Stephen Bailey: You need a bit of height to appreciate the size of a brick factory. You need to get close to appreciate the human cost. From a hill over Duwakot you can see people labouring in the grey mud beneath the towering chimney.  Down in the factory you can see the weather beaten faces,

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RTCC: The world’s largest cities are feeling the effects of climate change and are leading efforts to adapt to them. That is according to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group that includes London, New York, Cairo and Sao Paulo. Terri Wills, director of global initiatives at C40, told RTCC that the group has had to

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D+C: The impacts of climate change make the poorest people on earth suffer more than others. This is evident in Mustang, a northern district of Nepal. Entire villages are thinking of relocating because water scarcity is getting worse. Swiss researchers assessed the options. Mustang is a tough place to live because of desert-like drought, freezing

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CDKN: Dr. Govinda Nepal, IDS-Nepal, reflects at the half way point of a project in Nepal which is calculating the economic cost of climate change in key sectors on what the team has learnt so far Which climate risk screening tool is the most appropriate for Nepal? What questions does an Investment and Financial Flow

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EBA: The government of Nepal, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) jointly launched the ‘Ecosystem based Adaptation in mountain ecosystem in Nepal (EbA)’ Project on the 16th August 2012. The project aims at implementing an emerging approach to help people to adapt to

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Life had been good for Sunyali Majhi, a farmer in Dolalghat, a small village about 50 kilometres from landlocked Nepal’s Kathmandu. She harvested enough rice to sell and feed her brood at home. But the portions have been getting smaller, the financial squeeze tighter. In the shade of a Peopaal tree, Sunyali and her children

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The Hindu: Polluted skies, dead rivers, disappearing forests and displacement of peasants and tribal are what we see around us 40 years after the Chipko movement started On the 27th of March 1973 — exactly 40 years ago — a group of peasants in a remote Himalayan village stopped a group of loggers from felling

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IIED: New systems for tracking the social impacts of efforts to adapt to climate change could soon be in place in Africa and South Asia. Working with policy and research partners in these regions, the International Institute for Environment and Development (with partners Adaptify and Garama 3C Ltd) has designed a framework and tools that

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IPS News: Defence establishments around the world increasingly see climate change as posing potentially serious threats to national and international security, according to a review of high-level statements by the world’s governments released here Thursday. The review, “The Global Security Defense Index on Climate Change: Preliminary Results,” found that nearly three out of four governments

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Tribune: Pakistan’s only dedicated climate change research centre is going to partner with Italian experts to identify climate change adaptation measures. The Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC), which recently became an autonomous body by act of parliament, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ev-K2-CNR, an Italian research organisation that has worked in Pakistan’s

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Earthweek: Climate change has caused some villages in northeastern India to become flooded, and in some cases, washed away entirely due to more extreme rainfall over the last few decades. The trend has caused some rivers across the region to migrate from their established channels that humans have used for thousands of years. These roving

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Dr. Madhav Karki discusses about sustainable mountain development- SMD agenda that was adopted during 1992 Rio Earth summit, and how the socio-economic and environmental issues were taken by countries in the Hindu Kush Himalayan- HKH region during last 20 years in terms of achieving the goals as envisioned in SMD document. He argues that mountain

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Alertnet: Wooden water wheels have long captured energy from mountain streams. New versions work even better, helping provide a local, sustainable source of energy to Indian villages high in the Himalayas. Living in an isolated Himalayan hamlet, 2,500 meters (5,600 feet) above sea level, Govind Singh Rana seems an unlikely candidate for wealth. But by

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Chinadialogue: An international network of lawyers wants countries to commit funds to helping people forced from their homes by climate change. Villagers in the harsh landscapes of northwestern Alaska face a formidable journey. Sea ice and permafrost, the frozen subsoil that makes the land hospitable to humans, are melting. Flooding and erosion are blighting lives.

