With climate science evolving but remaining uncertain, how can journalists accurately communicate about climate change in the media? And, how can they break through the national perspective of their media outlet to give the regional story of climate change? The 24 journalists selected from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as the CDKN/Panos

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Himalayan Times: Summer monsoon is approaching and South Asia climate outlook has predicted above normal precipitation in Nepal. Recent data revealed by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) shows that at least 420 people are killed every year in different disaster events in Nepal. Injuries, disruptions and a range of impacts including losses and damage

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Reuters: A newly established global panel on biodiversity faces being sidetracked by niche interests and northern agendas if it does not tread carefully, a meeting has heard. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was formed in April 2012, with a mandate to assess the state of the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems, and provide accessible scientific

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Recognising common ground is the first step towards concrete ways of enhancing the work of both scientists and development practitioners. The world of science, technology and engineering might seem, for good reason, miles away from the day-to-day work of most development NGOs. But if you get past the jargon or the traditional lab-coat image and

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World Bank: On World Water Day 2013: 85% of the world’s population lives on the driest half of the land, 783 million people do not have access to clean water, and 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. The economic and health effects will be exacerbated by climate change and its effect on

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ACT Alliance members from eight Asian countries met last week in Nepal to share their experiences and develop strategies on how to better influence governments to address climate change. Some of the countries that suffer the most visible and tangible immediate effects of climate change are located in Asia. Foezullah from ACT Bangladesh explains that

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Mongabay: In Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science, Dr. John J. Berger deconstructs the climate change denialists’ myths in simple, easy-to-read terms. According to the Pew Research Center: “Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) [Americans] say there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades, up six points

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CDKN, in collaboration with partners across Asia, Africa and Latin America, is pleased to announce a new publication on Climate resilience and disaster risk management. It presents recent results from CDKN-supported projects to assess vulnerability and mainstream climate resilience into development planning. Our stories from India, Ghana and Colombia illustrate the importance of involving diverse

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Scientific skepticism is healthy. In fact, science by its very nature is skeptical. Genuine skepticism means considering the full body of evidence before coming to a conclusion. However, when you take a close look at arguments expressing climate ‘skepticism’, what you often observe is cherry picking of pieces of evidence while rejecting any data that

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Tribune: “We have suggested building several upstream water reservoirs in Pakistan to prevent floods. We are also examining reforestation as it slows down the process of floods and subsequent droughts,” Marius Keller, an adaptation consultant with the International Institute of Sustainable Development, said speaking to Lahore University of Management Sciences students on Monday. Keller presented

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EU Climate Adaptation Platform: The preparation of these guidelines has benefited from useful inputs from a range of stakeholders, who had the opportunity to comment on a preliminary draft. Those include representatives from the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, KPMG, Network Rail, the European Institute for Environmental Policy, and KfW.

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Aljazeera: Government attempts a new insurance scheme to protect farmers from floods and other worsening weather problems. After five consecutive dry winters, Abdul Qadeer was jubilant at the prospect of a plentiful harvest of wheat after December rains soaked his farmland. But the 39-year-old farmer’s hopes were destroyed last month by torrential spring rains and

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WRI: Indian cities are urbanizing at an unprecedented scale and pace. Over the next few decades, India’s urban population is expected to increase significantly, from 377 million in 2011 to 590 million by 2030. The problem is that the country’s existing urban transport infrastructure is already over-capacity. This fact–coupled with the alarmingly high rate of

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Alertnet: Pakistan’s government has boosted the funding of a state institution that researches the impacts of climate change, and granted it autonomy, in an effort to increase the quality of its recommendations on climate resilience for government policy and programmes. The Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) will focus on research aimed at helping sectors

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weAdapt: Inherent in every adaptation measure are risks, costs and benefits. A challenge for decision-makers is how to choose adaptations that reduce risks from climate change impacts and provide overwhelmingly beneficial outcomes. This project focused on three catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin to test a method for more integrative climate change adaptation that increased resilience and avoided maladaptation. Water management

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IIED: The poorest communities (and poorest countries) are leading the world in learning about and practising adaptation to climate change. The rich would do well to learn from them. The flood plain of the Ganges river in southern Bangladesh is only around two metres higher than sea level. Rising floodwaters can wipe out crops and

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C4D: Climate change is increasingly intersecting with the challenges faced by people seeking to emerge from poverty, and changing the way Canadian development organizations – and their partners in the global south – must design their programs to ensure resiliency and continued sustainability. Climate change not only permeates the entire development process, it threatens many

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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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Mitigation Partnership: The NAMA-Tool provides developers and implementers of NAMA with brief step-by-step instructions on how to develop a NAMA. The tool navigates users to the relevant information, knowledge, instruments, and publications available. The process is structured into ten steps. The 10-step approach is designed to supply users with more data and accessible instruments for

