IIED: The Vice-President of Nepal — His Excellency Parmanand Jha — hosted the launch of a new report that details how the country can benefit from bringing its environment and development policies into harmony. The report, by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Kathmandu-based Asian Centre for Environment Management and Sustainable [...]

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, [...]

Devex: Global demand for food will double in coming decades, through population growth and rising levels of consumption. Ensuring the planet produces enough food for all in a sustainable way will be a real challenge, and climate change will hamper our efforts if it is not tackled. Food security is crucial to helping the poorest [...]

China Daily: In June 2012, Brazil will host the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20. The time is right: there are clear signs that the current development models must be reformulated. Countries – regardless of their wealth – face serious economic and financial crises, social inequality, hunger, unemployment, losses in biodiversity and [...]

Vancouversun: Experts seek ways to boost production; World will need 70 per cent more food by 2050 In flood-damaged fields in the Philippines, farmers are testing a hardy new variety of rice that can survive completely submerged for more than two weeks. In Kenya’s Kibera slum, poor urban families are turning around their diets and [...]

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”- Neil Postman One of the perks of my job is the opportunity to interact with, and influence, the future generation. I recently enjoyed such an opportunity at The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) University, where I addressed a gathering of students [...]

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 [...]

Sudan Vision: The timely, thought-provoking essays of this book provide valuable evidence of the impact of different gender and faith perspectives on practical development issues while also highlighting the complexities and ambiguities of religious influences. Development workers, researchers and social activists will gain from these studies a greater awareness and more critical understanding of how [...]

RAYAGADA, India, Apr 27, 2012 (IPS) – Tribal farmer Harish Saraka has rediscovered the key to sustainable farming in this rain-dependent hinterland of eastern Odisha state – mixed cropping. Saraka, 38, is careful not to take credit for helping to turn around farming in this area, in the news just a decade ago for starvation [...]

Oxfam: Climate change is fast pushing the poorest and most marginalized communities beyond their capacity to respond. This report draws on case studies from around the world and on Oxfam’s experience working with rural communities. It sets out what is needed to enable people living in poverty to adapt to climate change, and a range [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 (Durban): Negotiators at the 17th Conference of Parties owe it to the world’s more than seven billion people to deliver a deal with a work plan for agriculture, a sector that is expected to be the worst affected by climate change. Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of Food Agriculture Natural Resources Policy Advocacy Network told [...]

The goal of holding global warming to 2C will be missed if the world’s largest economies insist on delaying negotiations. When psychologists identified the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance – the ability to believe two contradictory things at the same time – they might have been describing the world of international climate change negotiations. Only this [...]

MyRepublica: Experts from different countries including Nepal have expressed concerns over decreasing pollinator populations, as it results in low pollination rate posting threat to food security. About 25 experts and pollination management project managers from seven countries, who recently participated at international workshops in Chitwan and Kathmandu, stressed the need to formulate country strategies to [...]

Noreen Haider: Writes from her visit to the beautiful Naran valley of Khyber Pakhtunkwa province in Pakistan, where she observes various dimensions of social and environment development. Noreen came across various developmental projects and activities in the region and finds that poor education and poorly planned social and environmental projects lead to acute poverty natural [...]

Brettonwood Project: The Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), part of the World Bank-housed Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), intends to help integrate climate resilience in national development planning of climate vulnerable countries. The PPCR offers recipient countries a mix of grants and loans for climate adaptation projects. Nepal, the world’s fourth most vulnerable country to [...]

Radio Netherlands Worldwide: The Climate Change Risk Atlas ranked Nepal as the fourth most vulnerable country in the world last year. Given the vulnerability of the Himalayan country, USAID donated $30mn for the Hariyo Ban project last week. The programme hopes to build mechanisms that will help Nepal cope with climate change risks. Along Nepal’s [...]

Commodity Online: The implementation of climate smart agricultural practices will go a long in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The theme has now become the main agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) scheduled to start later in November at Durban, according to carbon-investments.co.uk. The importance of the reduction of greenhouse gas [...]

Daily Star: 17th Saarc Summit ends in Maldives with 20-point Addu Declaration; South Asian leaders also agree to forge effective cooperation for full implementation of Safta, better connectivity and steps towards Saarc Market for Electricity. The 17th Saarc summit ended at Addu in the Maldives yesterday with the adoption of a 20-point Addu Declaration to [...]

Practical Action: This briefing focuses on the impact of climate change on Nepal’s rural poor. A great deal has been written  on the challenges of providing clean energy and the risks to urban populations but, as this paper outlines, climate change also has many other consequences. Rural communities, whose livelihoods are intimately tied to the [...]

Republica: limate change is considered the greatest environmental challenge faced by mankind in human history. Changed pattern and quantity of precipitation in concert with temperature extremes manifests itself in a number of catastrophic outcomes like drought, slides, snowmelts, floods, agricultural productivity loss, and upsurge in diseases which impact both the natural and the human systems [...]