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Conversation: As with the federal elections of 2007 and 2010, climate change appears set to feature again in the forthcoming September poll. Yet one of the most important aspects of the issue, that of adaptation to climate change, is again unlikely to garner any attention. Climate change and its associated global changes (prominently sea level

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AKF: At independence, Tajikistan faced a variety of rural development challenges precipitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing civil war from 1992 to 1997. The mountainous regions of the country were especially affected, as both events left these areas cut-off from previous supply routes and desperately short of food. The dependency

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PHYS.Org: Monitoring communities of climate sensitive species, such as insects, could enable scientists to develop indicators for climate change effects on biodiversity and help devise policies to protect it. With climate change, flora and fauna shift their seasonal inner clock. For example, fruit tree blossom earlier than previous years. But many species may not be

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The News: Widespread rains and snowfall that claimed more than 33 precious lives in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Islamabad was essentially due to climate change, experts told The News. “If you look at the weather in the last six to eight weeks in Islamabad and the northern parts of the country, you will find

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Scedev.net: Disaster warnings can be fast, but how can we also ensure their accuracy and credibility, ask Rohan Samarajiva and Nalaka Gunawardene. The challenge with disaster warnings is to make the best possible decisions quickly using imperfect information. With lives and livelihoods at stake, there is much pressure to get it right. But one can’t

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CHI: In recent disasters in Indian Himalayan region we lost many human lives, livestock population, agriculture land, livelihood opportunities and huge infrastructure overnight.  The most affected states due to these calamities in India are Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim and part of West Bengal. The flood in Kosi and Indus basins in Nepal and Pakistan

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SciDev.net: Disaster response and relief efforts are becoming more dynamic and decentralised with the development of web-based geospatial technologies, says a study. Researchers writing in Disasters evaluated the experiences of Harvard University’s Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) during the Sichuan and Haiti earthquake responses in 2008 and 2010, respectively. They found that the conventional ‘top-down’

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ODI: An increasing number of policy statements claim that investing in resilience is cost effective when compared with approaches that rely exclusively on ex-post response and recovery. Yet very little funding goes towards disaster prevention and preparedness, which can build the resilience of communities to cope with emergencies. Resilience is perhaps best conceptualised as a

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Business Recorder: A two-day regional conference under the theme “climate change and disaster risk management in South Asia: exploring commonalities and realising joint frame works” will be held here on January 29 and 30. The conference is being organised by Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) with the focus on engaging policy makers,

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Alertnet: Muhammad Mushtaq moved his family and several neighbours to safety last September when their homes in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, were flooded by an overflowing stream during heavy monsoon rains. Mushtaq, who lives in a three-room tin-roofed house perched on a steep river bank at risk of landslides and floods, put into

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World Bank: -While South Asia is among the most densely populated regions in the world, it is also one of the least urbanized. -Its cities across all countries increasingly face development stresses in terms of congestion, pollution, and quality-of-life issues. -Students shared their vision of green growth in South Asian cities of the future at

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ADB: Strategy 2020 identifies infrastructure and climate change as two of ADB’s five core operational foci. The rehabilitation of rural infrastructure has been a component of ADB s lending program to Vietnam through the past three country strategies and, in view of the status given RI in Strategy 2020 will remain a component of the

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Scientific American: A record of changing climate in the Olduvai Gorge suggests early humans had to adapt to shifting ecosystems. An ancient lake whose shores vacillated between lush forests and dry savannahs shows how the changing climate may have shaped humanity’s dawn in eastern Africa, according to new research. Scientists studying organic remains dating back

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Guardian: Bhutan’s green schools project is an attempt to bring its revolutionary ‘happiness’ model to all young people. The Jigme Losel primary school in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, is a riot of green. Plants cover most surfaces and are piled precariously on walls and stairwells. On the wall behind the school’s vegetable patch a hand-painted

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Nepal 24Hr: The Doha climate change conference this year was the most significant in nearly 20 years of gatherings under the U.N. Framework Convention process aimed at staving off future global warming disaster. Since carbon dioxide emission limits agreed to under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol were to expire at the stroke of midnight on December

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The Global Warming Policy Foundation: A Times of India article perpetrates a fraud on its readers. It takes estimates of deaths from forces of nature and then ascribes it not just to climate but to climate change. A misleading report in the Times of India, purportedly based on the Global Burden of Disease 2010 (GBD) study published last week in the Lancet,