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ABC Net: The small, landlocked country of Bhutan is aiming to increase its national happiness by becoming the first country in the world to completely shift to organic farming. About 80 per cent of Bhutan’s 800,000 residents depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The country plans to use the organic status, which it hopes to

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Telegraph India: World Bank, which is funding a $150-million project on integrated flood and erosion management in the Northeast, has called for a multi-sector approach towards management of water resources in the Brahmaputra basin. The bank’s suggestion is meant to ensure that the states involved benefit from the risks and opportunities associated with a multi-sector

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The Better India: Puja Devi, 30, watches with satisfaction as her young son gulps down his glass of milk and then reaches for his satchel, ready to go to school. For some months now, the happy mother has been able to provide milk for her son every day, a far cry from earlier times when

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EBA: The ecosystem-based adaptation in mountain ecosystems (EbA) project in Peru, among its activities, contributes to the enhancement of local and national capacities by providing training in analytical and decision-making tools that help better understand and address vulnerability of ecosystem services, through the use of ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) and enhancing local livelihoods. In order to

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A new output report from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has been published which is an outcome of an international workshop on “Scaling up Climate Services for Farmers in Africa and South Asia,”.  Jointly with USAID, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Climate Services Partnership (CSP), CCAFS

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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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MP: A project to improve food security among vulnerable rural groups coordinated by Mountain Partnership member the International Potato Centre (CIP) is underway in four Latin American countries. In the Andes, the potato is one of the most important crops in the agricultural sector. However, in areas where the tuber is produced, chronic malnutrition in

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Kabar: Bishkek-Kyrgyzstan and the State of Utah (USA) strengthen cooperation in order to facilitate sustainable mountain development (SMD). A delegation from Kyrgyzstan, comprised of the deputy of the Zhogorku Kenesh (Parliament), the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary committee on budget and finance Kurmanbek Dyikanbayev and the adviser to the city court of Bishkek Sultangazy Kasymov, as

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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 UNFCCC Secretariat has released a report to support the Subsidiary Body for Implementation’s (SBI) annual monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the framework for capacity-building in developing countries. The report features sections on, inter alia: the overview of information reported by parties; capacity building activities under the Kyoto Protocol; and capacity building activities

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IHCAP: A Capacity Building Programme on Himalayan Glaciology was inaugurated on 02 April 2013 at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India) in the presence of Swiss Ambassador to India Dr. Linus von Castelmur and Dr. T. Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. The press release states that the Capacity Building Programme

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IIED: Countries need new tools to check whether climate change adaptation is keeping development on-track, and whether costs and benefits are fairly distributed. IIED and partners are developing a framework that does this by assessing risk management and resilience at many levels. As countries increasingly focus on adapting to climate change, and more ‘climate finance’

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CFS: Policy makers and project planners in developing countries at national and city levels need access to information on potential sources of climate finance, inspiring best practice examples, research results and tools for better investment decision making. The global climate finance gap demands increasing levels of financial flows along with coordination at a level previously

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TERI: Recently the need for a greater understanding on linkages between biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation and the livelihoods of the local communities has increased the attention of the world leaders. The threat of climate change, which cuts across national and international boundaries, has further catalyzed the importance of the issues and facilitated

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The first meeting of the Indo-Swiss Joint Committee on Science and Technology on 23 September, 2011, at Bern, agreed to establish a development cooperation initiative for capacity building in the field of glaciology and related areas. It was agreed that the Capacity Building on Glaciology and related areas will be coordinated by the Swiss Agency

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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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Climate Central: The Indus river, originating on the Tibetan Plateau and flowing for nearly 2,000 miles through the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and finally down to the province of Sindh and out into the Arabian Sea, is key to life in Pakistan. The majority of Pakistan’s 190 million people are involved in agriculture:

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The Natural Environment Research Council of the UK (NERC) and the Earth System Science Organization, Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Republic of India (ESSO-MoES) have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to facilitate cooperation between the UK and Indian earth system science and environmental research communities. The UK and India have shared interests and

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The first Swiss development experts arrived in Peru half a century ago, beginning a fruitful and multifaceted partnership. In late 2011, SDC brought traditional bilateral cooperation to a close and transferred on-going projects to its local partners. In the future, Peru will actively participate in a number of SDC global programmes, particularly in the area

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OneUNTSP: The National Council on Climate Change (DNPI) of the Government of Indonesia held a workshop on 14 February 2013 with over 62 participants representing 15 government ministries and agencies, 7 UN agencies (UNESCO, FAO, ILO, WHO, UNORCID, UNEP, UNITAR), the UN Resident Coordinator (RC) Office, 3 universities (University of Indonesia, University of Sriwijaya, Bandung

