accelerated by a warming planet. Mountains represent 25% of the earth’s surface and host 13% of the world’s population. Warming-fueled changes are threatening sensitive ecosystems, water resources, climbing routes, and, in turn, the way of life in local communities (see “As [...]
SciDevNet-(Bernard Appiah): A pilot version of an online mapping tool has been launched in Africa which enables researchers and policymakers to identify how climate change vulnerability, conflict, and aid intersect. Researchers from the Strauss Center’s Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) programme, United States, integrated data from areas of climate change vulnerability and active [...]
Researchers report that Earth’s polar regions are losing 502 billion tons of water annually out of the total amount 536 billion tons lost annually worldwide. Scientists published results in a February 2012 issue of Nature that reveal a detailed picture of how Earth’s glacier regions have changed over the last eight years. In previous publications, [...]
By Rashme Sehgal, Deccan Chronicle: India has the world’s largest water infrastructure, but the poorest water delivery system in the world.On World Water Day 2012, water experts are demanding a dramatic revamp of the present water management strategy. Unlike the US and Australia, which have built over 500 cubic meters of water storage per capita, [...]
100 days to go to a conference and a summit that UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon has described as a “once in a life time opportunity”. Whether this event, coming 20 years after the historic Rio Earth Summit of 1992, delivers transformational change will depend on governments, but it also depends on you. If the UN [...]
The Himalayan ecosystem is fragile and diverse. It includes over 51 million people who practice hill agriculture and remains vulnerable The Himalayan ecosystem is vital to the ecological security of the Indian landmass, through providing forest cover, feeding perennial rivers that are the source of drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower, conserving biodiversity, providing a rich [...]
Low-tech experiment produces accurate data on threat to plant biodiversity and may also help with carbon capture. The fresh snow covers the Aubonne valley overlooking Lake Geneva. Clumps of beech, maple and juniper trees cling to the slopes of the Jura highlands. Scientists from Lausanne Polytechnic (EPFL) and Switzerland‘s Forest, Snow and Landscape Research Institute [...]
BBC: Up to 900 species of tropical land birds around the world could become extinct by 2100, researchers say. The finding is modelled on the effects of a 3.5C Earth surface temperature rise, a Biological Conservation Journal paper shows. Species may struggle to adapt to habitat loss and extreme weather events, author Cagan Sekercioglu says. [...]
Climate change has major social implications. Many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people already feel the effects of climate change, and adverse impacts are unavoidable for millions more. The negative impacts of climate change push those living on the margin closer to the edge and can hamper the development pathways of entire regions [...]
Institutions play a crucial role in the ability of vulnerable systems to cope with and adjust to change and uncertainty. They can either enable or constrain access to resources, markets, regulations, information, finance, and technologies, among others, which are key to overcome the challenges and benefit from the potential opportunities posed by climate change. Thus, [...]
Mr. Cyril R Raphael: In this article Mr. Raphael writes the agony of mountains in general by taking an example of overall development in one of the Indian mountain states called Uttarakhand. His discourse covers the social and economic development, governance, leadership, availability of basic amenities, health, education, livelihood, effectiveness of information and communication, role [...]
Discovery: What to do when adults persist in believing that the burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change? You know, on account of that pesky overwhelming scientific evidence and stuff? Simple. Target kids instead, and try to convince them, as early as possible, that it’s all a crock – or at least that it’s [...]
University of Kashmir has become part of the countrywide efforts for undertaking joint research on glaciers and climate change in the Himalayas and Karakoram. An Inter-University Consortium on Cryosphere and Climate Change (IUCCC) with membership from Kashmir University JNU, Jammu University and Sikkim University was recently launched at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. During [...]
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992, where a number of seminal agreements were signed by heads of state from all the countries of the world. These included the Rio Declaration, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) [...]
The environment is already affecting patterns of human migration. On the island of Hatia, along coastal Bangladesh, 22 percent of households have migrated to cities as a coping strategy following tidal surges. But we would be wrong to assume that our only concern should be for the millions of people who might try to leave [...]
The Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research will, together with Indian and Norwegian partners, study the impact of climate change on some water systems in the north of India. The project is part of a portfolio financed by The Norwegian Embassy and administered by The Research Council of Norway (RCN). The relevance can hardly be disputed. [...]
Improving access to information technology can help communities assess their own vulnerability and boost local planning, says John Waugh. Climate change affects virtually all of the natural systems necessary for human survival. It has implications for water supply, food production, health and physical security. Climate impacts will vary from region to region, so planning for [...]
Climate change impacts – from worsening droughts to new pots of climate-related cash for fragile states – may turn out to be a catalyst for worsening conflict. If so, keeping an eye on local politics and the quality of governance could be as important in heading off climate crises as breeding drought-resistant crops or protecting [...]