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A changing climate places great pressure on society, and creates many new challenges. To make city planning easier, a planning tool has been developed to support climate adaptation of cities and regions in Europe. The European research project SUDPLAN, co-ordinated by SMHI, has developed a planning tool for climate adaptation of European cities and regions

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ClimateAdaptAsia: Determinants and Effectiveness of Local-Level Adaptation to Climate Change: Case Studies of Two Bangladesh ministries, including the ministries of agriculture, environment and forest, water, health, rural development, food and disaster management, children and women affairs, relevant departments and NGOs have been implementing a number of local level adaptation (LLA) projects with their limited resources

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Guardian: National Intelligence Council also sees water and food shortages and suggests world is at a ‘critical juncture in human history’ A US intelligence portrait of the world in 2030 predicts that China will be the largest economic power, climate change will create instability by contributing to water and food shortages, and there will be

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IISC: Climate change vulnerability profiles are developed at the district level for agriculture, water and forest sectors for the North East region of India for the current and projected future climates. An index-based approach was used where a set of indicators that represent key sectors of vulnerability (agriculture, forest, water) is selected using the statistical

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Dandc.eu: India is expected to feel severe impacts of climate change. The country’s northeastern region, for instance, is highly vulnerable. Anticipated impacts include melting of glaciers, more floods and extended droughts. At the same time, the region’s natural resources are under enormous pressure due to population growth and rising prosperity. Germany’s KfW Development Bank has

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Asianscientist: Chinese experts disagree that climate change will cause bamboo die-offs in the Qinling Mountains. Chinese experts have disagreed with a recent Nature Climate Change report that climate change will cause bamboo die-offs in the Qinling Mountains, threatening the wild panda population there. In the report, scientists from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy

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Canberratimes: Doha’s failure shows they must develop their own solutions, writes William Pesek New York’s brush with developing-nation status is an even bigger warning for Asia than it is for the United States.The city could be excused for wondering if it had suddenly been transported to Bangladesh in October. The deadly floods and crippling power

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First Post: Climate change leading to natural disasters, particularly flood and erosion, has affected the livelihood options of thousands of people across Assam, a study has found out. The impact of the climate change is most pronounced among marginalised women, but it has also pushed people from prosperous families into taking up work of domestic

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MP: The Mountain Partnership is a United Nations voluntary alliance of partners dedicated to improving the lives of mountain people and protecting mountain environments around the world.  The Task Force meeting took place in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs during 29-31 October 2012 of Mountain Partnership that is coordinated UN’s FAO based in Rome,

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My Republica: The lead up to this year’s UN Conference on Climate Change was pretty bland. The meetings got underway in Doha on November 26 without the prelude of the picturesque Cabinet meetings near the top of world. In the lead up to the annual UN Conference on Climate Change three years ago, Nepal’s government

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CoP 18: Participants look past conference to future challenges and solutions. Forests, water and food topped the agenda on Day 11 of COP18/CMP8 as a number of events put the focus firmly on the future. These included highlighting some of the mitigation and adaptation projects already underway or planned in the region and across the

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MP Press Release: Mainstreaming Rio+20 outcomes in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes for prosperous, resilient, and sustainable mountain ecosystems and communities” was held in Doha, Qatar, on 3 December 2012, on the sidelines of the 2012 UN Climate Change Conference.   The strong negative impact of climate change on the life

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IRIN: In a formal letter to Qatar – host of the 18th conference of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – a coalition of 40 NGOs, backed by academics, has called for urgent action on loss and damage caused by climate change. The NGOs have drawn up a framework to

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Global water crisis: Reporter William Wheeler talks about water stress from the effects of climate change high in the Himalayas where India and Pakistan’s great rivers start to Haiti’s fresh-water pollution. In the Nepalese Himalayas in 2009, I trekked into the Langtang Valley, just short of the Tibetan border, and to a village of empty

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San Diago Free Press: As the world’s governments gather yet once more for a global climate summit, the prospects for the future look more ominous than ever. Regardless of the outcome of this year’s COP 18 climate change negotiations in Doha, many now fear it is too late to prevent global temperature rise exceeding 2°C