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WWF: Denmark, followed by Israel, Sweden, Finland and the US provide the best conditions today for clean technology start-up creation, with companies in the Asia Pacific region following closely behind when it comes to commercial success, the first Global Cleantech Innovation Index shows. In Coming Clean: The Global Cleantech Innovation Index 2012, Cleantech Group and

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Scidev.Net: With extra funding and empowering legislation Pakistan’s autonomous Global Climate Change Impact Centre (GCCIC) is set to take on a regional and international role in climate research. Legislation passed this month (6 March) is expected to transform the GCCIC into a centre capable of providing data for decision making and formulating policy in areas

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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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Climate Central: Rules Needed for Geoengineering Research, Experts Say. With no clear rules to guide new research, scientists are shying away from examining whether geoengineering technologies can effectively cool the planet, and at what cost. That’s the warning put forth by a pair of climate change experts in an essay published Thursday in the journal

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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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Scidev.net: Disease may challenge the ability of fish farming to feed the growing human population even as wild fish stocks decline and climate change hampers food production from other sources, a study shows. Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector in the world, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, with 90 per cent

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Colaradoan: Scientists: Individual action, adaptation necessary to halt a changing climate. Do your small part to adapt to climate change and stop it in its tracks, or a global problem could continue to get worse. That was the primary message from a panel of five Northern Colorado scientists — all of whom helped author the

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IPS: Drought has dramatically increased as a consequence of climate change. Most countries react to it only after it has occurred, but don’t have national policies to prevent it. The high-level meeting on national drought policies in Geneva this week is trying to match scientific knowledge with political awareness. “Drought is a natural phenomenon, but

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Thinkdifferent: We have uploaded a number of photos (ideas) from Think Different facebook page.    They could be used in our offices towards  ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘eco-friendly’ working to reduce our carbon foot prints. We strongly feel that these ideas will help in reducing the ongoing impact of climate change due to various human induced

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Ecoinventos: Here we have uploaded a number of ideas taken from Econinventos those could be used in our offices towards ‘carbon neutral’ living and reducing our carbon foot prints. These ideas will help in reducing the impact of climate change and also the global warming phenomena that we now days hear from our climate scientists.

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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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MARCC: Results from a landmark climate study for the Mekong region will be released at a press conference here Mar. 29, forecasting dramatic changes in growing conditions and yields for major crops like rice, maize, coffee, and rubber, and impacting fisheries and livestock productivity. “Our study is producing very shocking results. We’ve found that this

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SciDev.Net: India needs micro-level scientific assessment at the state, district and village levels for effective planning and implementation of measures to combat climate change, a national workshop has highlighted. The workshop on  climate-resilient development, organised last month (13 February), discussed integrating climate change into development programmes in semi-arid regions like Bundelkhand in central India. Participants

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IRN: Bhutan fires the imagination of an ideal mountain country with many snow-clad peaks, where people go about their daily chores in serenity, dressed in their national dress, wearing a smile and with a song on their lips. The image of the Gross National Happiness (GNH) that it portrays is ever present. The four pillars

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The book is the first to provide a complete overview of international climate finance. In the Copenhagen Accord of 2009, developed countries jointly committed to mobilize US$100 billion per year to address climate change in developing countries. The book presents the best information available on this subject: an overview of current international climate finance, estimates

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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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CNN: The world may need to turn to geo-engineering in order to tackle climate change effectively, scientists think – and that would raise a whole lot of tricky questions. Geo-engineering of the climate is fraught with all manner of technical, ethical and governance issues but needs to be taken into consideration if targets for limiting

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RECOFTC’s Grassroots Capacity Building for REDD+ project team shares highlights from the recent national level expert seminar on Gender, Forestry, Climate Change and REDD+, organized jointly by RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests and the Department of Forestry, Lao PDR. Despite some well documented studies on the extensive knowledge, skills, and hands-on experience

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Guardian: Barack Obama should spread awareness of the “scientific realities of climate change” in the US, the head of the UN’s climate science panel has told the Guardian. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that one of the president’s priorities should be “awareness creation” on the public’s understanding of the

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Times of India: GitaDevi of Kullu used to routinely visit apple orchards and jungles every morning, collect some guchhi ( morel mushroom, also known as common morel, morel or yellow morel) and leave it to dry near the tandoor and sell it for high prices to traders at her doorstep. She used to earn good

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360 Yale: Renowned biologist George Schaller has been traveling to the Tibetan Plateau for nearly three decades, studying its unique wildlife. But with climate change and overgrazing taking a toll on the landscape, he reports, scientists and the Chinese government are working to preserve one of the planet’s wildest places. Chang Tang. It is a

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