Science Daily: Black carbon aerosols and tropospheric ozone, both human made pollutants emitted predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere’s low- to mid-latitudes, are most likely pushing the boundary of the tropics further pole ward in that hemisphere, new research by a team of scientists shows. While stratospheric ozone depletion has already been shown to be the [...]

PLOS-One: Climate change in the Himalayas, a biodiversity hotspot, home of many sacred landscapes, and the source of eight largest rivers of Asia, is likely to impact the well-being of ~20% of humanity. However, despite the extraordinary environmental, cultural, and socio-economic importance of the Himalayas, and despite their rapidly increasing ecological degradation, not much is [...]

SciDevNet: Pakistan’s outdated crop yield forecasting system needs a revamp, says Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar. Like most developing countries, Pakistan is staring at the spectre of food insecurity, with its food production out of sync with population growth. The food availability scenario is further complicated by changing weather patterns with recurring severe droughts and floods [...]

ICIMOD: The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is blessed with a diversity of honeybee species; five species – Apis cerana, Apis dorsata, Apis florea, Apis laboriosa, and Apis andreniformis – are indigenous, while Apis mellifera is introduced. Of these species, only Apis cerana and Apis mellifera can be kept in hives and managed for honey [...]

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 [...]

Assam Tribune: Ignoring the crucial linkages of a river’s upstream, midstream, and downstream flows can endanger not just the river, but human communities and ecology sustained by it. A disregard of ‘environmental flows,’ by construction of dams, has already harmed many rivers in the Western Ghats, giving rise to political as well as environmental issues. [...]

Click Green: A new study from the University of California, Davis, provides a deeper understanding of the complex global impacts of deforestation on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, reports that the volume of greenhouse gas released when a forest is cleared depends on how the trees [...]

Jagaran Post: Members belonging to various parties on Monday demanded immediate intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to save the river Ganga and make it pollution free at the earliest. “I demand that the Prime Minister should intervene to save the Ganga which is not just a river but our lifeline and part of our [...]

Kashmir Images: As the rise in temperature, by 4 degrees Celsius, by the next decade is considered inevitable, it is time to prepare for the fallout.The fact that India faces multiple environmental crisis’s was highlighted by the government’s report on the impact of global warming across the country. The report, soon to be submitted to [...]

PHYS: ..Enables better understanding of global patterns. Scientists have developed a new diagnostic tool that will enable better understanding of global climate patterns. The development, by researchers from The University of Queensland, University of Canterbury (New Zealand) and Monash University, distinguishes between the causes of particles in glacial deposits – whether climactic or caused by [...]

Environmental Research Web: University of California, Berkeley, scientists are drilling into ancient sediments at the bottom of Northern California’s Clear Lake for clues that could help them better predict how today’s plants and animals will adapt to climate change and increasing population. The lake sediments are among the world’s oldest, containing records of biological change [...]

PHYS.ORG: For algae to power our cars and planes, production needs to be low carbon and cost effective, which means working with natural processes, not against them, say scientists. Algae could become an important source of sustainable biofuel, as production doesn’t compete with food crops for land. But we may need to change the way [...]

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 [...]

Alertnet: Continuing scepticism about climate change in some parts of the world threatens the planet and the people on it, according to Rajendra K. Pachauri, chief of the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “I think global society has to realise that we are affecting the climate of this planet and this is the [...]

ScienceDaily: A modeling study from the European Alps suggests that population declines to be observed during the upcoming decades will probably underestimate the long-term effects of recent climate warming on mountain plants. A European team of ecologists around Stefan Dullinger from the Department of Conservation Biology, Vegetation and Landscape Ecology of the University of Vienna [...]

New Internationalist: At the frontline of climate change, the people of Bangladesh are using every ounce of their creativity to adapt. Hazel Healy assesses whether it will be enough. It is hard to believe the village was built from scratch. It looks as if it has always been here. Tidy kitchen gardens sit next to thatched [...]

Bangkok Post: Mountain kingdom has inspired choice for conference on sustainable tourism. Few people would have pictured Bhutan as the site of an event staged by a large mainstream tourism organisation, given the mountain kingdom’s zealous attempts to guard against being overwhelmed by the outside world. But the choice of the picturesque town of Paro [...]

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 [...]

Daily Mail: When it comes to conservation of river Ganga, the government seems to be moving at snail’s pace. Even 10 months after issuing a notification to declare 135 km stretch of the river from its origin at Gaumukh as eco-sensitive zone (ESZ), the ministry of environment and forests has failed to finalise it. The [...]