Think about this: Anthropologists and linguists say that every two weeks a unique language disappears with its last surviving speaker. As we celebrated our entrance into the 21st century, about half of the world’s 7,000 human languages were not being spoken or taught to younger generations. Can you imagine this happening to your own language [...]
Practical Action Handbook from Nepal: This handbook is aimed at practitioners who seek examples of how the V2R framework can be used in practice, based on examples from Nepal. It offers a step process, workbooks and tools. It includes guidance on how to include long-term trends in programming with a focus on climate change. It [...]
Promoting resilience is a growing area of interest in development. The UK Government’s Humanitarian Policy ‘Saving Lives, preventing suffering and building resilience’, puts resilience at the heart of their approach. Building on this, DFID have committed to embedding resilience-building in all of its country programmes by 2015 and integrating resilience into all of their work [...]
Sudhirendar Sharma Tagged as fragile, remote and marginal, these three aspects have featured prominently in discussions and deliberations concerning development in the mountains in our part of the world. Retired but active academician N S Jodha, a former senior staff with the Kathmandu-based Integrated Center for International Mountain Development, has been credited for using these [...]
Guardian: Three years after it was decimated by cyclone Aila, Bainpara in south-west Bangladesh is being rebuilt with UK assistance. On 25 May 2009, the village of Bainpara, in the district of Khulna on Bangladesh’s south-west coast, was wiped off the map. Driven by the 120km/h winds of cyclone Aila, a 12ft wall of sea [...]
TIME: Climate change might hit us in the most vital place of all — the dinner plate Why do we care about climate change? Obviously we worry about what warming temperatures might do to the geography of the planet — particularly melting polar ice and raising global sea levels. We fear the impact that climate [...]
The Gazette: For the last 11,700 years, mankind has lived in what geologists refer to as the Holocene epoch. This interglacial period has been defined by its stable warm climatic conditions that have allowed Homo sapiens to populate the Earth and become its dominant species. Many scientists now believe that over the last 200 years, [...]
BEN: Australia’s infrastructure is not prepared to withstand the consequences of catastrophic climate change events such as floods, droughts, coastal erosion, tropical cyclones, fires and seal level rise. The report released today calls on all stakeholders to address regulatory frameworks gaps, which are acting as barriers towards effective climate adaptation. It analyses the extent to [...]
Scientific American: Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government’s latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself. Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, [...]
Business Insurance: Insurers and reinsurers are becoming more involved in managing risks related to climate change, though more work needs to be done, recent research concludes. In addition, the outcome of the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, was disappointing for the industry, according to a leading reinsurer. In a recent report [...]
Mission to reduce chances of glacial lake’s outburst fails to achieve target. The Thorthormi glacial lake in northern Bhutan is considered the country’s likeliest climate-induced disaster. The lake, perched at a height of more than 4,400 metres, is swelling because of melting ice, and is in danger of bursting its wall. Efforts by the Bhutanese [...]
Washington Bangla Radio: Chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Kumar Pachauri was in Kolkata on Jan 2, 2012 to attend a function. He shared his thoughts about India’s role in the global arena vis-a-vis the developing nations in combating climate change. IBNS correspondent Pratik Singh caught up with Pachauri for a brief [...]
The Interdependent: In the birthplace of the potato, things are heating up. Over the past decade, the Quechua farmers working at the El Parque de la Papa, outside Cusco, Peru, started noticing that the potato varieties they used to grow at lower altitudes can now only be cultivated much higher up the mountainside. “Temperate zones [...]
Bangkok Post: Rising, warming and increasingly acidic seas threaten the very survival of Pacific island countries. The retreat of glaciers and snowfields in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau jeopardise these “water towers” on which one billion Asians depend for dry season and drought year flows. More than 450 million Asians live within the low-elevation coastal [...]
Telegraph Nepal: Combating global warming and achieving UN’s 2 degree Celsius goal by 2020 require collective political action of the rich and the poor nations. Without this, small, island and least developed countries like Nepal would remain vulnerable to climate changes causing droughts, floods, rise of sea level causing coastal tragedies, fast melting Himalayan ice, [...]
Bangkok Post: A city once famous for its extensive network of canals, known locally as khlongs, Bangkok had long since been filled over to make way for an ever-expanding network of roads in this rapidly modernising city of 12 million people. Across the developing world, the pressure on cities to build new industrial, commercial, residential [...]
Mongabay: The year 2011 has presented the world with a shocking increase in irregular weather and disasters linked to climate change. Just as the 2007 “big melt” of summer arctic sea ice sent scientists and environmentalists scrambling to re-evaluate the severity of climate change, so have recent events forced major revisions and updates in climate [...]
