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, [...]

The World Resources Institute (WRI) will initiate a five-year program in two Chinese cities to develop low-carbon city models. WRI is an environmental think tank founded in 1982 and based in Washington, DC. Five cities in China, Brazil and India will participate in the project, including the city of Qingdao, Shandong province (eastern China), and [...]

Nature: China’s Yangtze River is receiving less water as climate warms. Chinese researchers have revealed that the amount of water entering the Yangtze River near its source on the Tibetan plateau has fallen by 15% over the past four decades, despite a 15% increase in glacial melt and increased rainfall over the same period. Wang [...]

Economic Times: The Durban conference in December 2011 marked a breakthrough in international efforts to combat climate change. The EU and India played a key role in final negotiations that unlocked the pact on the last morning of the conference. Together, we found the compromise that provided the basis to launch negotiations on a new [...]

Guardian: Efforts by developed countries to redistribute promised funds to help poorer parts of the world avoid environmental disasters have been described as “dismal” by the foreign minister of Bangladesh. Dipu Moni said wealthier nations must begin immediately delivering the billions of pounds’ worth of aid they have earmarked for climate change projects. “Our achievements [...]

Dawn: This month’s prospective meeting of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue Group comprising seven states sharing the rivers rising in the Greater Himalayas would be a watershed event as the group is expected to adopt a joint initiative to minimise the impact of glacial melt. The group comprises Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal. [...]

UNEP: China is the largest producer, consumer and exporter of HCFCs in the world. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection today launched the HCFC Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP), a US$270 million project to cut consumption of Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) by 1 January 2015. The HCFC-phaseout in China is impacting chemical production, foam, industrial and commercial refrigeration, air [...]

SciDevNet: A string of high-altitude research stations across Asia could shed light on how climate change is affecting one of the world’s largest ice masses. Spearheaded by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the initiative is building state-of-the-art research facilities across South Asia, including in Nepal, Pakistan and [...]

CBS News: A half-century record of history has melted away from the Naimona’nyi glacier in southwestern Tibet, highlighting the changes coming to glaciers across the Himalayas. Ice cores from glaciers capture a detailed history of the atmosphere and climate from the time when the snow and ice fell. They record dust, ash and even minute [...]

IISD Reporting: The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, was held from 28 November – 11 December 2011. The conference involved a series of events, including the seventeenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the seventh meeting of the [...]

Guardian: The Durban climate conference may have agreed a deal – or at least a deal to agree a deal – but the scale of the work that still needs to be done became plain today. Although talks are supposed to start immediately, America’s special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, infuriated the EU by [...]

Washington Post: Even as representatives from nearly 200 countries celebrated the last-minute compromise they fashioned at U.N. climate talks Sunday in Durban, South Africa, it became clear that its real-world outcome will be largely determined in Asia, rather than in Africa or the West. Broad in scope but short on details, the Durban Platform aims [...]

The SERVIR Web Mapper allows you to access and display data or functionality from several external sources to create a new service. Using the Web Mapper interface, you can choose specific data sets and information products by type and date, display them on a base map, and further manipulate them for analysis. If a layer [...]

The Global Warming Policy Foundation: For the mechanism of global warming, the IPCC report emphasizes the impact of human activities and the correlation between the CO2 concentration and temperature increase. However, the Earth is a complex dynamic system with various factors affecting each other; great uncertainties exist regarding causes and effects of the climate changes. [...]

IndiaChinaInstitute: Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalayas is a multiyear initiative that endeavors to uncover new dimensions to the current discourse on global environmental policy. The project aims to create an enabling environment for knowledge-sharing and production on the complex role of religion with particular emphasis on sustainable environmental issues. Given the diversity [...]

Science Dev Net: Sceptical views on man-made climate change have received far less newspaper coverage in major developing countries than in the United Kingdom or the United States, according to a survey. In the United States, over a third of climate articles published during the study period in selected newspapers reported sceptical standpoints while less [...]