AFP: Experiments that try to simulate global warming’s impact on plants badly underestimate what happens in the real world, according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The investigation backs anecdotal evidence from farmers and gardeners, especially in the northern hemisphere, who say seasonal plants are stirring into life far earlier than [...]

Zee News: Loss of biodiversity apparently impacts ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to a new study.   The study is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the effects of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes. [...]

CDKN: Thousands of researchers and sustainable development practitioners gathered in London for the conference ‘Planet under Pressure: Knowledge towards solutions’, (26-29 March, 2012). The conference aimed to bring together the latest scientific knowledge and practical thinking on sustainability to feed in to the Rio+20 Summit in June. The focus of participant discussions and subsequent ‘calls [...]

WRI: This working paper provides regular updates of the Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PPs) and National Programme Documents (NPDs) submitted by REDD+ Country Participants to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and to the United Nations’ Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD). The World Bank administered [...]

Dawn (PESHAWAR): To offset the effects of climatic change and global warming in the country, the Pakistan Forests Institute (PFI), Peshawar has completed a comprehensive study to determine the climatic change scenarios in Pakistan’s various ecological zones and its impact on forests resources. “It is the first professional attempt to address the emerging issues of [...]

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 [...]

ICTSD: In this article, Ulrich Hoffmann calls into question the notion of “green growth,” asserting that economic growth cannot be decoupled from a related rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Many economists and policymakers advocate a fundamental shift towards “green growth” as the new, qualitatively-different growth paradigm, based on enhanced material/resource/energy (MRE) efficiency and drastic changes [...]

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 [...]

Institute of Hazard Risks and Resilience: Last week Archinect website carried a slightly intriguing design concept for ‘Landslide Mitigation Housing‘ by Jared Winchester and Viktor Ramos, which are residential units to be intentionally constructed on a landslide site.  The inspiration is a location in California at Rancho de Palos Verdes , near to Los Angeles, [...]

WorldAgroforestry: Agriculture is the human enterprise that is most vulnerable to climate change. Tropical agriculture, particularly subsistence agriculture is particularly vulnerable, as smallholder farmers do not have adequate resources to adapt to climate change. While agroforestry may play a significant role in mitigating the atmospheric accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHG), it also has a role [...]

The Hindu: India’s space and security capabilities are poised for a big leap with the launch of an entirely indigenous radar imaging satellite, RISAT-1. In the popular mind, radar satellites have a swashbuckling image that is often associated with covertly watching over other countries and tracking their military hardware. These satellites can certainly serve that [...]

Alertnet: Indigenous communities around the world are highly vulnerable to climate change but instead of seeing them as victims, policy-makers should tap into their centuries-old knowledge of adapting to extreme weather patterns, aid workers say. In Iran, which has some 700 nomadic tribes, pastoralists have been successfully adapting to climate fluctuations for 12,000 years, development [...]

New Scientist: As Arctic sea ice breaks apart, massive amounts of methane could be released into the atmosphere from the cold waters beneath. High concentrations of the greenhouse gas have been recorded in the air above cracks in the ice. This could be evidence of yet another positive feedback on the warming climate – leading [...]

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) film Himalayan Meltdown won the prestigious Platinum Award in the broadcast documentary category last weekend at the 45th Annual Worldfest International Film Festival, the oldest independent film festival in the world. The one-hour film examines the shrinking glaciers of the Himalayas and the effects they have on the lives and [...]

Enterprise and Glacierworks: After 30 years climbing majestic Himalayan peaks, mountaineering filmmaker David Breashears has seen the vast glaciers that feed Asia’s rivers melting beneath his boots. The Emmy Award-winning cinematographer, who has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest five times, is showing his revelatory photographs in a cautionary exhibition at the MIT Museum [...]

India Today: Naysayers notwithstanding, new studies show that Himalayan glaciers are indeed melting possibly due to climate change. The rate of their melting is not as alarming as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 but is significant enough to seriously impact water availability in Asia in future. The warning comes [...]

International Eco-tourism Society: Peru is so much more than its well-known lost city of Machu Picchu. A large part of the country’s territory lies within the Amazon basin rainforest east of the Andes. With the goal of highlighting educational experiences, the 18-day journey “From the Andes to the Amazon“, by Worldwide Ecotours and InkaNatura Travel [...]

