Small farmers and crop production are under stress in the face of climate change. The impact of climate change is unfolding at a pace that is much quicker than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stated a new research study released here in the Capital recently. The study conducted by Action Aid [...]

UNDP (2010) Why water, including GLOFs, is a key sector for the country-Nepal? Water resources play an important role in the overall development of Nepal. Nepal has a theoretical hydropower potential of about 83,000 MW. The source of livelihoods of majority of the population is agriculture. Both of these sectors are heavily dependent on water [...]

This book provides an interdisciplinary view of how to prepare the ecological and socio-economic systems to the reality of climate change. Scientifically sound tools are needed to predict its effects on regional, rather than global, scales, as it is the level at which socio-economic plans are designed and natural ecosystem reacts. The first section of [...]

If you started seeing robins on your lawn in mid-February, you’re not alone. Reports of early red-winged blackbird flocks are also coming in. I’m being asked if birds down south sensed our milder winter and decided to pack their bags and come back ahead of schedule. For these birds, probably not – they simply didn’t [...]

Climate change challenges us to rethink the entire narrative of human progress and a range of unsustainable political and social practices. This process will be deeply disturbing yet potentially transformative, says Professor David Schlosberg, who will deliver the inaugural 2012 Insights lecture tonight at the University of Sydney. In his talk “Politics in a climate [...]

What are the gender dimensions of climate change? As a starting point, we know that women and men do not experience climate change equally. Pre-existing gender inequalities mean that neither their contributions to the carbon emissions responsible for climate change, nor the way that they experience its effects, are the same. In many developing countries [...]

This year’s unusually rainy season in Peru is having a negative effect on the wellbeing and health of women in rural areas who are forced, for example, to spend three times as much time walking to collect firewood and water. But the authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the problems they face. “It’s [...]

A freshwater ecologist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Smol studies lake sediments to understand climatic and environmental change. Nature Outlook asks him to share his experience. What can we learn from lake sediments? One of the biggest challenges in environmental science is the lack of long-term data, so we have to use indirect [...]

How is life on Earth reacting to climate change? : Human activities have added billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to Earth’s atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise. We are beginning to see how warmer temperatures are altering climates all over the planet and to understand the effects they are having on animals, agriculture and [...]

This was commissioned by infoDev in collaboration with DFID and UNIDO to develop practical recommendations on the design of Climate Innovation Centres (CICs) in 2010. Based on rigorous analysis by Professor Ambuj Sagar and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the report shows how CICs can: develop and deploy appropriate technologies to mitigate and adapt to climate [...]

Researchers from Burkina Faso and France have developed a low-cost construction material made of clay and sand mixed with fibres from the kenaf plant. Kenaf is member of the cotton family, and its fibres are already widely used in Burkina Faso to make bags and ropes, as well as other products typically made from wood, [...]

A consultation meeting bringing together Pacific Island climate change focal points and experts opened this morning in Apia, Samoa. The meeting is a collaboration between the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN) and aims to discuss the role of SPREP as a sub-regional node for APAN. [...]

Although there is widespread agreement on the need for adaptation measures to limit the risks posed by climate change, there is no clear consensus on how much adaptation will cost or how it will be paid for. A recent World Bank report suggested that the price of adaptation in developing countries alone will be $70–100 [...]

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 [...]

Paper highlights 40 years of research on plant use by indigenous peoples in Peruvian Amazon and Tibet (ST. LOUIS): Humans are frequently blamed for deforestation and the destruction of environments, yet there are also examples of peoples and cultures around the world that have learned to manage and conserve the precious resources around them. The [...]

There are two main policy responses to climate change: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation addresses the root causes, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while adaptation seeks to lower the risks posed by the consequences of climatic changes. Both approaches will be necessary, because even if emissions are dramatically decreased in the next decade, adaptation will still [...]

K N Vajpai: This article is in the series of responses to ongoing discussion on ‘Mountain Perspective’ at http://bit.ly/yYlbpl . It looks in to the aspects of mountain perspective and specificities as mentioned by Dr. N. S. Jodha during 1992s, and compares them in present  context. For the reference of readers and forum discussants, I [...]

Addressing climate change effectively is not only a challenge, it is also an opportunity. Growth that is based on high resilience and low carbon is at the centre of all efforts to address climate change. There are myriad opportunities to benefit people directly, while at the same time contributing to global efforts to control emissions [...]

The distribution of wildlife on Earth is changing with the climate, making conditions more favorable to odd species such as trumpeter swans, beetles, marmots, albatross, killer whales and white-tailed deer. Imagine a planet where jellyfish rule the seas, giant rodents roam the mountains and swarms of insects blur everything in sight. It may sound far-fetched, [...]

