New Scientist: Could Christiana Figueres have the world’s toughest job: getting all nations to agree how to tackle climate change? We talk to the UN’s climate chief. You are in charge of the United Nations climate negotiations – a notoriously tricky process. What would be considered a successful outcome?The governments need to put in place [...]

RTCC: Seasoned climate change activists will know that the annual UNFCCC Bonn Climate Change conference starts this coming Monday morning. It’s an important summit that will provide an idea of whether the ambitions of the Durban Platform can be achieved. You’ll recall that the agreement set the ball rolling towards a comprehensive global emissions limit [...]

Financial Express: Fight climate change with green energy. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has emphasised on the need for incorporating renewables in the energy matrix for climate change mitigation and for reducing greenhouse gasses. India’s national agenda on climate change is to reduce carbon emissions by 25% by 2020 in tune with its Copenhagen [...]

Guardian: Global warming threatens the future of Peru’s poorest coffee farmers, but one brand thinks it has found an answer on the financial markets. In the foothills of the Andes, in the Sierra Piura region of Peru, the problems faced by coffee farmers are clear. Up to 6,600 farmers produce here for the Central Piurana [...]

The Hindu: Countries in Asia and the Pacific must strike a balance between rising prosperity and rising emission as their success or failure will have repercussions worldwide, a latest report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has said. “The Asia-Pacific region must continue to grow economically to lift millions out of poverty, but it [...]

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

Centre for Global Development: Adaptation to climate change in developing countries is to a large extent about building resilience, including social and institutional responsiveness to change. In that sense it is about “development.” However, adaptation finance is not development assistance. It is better thought of as a financial transfer based on the “causal responsibility” for [...]

Forbs: The island of Hispaniola is split between two countries – Haiti and the Dominican Republic – each with more than its share of problems.  Haiti’s are worse, and for myriad reasons, but one thing is clear: over its tumultuous history, Haiti has lost more of the living ecosystems that support its economy than its [...]

Financial Express: The green climate fund (GCF), established as a result of the Durban talks last year for easy access to funds for developing countries tackling climate change, has found interest from six countries—Germany, Switzerland, Namibia, Mexico, Korea and Poland. The six countries have expressed interest to host the fund referring to the ability to [...]

BBC News: Leading energy ministers have been told the world is on track for a long-term temperature increase of 6C unless they change their priorities. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on current trends, emissions would double from 2009 to 2050. The deputy director of the IEA, Richard Jones, urged ministers: “Please take our warning [...]

CGIAR: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and supply agreements in the agricultural sector have a significant role to play to promote agricultural climate change mitigation and decrease pressure on the earth’s land and climate. Private sector engagement can also promote food security and positively affect the livelihoods of smallholder agricultural producers in developing countries. This states [...]

Business Mirror: There is an urgent need to enhance the capacity of poorest communities to cope with climate change and minimize risk to natural disasters, particularly in Africa with 414 million people and Asia with 1.9 billion people, according to the Sixth International Conference on Community-based Adaptation on Climate Change. “Communities in poor countries are [...]

IHDP (GEC): Shades of Green Global Perspectives on the Green Economy The capitalist system has since its emergence as a dominant economic model faced scrutiny and scepticism, which has in many parts of the world reached a zenith in the wake of a global economic crisis and after decades of environmental degradation. Some would consider [...]

Telegraph Nepal: The Nepalese Ministry of Environment launched the Nepal Climate Change Support Programme at the International Conference of Mountain Countries on Climate Change in Kathmandu, April 5, 2012. The first phase of this Euro 16.5 m (NRs 1,800,000,000)  programme aims to reduce the vulnerability of 2 million women and men in the Mid and [...]

Deccan Herald: The Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA) on Monday launched a multi-disciplinary Indo-French research project titled ‘Adaptation of Irrigated Agriculture to Climate Change (AICHA).’ The study aims at developing an integrated model for analysing the impact of climate change on ground water-irrigated agriculture in south India. Berambadi village and surrounding [...]

Nature-Jeff Tollefson: Round-table talks aim to slow climate warming by transforming agriculture. The principle is seductively simple: to reduce carbon emissions, leave tropical forests standing. But a widely heralded approach in which rich nations would pay poorer ones to keep their forests intact has proved trickier to deploy than many had hoped. Now a consortium [...]

Daily Times, ISLAMABAD: Climate change could cost the economy of Pakistan up to $14 billion each year for natural disasters and other losses, which is almost 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this was stated by Former Federal State Minister for Environment Malik Amin Aslam. He was addressing a seminar titled ‘Outcomes of [...]

Like 2011 before it, 2012 is shaping up to be another year of economic volatility, political instability and environmental challenges for Australia. It is easy to be distracted by short-term issues but against this backdrop, climate change mega-trends are continuing. Evidence of climate change driven by our economic dependence on polluting technologies continues to grow. [...]

The idea of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is a beguiling one. Could it ever become real? THOSE who worry about global warming have a simple answer to the problem. Simple in theory, that is: stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In practice that is rather hard to do. But there is [...]

With climate change posing one of the biggest challenges, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Friday announced Rs.200 crore for research to develop plant and seed varieties that yield more and can resist climate change. “Food security and agricultural development in the coming decades would depend upon scientific and technological breakthroughs in raising productivity. We have to [...]

Global funding is vital for countries like India to address concerns related to climate change as mitigation efforts ultimately involve costs, says the Economic Survey 2011-12, which for the first time has made a pointed reference to the challenge posed by climate change. Global funding through the multilateral mechanism of the Convention will enhance domestic [...]

Himalayan Times: Nepal’s 40,000 biogas plants have been registered with the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations Climate Change Convention (UNFCC) for carbon trading. According to the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) under the Ministry of Environment, the executive board of UNFCCC has approved 40,602 biogas plants so far. “Now, biogas use helps us [...]