PHYS.ORG: Climate change will make conservation of biodiversity, and all the associated human benefits such as clean water and clean air, more challenging and expensive, with costs increasing by more than 100 percent in some cases, according to three new studies by a group of international researchers convened by Conservation International. Researchers called the studies [...]

The Week: Around the world, ice caps are melting due to climate change, scientists say. But a few icy masses in the Himalayas are, weirdly enough, getting bigger Glaciers around the world are slowly melting, and scientists are quick to point their fingers at manmade climate change. But new research suggests that a few glaciers [...]

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 [...]

Telegraph UK: Glaciers in parts of the greater Himalayas are growing despite the worldwide trend of ice melting due to warmer temperatures, a study has found. In the Karakoram mountain range on the border of Pakistan and China, glaciers have defied global warming to become marginally larger over a decade, researchers said. The French scientists [...]

Reuters: To figure out what is likely to happen to Earth’s climate this century, scientists are looking 3 million years into the past. They have concluded that the most revealing slice of time is the Pliocene Epoch, a warm, wet period between 3.15 million and 2.85 million years ago, when the world probably looked and [...]

Nature: Despite a warming climate, some glaciers in southern Asia are holding their own. By: Sid Perkins While most of the world’s glaciers are shedding ice at a brisk clip, many in one mountain range along the rim of the Tibetan plateau have been posting measurable gains in recent years, a new study confirms1. The [...]

Climate Central: Dramatically reducing emissions of one of the key contributors to global warming – nitrous oxide – will require farmers to change their ways of growing food, and citizens in the developed world to slash their yearly meat consumption, according to a new study published Friday. The study by Eric Davidson, the director of [...]

ScienceDaily: Global warming may initially make the grass greener, but not for long, according to new research conducted at Northern Arizona University. The study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, shows that plants may thrive in the early stages of a warming environment but begin to deteriorate quickly.” “We were really surprised by the [...]

Alertnet: Water is key to food security. Meeting mounting food needs of a burgeoning population increasingly depends on efficient use of the water. That is possible if people are educated about its prudent use. According to the a UN Water, “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access [...]

Scientific American 28 Mar: The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned. The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists [...]

Science Daily: New research by UCLA life scientists could lead to predictions of which plant species will escape extinction from climate change. Droughts are worsening around the world, posing a great challenge to plants in all ecosystems, said Lawren Sack, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author of the research. Scientists [...]

Climate Access (Cara Pike) : I recently attended the “Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change: How do we Address Uncertainty” symposium at Rutgers University where I learned from leading climatologists and social scientists* a few simple concepts that help make the connection between the increased intensity and frequency of storms and global warming. While it [...]

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 [...]

Zee News: Patches of forest measuring anywhere between 0.1 hectare to 1200 hectares and which are bio-diversity hot spots have been unique to Meghalaya for centuries, but now they are falling into disarray owing to reasons as diverse as poverty, cultural change and migration. Local Khasi tribes consider the forests as “sacred groves”, some of [...]

DowntoEarth: AFTER spending 6 months in the Indian Himalayas, my pessimistic attitude towards the developing world has eased somewhat. My experience has also led me to believe that the current ideology needs to be changed in order to restore the environment to the people, alleviating some of the everyday drudgery in their lives while preserving [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

SevenSisters Post: Success stories on bio-gas and energy generation in a village in Uttar Pradesh and crop pattern as part of climate change mitigation in neighbouring Nepal were some of the highlights of the week-long basin development programme in Tura which concluded on Wednesday. The meeting also dwelt on financial inclusion and ways and means [...]

IRIN News: JOHANNESBURG- A Nobel laureate, a Swedish environmentalist’s idea, the “doughnut” concept, Scandinavia’s sense of social capital, measuring the quality of life, and valuing the oceans are just some of the things trending in the run-up to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development due to be held on 20-22 June 2012. Rio+20 will [...]

IISD (Biodiversity Policy and Practice): Argentina held a national committee meeting and workshop in the context of the Mountain Partnership’s “Strengthening participatory governance for sustainable development of the Andes” project. Participants examined a national mountain assessment report, and outlined an action plan and set of goals for strengthening participatory management in the Argentine Andes over [...]

ScienceDaily: A project running almost 10,000 climate simulations on volunteers’ home computers has found that a global warming of 3 degrees Celsius by 2050 is ‘equally plausible’ as a rise of 1.4 degrees. The study, the first to run so many simulations using a complex atmosphere-ocean climate model, addresses some of the uncertainties that previous [...]