Climate change requires attitude change. The official call is actually for Climate-Change Adaptation and Mitigation. And since the impact of climate change would be most felt in terms of agricultural output and food production, farmers need to be equipped with adaptation and mitigation skills and techniques to ensure maximum yield despite extreme or erratic climatic [...]

AN expert from the Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) is pitching calls for the adoption of “climate-smart agriculture” to address the twin challenges of achieving food security and climate change. Hideki Kanamaru of the Climate, Energy and Tenure Division (NRC) of the FAO told participants of the APEC Symposium on Climate Change held at the [...]

Michael Mann reveals his account of attacks by entrenched interests seeking to undermine his ‘hockey stick’ graph. It is almost possible to dismiss Michael Mann’s account of a vast conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry to harrass scientists and befuddle the public. His story of that campaign, and his own journey from naive computer geek [...]

The climate change is no more a myth as scientific evidences as well as occurrence of frequent floods, cyclones and droughts around the world have proved beyond doubt that it is real. The fluctuations that occur from year to year, and the statistics of extreme conditions such as severe storms or unusually hot seasons, are [...]

Climate stakeholders of SDPI-HBS Pak-India Track II Dialogue adopt unanimous resolution. Deliberating on water, energy, adaptation, gender equity and livelihoods, the climate stakeholders adopted a resolution on the concluding day of ‘Track-II Dialogue on (Climate) Change for peace’ which was jointly organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and Heinrich Boll Stiftung (HBS). They stressed [...]

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 [...]

National Geographic: Villagers discover that it is easier to store water in ice than in a reservoir, and less is lost to evaporation. This story is part of a National Geographic News series on global water issues. A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or [...]

Traditional knowledge and crop varieties of indigenous people could prove even more important than modern agriculture in adapting agriculture to climate change (Feb. ’12) Compared with modern hybrids, traditional crop varieties are not only cheaper and easier to access but also more genetically diverse and therefore more resilient to environmental stress such as lack of [...]

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 [...]

Brookings: Sometimes it’s difficult to see what’s most likely to happen and not the more pleasant scenario, but the Energy Information Administration (EIA) does just that in its energy outlook “reference case.” Based on existing laws and policies (i.e. “business as usual”), EIA predicts that annual world carbon dioxide emissions will increase from 30.2 billion [...]

Improved integrated water management practices could increase agricultural production, protect natural systems and improve regional food security A major new survey of the likely effects of climate change on India’s water resources identifies huge challenges to maintaining adequate supplies in the next few decades, but argues that these can be overcome with an integrated, multi-sectorial [...]

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 [...]

As we reflect on 2011, a year of extreme weather all over the world, my thoughts have turned back to a very strange summer I experienced not long ago. That summer, I met a government employee who was working in his office and received a frantic call from his wife. “The flood water is coming,” she said. [...]

Sharing research-based knowledge and promoting innovation are unprecedentedly critical for effectiveness climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes worldwide, particularly in developing countrie. Scientists can significantly help advance policies to promote best and environmental practices in all socio-economic spheres including agriculture, livestock rearing, irrigation, water management, environmental-friendly drainage and sanitation. Such roles by scientists can boost [...]

High in the Himalayas, Chewang Norphel cut a path through the uncharted snow in his dress shoes. Each step sank and his ankles were swallowed yet the 77-year old appeared neither cold nor encumbered. “I grew up in the mountains,” said Norphel with a comfortable smile to his shivering visitors, “they call me the Ice [...]

National Geographic: We have the knowledge that can contribute to finding solutions to the crisis of climate change. But if you’re not prepared to listen, how can we communicate this to you? — Marcos Terena, Xané leader, Brazil. The precipitous rise in the world’s human population and humankind’s ever-increasing dependence on fossil fuel-based ways of living [...]

30,000-year-old bison bones help scientists unravel mystery of animals adaptations to environmental change. Thirty-thousand-year-old bison bones discovered in permafrost at a Canadian goldmine are helping scientists unravel the mystery about how animals adapt to rapid environmental change. The bones play a key role in a world-first study, led by University of Adelaide researchers, which analyses [...]

A Technical Paper by European Tropical Center: This project builds on the preceding phases of work on climate change adaptation indicators undertaken by AEA and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) for the European Environment Agency (EEA). It uses the ‘high-level’ adaptation indicator categories proposed for biodiversity (Harley & van Minnen, 2010) as a starting [...]

IISD: The World Economic Forum (WEF) held its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, from 25-29 January 2012, gathering industry, business, government and other world leaders to discuss current issues. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon participated in two panels, on ending energy poverty and on the perspectives for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20), warning “we [...]

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 [...]