Sunday Morning Herald: Amid the bullishness about Asia’s economic future, and the potential for Australia to benefit, there’s a nasty downside risk that can’t be ignored – climate change. With more than half the world’s population, Asia has more at stake than any other region. It has become the largest contributor to the global increase [...]

Zee News: The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined [...]

Z News: With barely a month left for the global climate change negotiations in Durban, ministers from BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) will hold a crucial meeting in Beijing Monday to discuss their perspectives on key issues. China will host the ninth BASIC ministerial meet Oct 31-Nov 1. A meeting of experts [...]

Spiegel Online: Glaciers are shrinking worldwide — some of them rapidly. Now Chinese researchers have sounded the alarm in their country too, where they say warmer weather and increased precipitation are reducing the size of glaciers. Water shortages and floods could result. Chinese scientists are not known for fearmongering, particularly when it comes to dangers that could [...]

Washingtonpost: Humans have mined resources from the remote and rocky coast of Peru and Chile for more than a century and a half, gathering the guano deposits of seabirds for fertilizer and gunpowder. Those seabirds flourished on anchoveta in the coastal waters, while Peruvians in the highlands ate the same fish as dried snacks. Now [...]

Xinhuanet: Glaciers in southwest China’s Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the major source of the country’s largest rivers, are melting faster than ever under the influence of global warming, researchers said. Experts have been conducting research on the waters, geology, glaciers, and wetlands in the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers in northwest China’s Qinghai Province [...]

Nature News: Chinese climatologist says the world must work together on global warming Global warming is causing changes in glaciers, permafrost and snow cover in Central Asia, threatening the livelihood of millions of people in the region. Nature spoke with Qin Dahe, a glaciologist at the Cold and Arid Regions Environment and Engineering Research Institute [...]

There seems little possibility that next month’s climate summit in Durban will produce an emissions reduction agreement — meaning the world will soon lack any binding CO2 targets. Europe may soon find itself alone in the fight against global warming. A climate catastrophe descended on the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin early last week. Politicians [...]

Project Syndicate: International discussion about China’s rise has focused on its increasing trade muscle, growing maritime ambitions, and expanding capacity to project military power. One critical issue, however, usually escapes attention: China’s rise as a hydro-hegemon with no modern historical parallel. No other country has ever managed to assume such unchallenged riparian preeminence on a [...]

ClimateSpectator: As the federal government’s two-day tax forum wound to a close in Canberra, Malcolm Turnbull was setting his sights on bigger-picture issues, delivering an address in the UK overnight on the need for better thinking and leadership on issues such as climate change. The Opposition spokesman for communications was in London to share his view [...]

Syed Iqbal Hasnain:Climate change and black carbon are causing the glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Karakorum, Himalaya, and Tibetan plateau to melt.  Their waters feed the river systems throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia, and are essential for drinking water and for irrigating wheat, rice, and other crops throughout the region on which the local populations [...]

IDSA: In recent times, the world has witnessed a major surge in regional unrests caused primarily by the shortage of water. Tension builds up between two or more countries when an effort is made by any upper riparian country to control the waterways of transboundary rivers. Factors like population surge, industrialization and other development activities [...]

Guardian: Former US vice president tells Scottish green conference that evidence from floods in Pakistan and China is compelling. Al Gore, has warned that there is now clear proof that climate changeis directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year. Speaking to an audience of [...]

NineMSN: Rescue teams backed by army engineers using explosives are trying to reach the remote epicentre of a powerful Himalayan earthquake that killed 83 people in India, Nepal and Tibet. Before the grim search for more victims can begin, the main challenge after Sunday’s 6.9-magnitude quake is to reach the isolated, mountainous impact zone on [...]

Chinadilogue: Today, Carbon Disclosure Project launches its report on the emissions of the world’s biggest firms. Paul Simpson, its boss, tells Olivia Boyd how going green boosts profits – and recession isn’t all bad news. Every year, the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) asks the world’s biggest companies to disclose details on their greenhouse-gas emissions and the [...]