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Dunya News: At Friday prayers in Qatar s most popular mosque, the imam discussed the civil war in Syria, the unrest in Egypt and the UN endorsement of an independent state of Palestine. Not a word about climate change, even though the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar is hosting a UN conference where nearly 200 countries

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Huffingtonpost: In a world where almost one billion people are chronically hungry and the current and future state of food security is beset by challenges such as climate change, knowledge and information are powerful. Powerful in terms of understanding the problems, in terms of deriving solutions and in terms of advocating where, how and when

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CoP18: Pastoralists explain significance of ancient practice to the modern world. The ancient practice of pastoralism is alive and well today and present in developing and developed countries alike across the globe, according to experts. Pastoralism, which involves shepherding and husbandry of animals such as camels, goats and cattle, can be adapted with proper management

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CoP18: Hikma’ sessions discuss traditional methods of societies in extreme climates. While climate change is a relatively modern phenomenon for much of the world, people living in Arab regions have coped with similar conditions for thousands of years. COP18/CMP8 Doha, which will be the first time that the annual climate change conference has been held

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Outreach: Dr. Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of Food Agriculture Natural Resources Policy Advocacy Network and spokesperson for global agriculture coalition Farming First Women are the fountain of life. They are mothers, innovators, educators, farmers and custodians of the environment, particularly rural women. In Africa, 70% of the population – of which a significant portion are

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UNU: Adaptation to climate change (CC) impact is an emerging area of research and development in Nepal. Many households were deeply affected by climatic variability and natural disasters coupled with a decade-long conflict, leaving them with few options to cope with CC in Nepal. A study was conducted on people’s experience in CC and its

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The News: In an interview with The News on Monday evening, the regional adviser-environment of the United Nations Development Programme, Asia-Pacific Regional Centre, Joseph D’Cruz, talked about how far Pakistan was vulnerable to droughts and floods, global climate change and other related issues. Joseph D’Cruz is based in Bangkok. He is here to attend the

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IRIN: Scientists are pushing for changes to a UN mechanism that aims to curtail greenhouse gases by preventing forest loss. Environmentalists have long argued the mechanism must also protect biodiversity and forest-dependent communities. Now, ahead of climate talks in Doha, this thinking is finding a broader audience. The mechanism, REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and

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Reliefweb: Cities of Dhaka, Manila, Bangkok, Yangon and Jakarta face highest climate change risks – Maplecroft New York at ‘medium risk’ despite exposure to natural hazards Multinational companies operating in the Asian growth economies will be exposed to spiralling environmental risks over the coming decades, according to Maplecroft’s 5th annual Climate Change and Environmental Risk

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Worldcrunch: Sometimes described as the engine of the global climate system because of its role in climate and water systems, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western China, with its fragile and sensitive ecosystem, is considered a “canary-in-the-mine” for global climate change. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, also called the Tibetan Plateau, covers about 25% of China’s surface area

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Daily Times: Speakers at a seminar on ‘Climate change: Impacts on Livelihood, Marine and Coastal Resources’ said on Saturday that indigenous people are direct victims of climate change and the state has failed to provide required protection to the people during calamities. The seminar was jointly organised by Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), Pakistan Institute of

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Taylor Wilmot: In the twentieth century big dams and other development projects were often associated with progress and prosperous economic development for many countries, including India (Khagram, 2005). Dam development projects entice governments with the promise of hydroelectricity, irrigation, and drinking water for their growing populations. They represent an abundant resource to developing countries (Khagram,

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Science Daily: The impact of climate change on many aspects of cultural life for people all over the world is not being sufficiently accounted for by scientists and policy-makers. University of Exeter-led research by an international team, published on 11th November in Nature Climate Change, shows that cultural factors are key to making climate change

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IIED: Policymakers need to better integrate strategies for dealing with climate change into their country’s development plans, rather than leaving them isolated as stand-alone policies and projects. At last year’s Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries decided that “comprehensive, iterative assessments of development needs and climate vulnerabilities”[1] should form

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The News: Pakistan is facing serious threats due to climate changes fast taking place particularly in mountainous regions of Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya, it is learnt.  “The carbonaceous filth has started mixing into Indus waters pouring in from Glaciers (snow melting) which could leave hazardous consequences for life of every kind in the water passageways,” officials told

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