You are an expert in disaster risk management/reduction, working in tough conditions with little time to process huge amounts of information. You make life-or-death decisions about disaster programmes or policies. You know a lot about what you do. But knowing is not enough. We need to integrate DRM/DRR, development and climate change adaptation. Changing climate, [...]

World Bank and partners help smallholder farmers increase productivity and revenue A new methodology to encourage smallholder farmers in Kenya –and potentially worldwide — to adopt improved farming techniques, boost productivity, increase their resilience to climate change, and earn carbon credits, has been given international approval. The Verified Carbon Standard approved this first methodology on [...]

A 30,000-year-old bison bone plucked from the thawed permafrost inside a Yukon gold mine has helped a team of Australian scientists make a potentially groundbreaking discovery about the way animals adapt to climate change. A study published in the latest issue of the journal PLoS One describes the Canadian specimen — a bone from the [...]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man. I don’t often disagree with George Bernard Shaw but I think in this case his argument, like our earth’s resources, may be approaching its limit. Our progress [...]

Participating in a session on Adapting to Climate Risk, held at the annual World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, UK, noted that the world is heading towards a 3°C increase in global average temperature, and warned that this situation “will bring temperatures not seen [...]

A recent article in Science Magazine demonstrates how controlling methane and soot can have positive effects in a relatively short time on global warming, the Arctic, human health and agricultural productivity. It should be mandatory reading for all of the Republican presidential hopefuls and for President Barack Obama. If the next president refocuses international climate [...]

The significant negative impacts of climate change have become an interest shared not only on an international and national level but also on a local community level. Farmers in rural areas face the negative impacts of climate change in the form of harvest failure, the reduction of farming production and also the degradation of the [...]

There are many forces at work making it difficult to stop global warming. Many assume that the cost of creating a healthy planet will be astronomical in comparison to the results it will yield — partially because the benefits will be far in the future. The old standby of restricting carbon dioxide (CO2) and other [...]

SciDevNet: This policy brief, published by Science, examines how agricultural science can help improve policies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Global food production must rise to meet global food needs, but predicted increases in extreme weather events — combined with stresses such as poverty, conflict and weak governance — threaten food security. At the [...]

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 [...]

CDKN: Disasters and Climate Change Disasters can be sudden, such as earthquakes or floods, or may build up gradually, such as a drought.  An important consequence of climate change will be the increase in the frequency and magnitude of extreme events such as floods, droughts, windstorms and heat waves. Whether hazards become disasters depends on [...]

Earlier this month, Bangladesh’s foreign minister chided the world’s developed nations for failing to honor their pledge to help this low-lying, water-logged nation adapt to the effects of climate change. Of the $30 billion that poor countries were promised three years ago, just $2.5 billion have been disbursed. “Our achievements — social, economic, environmental — [...]

Earth Child Institute (ECI) Nepal officially inaugurated its first initiative “Global School Campaign” on Jan 21, Saturday, to inform and empower children on global environmental issues, and encourage them to adopt green, healthy and sustainable lifestyles in their schools and communities. To achieve the goal, they are envisioning to collaborate with 200 schools around the [...]

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 [...]

NewYork Times: Agriculture has long been a stepchild in global negotiations over the climate. Hopes had risen that this might change at the latest big global climate session, in Durban, South Africa, in December. It did not. Now, a group of experts led by John Beddington, the chief science adviser of the British government, is [...]

Guardian: The “climate problem” suffers from a more powerful and enduring force: economic stagnation. These days, dormant climate policy in Washington DC is like Mitt Romney’s coiffure: seemingly no prospects for change. And, with the 2012 US presidential election on the horizon, it seems there’ll be little federal action for at least another year. In [...]

Telegraph Nepal: Though Climate Change (CC) has moved to the centre stage of public affairs, there is no effective policy of CC. Publications like “The Climate Change Risk Atlas” 2010[i] ranked Nepal as the fourth most vulnerable country in the world after Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan. Why is this country so vulnerable to CC for [...]

India’s 12th Five-Year Plan seeks to sustain high rates of growth and improve human development outcomes for the country’s poor, while further reducing the carbon intensity of its GDP. However, adoption of strategies to achieve lower carbon intensity may require high levels of investment. Approaches to financing climate change were the focus of a day-long [...]

Gorakhpatra: Dr Alexander Spachis was appointed as the first fully accredited European Union Ambassador to Nepal in November 2009. He joined the European Commission in 1981 and has over the years worked with various EU institutions, including the European Parliament and the Council. He has also served in the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs as [...]

FAO and the European Commission announced today a new €5.3 million project aimed at helping Malawi, Vietnam and Zambia transition to a “climate-smart” approach to agriculture. Agriculture — and the communities who depend on it for their livelihoods and food security — are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. At the same time agriculture, as a [...]