Sydney Morning Herald: Jason Fong’s question was the runaway winner of the OurSay climate agenda poll. The policy of both major parties is to reduce Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, even though both know that, in Jason Fong’s words, it will make ”negligible” difference to global temperatures. So the question [...]

Xinhuanet: Chinese scientists have pinpointed the sources of four major rivers that flow through China and south Asia, and measured their lengths and size of drainage basins, information that will prove to be invaluable for future environmental research. The information about the Brahmaputra, Indus, Salween and Irrawaddy rivers was a result of expeditions and satellite [...]

Ocregister: A World Bank study reported in 2005 that the grain supply for 175 million Indians and 130 million Chinese is produced by overpumping water. There are all kinds of bubbles. We had the financial bubble that burst in 2008, causing economic devastation that we are still paying for. There is the Chinese real estate [...]

IDSA: The Brahmaputra river, which is called Yarlung Tsangpo by the Tibetans and Tsan-Po by the Chinese, is the soul of India. It is the lifeline for those living in Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Assam. People in this region largely depend on the river for irrigation, fishing and transportation of goods. As is well known, [...]

CleanEnergyFuture:China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon pollution, representing around 20 per cent of global carbon pollution. However, on a per capita basis, Australia’s emissions (27.3 Mt CO₂-e per person) are almost five times those of China’s (5.5 Mt CO₂-e per person)[1]. Further, in the past 20 years, China has reduced the amount of [...]

The purpose of LCES-2011 is to provide a world-class meeting place for information exchanges and trade fairs to promote low carbon economy. The World Expo Center will differentiate itself from other conferences by covering more comprehensive issues from both public and private sectors regarding the anticipated climate change. We also hope such an initiative can [...]

China Daily: China has established guidlines for 10 work focuses on energy saving and emission reduction for the 12th Five-Yeas Plan (2011-2015) period, China Securities Journal reported on Tuesday. These work focuses include strengthening energy saving and emission reduction, reducing carbon intensity and so on, by means of promoting stepped-pricing for household water and electricity [...]

IDN Indepth News: China has been fighting two prolonged dry spells and the ongoing floods that have caused havoc in central and eastern parts of the country this year. The second spell of drought in the Yangtze River basin was followed by devastating floods with an enormously adverse economic impact. A total of over 36 [...]

DNA: For sometime now, strategic analysts have been projecting the view that if oil was the cause of wars in the 20th century, water could be a critical trigger for wars in the 21st century. They claim that dispute over the sharing of water between countries could contribute to tensions leading to regional conflagration. With [...]

Xinhuanet: Climate change may affect security, but it is “fundamentally a sustainable development issue, ” Wang Min, deputy permanent representative of the Chinese Mission to the United Nations said here Wednesday (20 July). Wang made the remarks when he addressed the Council’s open debate on the impacts of climate change, where the 15-member body failed [...]

IS IT any wonder that so many people are fed up with the climate change debate? Misinformation is rife – you could fill a column like this most days wading through false claims and half-truths. Take just one example: this week a new body calling itself the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance launched an advertising [...]

PIDP: The United Nations Security Council has failed to agree that climate change is a threat to international peace. Australia had argued that fragile economies in the Pacific could be destabilised by climate change but China and India balked at the idea. The United States ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said the Security Council’s [...]

Vancouversun: Negotiators made scant progress towards salvaging the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol for fighting climate change beyond 2012 at two weeks of talks recently in Bonn. The talks among 180 nations made it evident that the controversial climate pact faces the threat of extinction due to lack of support. Developing nations accused rich nations of [...]

CC China:On July 12, a project to research on “Climate legislation plan in China” kicked off in Beijing. Officials and experts from NDRC, Environment and Resources Protection Committee of NPC, Legal Affairs Office of the State Council, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences , Energy Research Institution of NDRC, Chinese University [...]

The Ganges BDC R4D program was launched in Bangladesh on 1 June 2011. The event sponsored by the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council (BARC) was held in their conference center and chaired by the BARC Executive Director Dr. Wais Kabir.  Presentations on the CPWF and the Ganges BDC were given by Boru Douthwaite of the CPWF [...]