WWF-Nepal: A five-year program to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change and threats to biodiversity in Nepal, was officially launched at a ceremony in Kathmandu on 8 Nov 2011. The Hariyo Ban program is a new investment in biodiversity conservation in Nepal, funded by the US Agency for International Development​ (USAID). The program will [...]

The minutes of First meeting of the Working Group on “Mountain Eco-systems and Challenges Faced by the People living in the Hilly Areas” for formulation of the 12th Five year Plan” is given below, that was held on 28 October 2011 at Yojana Bhavan in New Delhi. It was chaired by Shri B.K. Chaturvedi, Member, [...]

DAWN: A safe environment is prerequisite for healthy life. Major environmental issues currently confronting Pakistan include water, energy, pollution and waste management, salinity and water logging, irrigated agriculture, biodiversity and climate change. Pakistan being one of the most urbanized countries of the region is facing overall deterioration in all these areas. Environmental hazards have become [...]

Digital Journal: Of late, all is not well with the world’s most wanted caterpillars: the Cordyceps mushrooms, grown exclusively in the Himalayan region. Cordyceps is a rare species of mushroom widely used both in clinical medicine and as a household remedy. There are few countries where Cordyceps grow in the wild. These are Nepal, Bhutan [...]

In central Nepal, where rugged terrain and widespread poverty limit veterinary care, more than two in ten goats will succumb to parasites and disease. Goats are a source of food and a living bank account that can be cashed in for school fees or a medical emergency. For a woman who tends goats, the loss [...]

Alertnet: In Pakistan, environmental degradation is both a cause and consequence of different socio-economic problems including deepening poverty, declining performance of different crops and worsening problems with human and crop diseases. Environmentalists say that a fragile and damaged resource base is a key cause of rising poverty. Degraded land affects agricultural yields and forest resources [...]

New York Times: Nepalganj (Nepal)-Here’s an unlikely starting point for clean energy: No toilets, and plenty of dung. In developing countries where domestic animals are ubiquitous and sewage systems rare, biogas technology — in this case methane derived from feces — can provide both valuable fuel and improved sanitation. Unlike directly burning animal dung, the [...]

Telegraph: A third of humanity, mostly in Africa and South Asia, face the biggest risks from climate change while rich nations in northern Europe will be least exposed, according to a report released Wednesday. Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are among 30 countries with “extreme” exposure to climate shift, according to [...]

HIMAL South Asia: The loss of their nomadic lifestyles is pushing the Van Gujjars, traditional herders of the Himalaya, into poverty and cultural alienation. For centuries the Van Gujjar community has been practising ‘transhumance’, moving between two distinct ecozones of the Himalaya. Every summer, the Van Gujjars move from the forests of the Shivalik range [...]

IIED: Community-based adaptation aims to empower local people to cope with and plan for the impacts of climate change. In a world where knowledge equals power, you could be forgiven for thinking that enabling this type of adaptation boils down to providing local people with information. Conventional approaches to planning adaptation rely on ‘expert’ advice [...]

Ground Report: Production of tea in Assam – one of the world’s largest tea producing regions – is on a slow decline, thanks to changing climate in the Brahmaputra river basin. This has been revealed by Prof Chandan Mahanta, a leading scientist from Assam who has been studying climate change effect in the river basin [...]

WRR: Recent extreme weather events including floods, heat waves, and droughts present a vivid image of the direction the world is heading. As climate change intensifies, more events like these, combined with longer-term changes in the climate’s average state -including rising seas, melting glaciers, and shifting precipitation patterns— will have profound impacts on people, ecosystems [...]

CDKN Blog: In Malkangiri, one of eastern India’s poorest provinces, lives Mangu Adari. The year before last, Mangu planted paddy, millets, lentils and beans on his two hectares of somewhat unproductive rain-fed farmland. The monsoons arrived early in June, a month in advance, and then the rains stopped for weeks; most seedlings wilted. Last year, once again, the [...]

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 [...]

PakObserver: WHILE Pakistan was still grappling with last year’s devastating floods that marooned one-fifth of the country, it has again been hit by the natural calamity causing devastation of enormous magnitude. According to National Disaster Management Authority, 5.3 million people have been affected by this summer’s heavy rains in 23 districts of Sindh. Of these, [...]

Mountain Partnership: Mountains are vital for sustainable development and human wellbeing. More than half of the earth’s population depends on fresh water coming from mountains. Mountains also provide a number of important global goods and key services which are under increasing pressure from globalization and climate change. Following the invitation of the Swiss Agency for [...]

The Nations: A total lack of seriousness when it comes down to the necessary nitty-gritty of dealing with both the existing and potential catastrophic effects of climate change has pushed Pakistan into a fast descending spiral of utter hopelessness right across the board: A situation exacerbated by political shenanigans, human greed and a dangerously escalating [...]