Chinadialogue: Often overlooked, grid operators are at the frontlines of climate change. As Germany embarks on an ambitious plan to scale up renewables, Letha Tawney looks at the challenge of transmission. In renewable-energy circles, there is a real excitement about Germany’s latest plans to move away from nuclear and towards renewable energy. The state of [...]

IBTimes: Even though India, the world’s largest democracy, is an aspiring global power, the country continues to pursue a highly reactive foreign policy, especially when it comes to non-traditional security issues. The absence of a grand strategy or template to meet non-traditional security threats becomes conspicuous whenever the country is confronted with security challenges on [...]

Assam Tribune: In the present juncture, it has become imperative for the four riparian nations – China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh to enter into a water-sharing treaty for sustainable, equitable and judicious exploitation of water resources of the Brahmaputra river in a climate of trust and harmony. This observation was made by Prof Nayan Sarma, [...]

Assam Tribune: Under the impact of the resultant flow reduction due to any possible future diversion of the Yarlung Tsangpo to acute water scarce regions in northern part of China, the river morphology in Assam is likely to undergo further intense braiding along with harmful rise in average stream bed level. As a consequence, even [...]

Guardian: Research reveals decade of global warming from China’s coal power stations has partly been offset by ‘cooling’ effect of sulphur pollution. The huge increase in coal-fired power stations in China has masked the impact of global warming in the last decade because of the cooling effect of their sulphur emissions, new research has revealed. [...]

In January 2004 I caused some consternation, particularly in the White House, when I said that global warming was our greatest threat — greater even than global terrorism. My statement prompted George W Bush to call Tony Blair, demanding a gag order be placed on me. I refused to be gagged and that statement, along [...]

The Punch: It’s time for a quick quiz. In Italy, people marched and voted against nuclear power recently. Every Australian news service carried the story. But did they mention how many nuclear power stations Italy will need to close as a result of this courageous decision? Following the Fukushima failure the Chinese suspended approvals on [...]

NewYork Times: When, in the early morning, I sit in the little meadow in front of my hermitage on a quiet hilltop, two hours’ drive from Katmandu in Nepal, my eyes take in hundreds of miles of lofty Himalayan peaks glowing in the rising sun. The serenity of the scenery blends naturally and seamlessly with [...]

University of Washington: There have been instances in Earth history when average temperatures have changed rapidly, as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) over a few decades, and some have speculated the same could happen again as the atmosphere becomes overloaded with carbon dioxide. New research lends support to evidence from numerous recent [...]

Independent Media Centre Australia: An extreme shift in weather in June across much of southern and eastern China has been put down to the effects of global warming and climate change. Usually light rains start in June in the middle and lower Yangtze valley leading in to the summer monsoonal rains and typhoon season, but [...]

Chinadaily: A senior Chinese official on Wednesday urged developed nations to provide more technology and financial support for developing countries to jointly address climate change issues. “Developed countries should fulfill their commitment to provide financial support and technological transfers in order to help developing nations tackle climate change and promote low-carbon development,” said Xie Zhenhua, [...]

Tribune Pakistan: Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said it will launch the Asia Accelerated Solar Energy Development Fund with $2.25 billion as it targets solar power projects in countries including China, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Thailand to add another 1,000 megawatts next year and 1,500MW in 2013. “By providing an enabling environment for commercial lending [...]

Tribune Pakistan: Pakistan shares it’s water resources with not just China and India but Afghanistan as well which was a challenge that needed to be addressed because it could lead to increased tensions between these countries. During a policy dialogue held here at National University of Sciences & Technology (Nust) Dr Shahbaz Khan Chief of [...]

HuffPostGreen: Chinese officials announced Wednesday a three-day international conference to discuss how to address climate change, while conveying to the world that China is determined to develop a low-carbon economy. Representatives from 30 international organizations and 10 areas and countries will attend the conference in Beijing starting Wednesday, said Huang Wenhang of the National Development [...]