Reuters: The Earth’s natural resources like food, water and forests are being depleted at an alarming speed, causing hunger, conflict, social unrest and species extinction, experts at a climate and health conference in London warned on Monday. Increased hunger due to food yield changes will lead to malnutrition; water scarcity will deteriorate hygiene; pollution will [...]

AFP: The UN’s talks on climate change are daft and crippled by finger-pointing and the need for consensus, the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, was quoted on Thursday by Le Monde as saying. Nasheed also said emerging economies were as much to blame for global warming as rich nations. In an interview with the [...]

Guardian: Demographers are predicting that world population will climb to 10 billion this century. But with increasing pressure on water and food supplies will this projected population boom turn into a bust? The hard part about predicting the future, someone once said, is that it hasn’t happened yet. So it’s a bit curious that so [...]

Bhutan Observer: Bhutan will submit the Second National Communications (SNC) to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the COP17 summit in Durban, South Africa, later this year. The national communications is an obligation that all parties to UNFCCC have to fulfill. It is a national report that communicates the actions parties are [...]

Times of India: India’s food security situation continues to rank as “alarming” according to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index, 2011. It ranks 67 of the 81 countries of the world with the worst food security status. This means that there are only 14 countries in the world whose people have a [...]

UNNC: The head of the United Nations disaster risk reduction agency arrives tomorrow (6 Oct) in Pakistan to discuss possible measures to reduce the impact and recurrence of major floods, which have inundated much of the Asian country in the past two years. Margareta Wahlström, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, is scheduled [...]

DAWN: More than climate change, more than the depletion of fresh water supply, a fast population growth rate is the key element which will determine the survival of humankind. Of these three, population growth requires the least complex planning in a way but the most challenging strategy. On the one hand, its success does not [...]

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 [...]

Climate Planning: A new, interactive users’ guide to tools for climate and development planning has just been launched by Ecofys and the Institute of Development Studies, with support from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). There are many dozens of tools and methodologies to assist decision-makers with development planning in a changing climate.  They [...]

Economics Times: The US has provided over USD 65 million to the government of Nepal for food, climate change and health services as part of efforts to achieve the objectives of President Barack Obama’s global initiatives in these fields. The assistance was provided through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under its ongoing [...]

GRAIN: Climate change endangers food security in Himalayan communities such as Dunche, in Nepal’s Rasuwa District. In this photo Tamang women pound and sift wheat. (Photo credit: Minority Rights Group/Jared Ferrie) Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around [...]

Friday Times: With several inherent flaws, the draft National Climate Change Policy is likely to suffer the same fate as its predecessors A man asked a neighbourhood grocer for 25 kilogrammes of grain and said he would pay later. The grocer agreed and started weighing five portions of five kilos each. Each time he weighed, [...]

Vimal Khawas: Mountains form one of the most important bio-geographical resource zones of the world. They are remote areas covering 52 per cent of Asia, 36 percent of North America, 25 per cent of Europe, 22 per cent of South America, 17 per cent of Australia, and 3 per cent of Africa making up, in [...]

Environment News Services: Environmentalists are blaming climate change for the unprecedented massive monsoon rains in Pakistan, which so far this year have affected eight million people, claiming 350 lives and damaging 1.3 million homes. Over the past month, the country’s southern region has received the highest monsoon rains ever recorded, local metrological experts confirm. In [...]

The Atlantic: From the increase in frequency of heatwaves to the spread of infectious diseases, changing weather patterns are already affecting us all. The consequences of climate change sometimes appear far off. But warming and changing weather patterns are already driving changes in public health. The following are seven ways in which climate change affects [...]

KashmirLife: Week the rains stopped just before the water could spill over the banks of  river Jhelum and flood Kashmir. But we are facing the danger of a devastating flood. Can Kashmir save itself? A Kashmir Life report. Given the behavior of the Jhelum river, hydrologists and engineers at the Irrigation and Flood Control would [...]

International Rivers: When the World Commission on Dams reviewed the development effectiveness of dams, multipurpose projects with large dams, power plants and irrigation schemes had the worst social, environmental and economic track record. As the world is grappling for appropriate answers to climate change, influential actors such as the World Bank want to give these [...]

Suman K A: The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), one of the eight missions under the NAPCC, lays emphasis on four key functional areas and ten important dimensions. Through these, the mission seeks to target both; the imminent challenges from the likely impacts of climate change on Indian agriculture and the more fundamental ones [...]

Womens eNews: The documentary “Weathering Change,” released today, shows how climate change is disproportionately impacting women. In one Nepali woman’s village, the forest has been depleted and only a quarter of the inhabitants have enough to eat. Walking into the forest near her home, Sarada Chaudhary likes to look up. Above her head, branches weave [...]