The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved a US$300.75 million Development Policy Loan  to support the institutionalization of policies aimed at strengthening social resilience to extreme situations — in particular those caused by climate change — and overcoming them. According to the World Bank , to this end, it promotes State-level climate change action [...]

The Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) framework has emerged as a result of the Copenhagen and Cancún Agreements and is used to encourage developing countries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Theses NAMAs can be part of more comprehensive domestic low-carbon development strategies. However, new projects and policies, eligible to be considered as NAMAs, [...]

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 [...]

A new report from the Nordic Council of Ministers highlights the potential consequences of acting as frontrunners in the global climate mitigation effort. Should the Nordic countries take the lead in the fight against climate changes and increase their carbon pricing unilaterally? Or will this simply result in the displacement of a number of high-emission [...]

A new study on rubber plantations highlights the need for the REDD+ climate change scheme to further consider biodiversity and rural livelihoods. Agricultural policies worldwide have traditionally favoured the conversion of rotating crops to homogenous, permanent rubber plantations because they are often perceived to be more beneficial for local development and better sequesters of carbon. [...]

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 [...]

The Heartland Institute funds climate skeptics, including Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change founder Craig Idso, physicist Fred Singer and geologist Robert Carter. Leaked documents from the free-market conservative organization The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change. The documents, [...]

Libertarian thinktank keeps prominent sceptics on its payroll and relies on millions in funding from carbon industry, papers suggest. The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks. DeSmogBlog, which broke the story, said [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Reuters: Picture this: a terrible drought forces you to abandon your meagre plot of farmland, so you migrate to a city where the jobs are, only to end up living in a slum regularly submerged by floods. It’s a scenario that’s going to become more and more familiar in coming years as climate change and [...]

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 [...]

Reuters: Norway will spend NOK 1.8 billion ($300 million) a year to devise ways to help some of the world’s poorest people get better access to energy and to develop a new market-based system to limit emissions from global energy production, a foreign ministry official said Wednesday. The Nordic nation expects to launch a plan [...]

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 [...]

Sciedevnet: A form of small-holder agroforestry in which trees are planted around the home, maximising the land left available for cash crops, may prove the best balance between sequestering carbon and making money by farming other crops, a study has found. There has been a proliferation of projects that encourage small-scale farmers to adopt tree [...]

The Nepal government will be receiving Rs 1.8 billion grant from European Union (EU) and the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID) for the implementation of the Nepal Climate Change Support Programme (NCCSP)  The EU will be providing Euro 8.6 million and DFID will contribute Euro 7.9 million (total of Euro 16.5 million) to [...]

We are republishing this news article that was published in 2008 Sep about the MoU between ICIMOD and GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development Almora (Uttarakhand India) a nodal agency of Ministry of Environment and Forest, Government of India for research, technical and knowledge support in Indian Himalayan region. The MoU was signed [...]

Business Insurance: Insurers and reinsurers are becoming more involved in managing risks related to climate change, though more work needs to be done, recent research concludes. In addition, the outcome of the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, was disappointing for the industry, according to a leading reinsurer. In a recent report [...]

Japan Times: Rising, warming and increasingly acidic seas threaten the very survival of Pacific island countries. The retreat of glaciers and snowfields in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau jeopardize these “water towers” on which 1 billion Asians depend for flows during the dry season and drought years. More than 450 million Asians live within the [...]

Himalayan Times: Claims glacial retreat is not happening. Ask a question about melting glaciers and pocket $500. “Glacier-hard cash in your pocket… all you have to do is attend a movie screening, ask a question and send us a video,” Steven Milloy, climate change denier wrote on the US-based website junkscience.com. After the US Department [...]

Daily Mail: Nearly half the money the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spends comes from U.S. taxpayers, despite the fact that Americans are the most skeptical Westerners (after Canadians) of the dubious theory that man is causing the Earth to burn up uncontrollably. The IPCC, which shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, who [...]

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 [...]

Devex: The world’s major bilateral donors continue to invest in climate change programming, primarily to comply with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change $30 billion Fast Start Finance mechanism for enhanced action on mitigation, adaptation, REDD+, technology development and transfer and capacity building.The chart above and corresponding analysis shed light on the financial commitments [...]

AusAid is currently inviting proposals from Australian and international NGOs for the community-based climate change action grants, a funding scheme for NGOs to develop and implement community-based climate change responses in one or more Pacific Island countries or in a single country in South East Asia. Grant proposals can be submitted under any one of [...]

Huffingtonpost: And not by eastern windows only,When daylight comes, comes in the light,In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,But westward, look, the land is bright.  –Arthur Hugh Clough You might be surprised to learn that I think climate protection may have posted its best quarterly results ever in the last three months of 2011. [...]

Korea Herald: Rising, warming and increasingly acidic seas threaten the very survival of Pacific island countries. The retreat of glaciers and snowfields in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau jeopardize these “water towers” on which one billion Asians depend for dry season and drought year flows. More than 450 million Asians live within the low-elevation coastal [...]

My Republica: Laurence Brahm, lawyer, political-economist and author of dozens of books, founded the Himalayan Consensus and African Consensus movements. A vocal critic to the policies of World Bank and International Monetary Fund and the very notion of globalization, Brahm has been embedded with Wall Street Protestors. Born and educated in the US, Brahm has [...]

Business Green: Earlier this month, the world’s heads of state, government, industry and NGOs met in Durban, South Africa, to discuss our common future. These climate negotiations were more successful than many people had feared. A new international climate agreement will enter into force in 2020. This agreement makes life more predictable for industry and [...]

Climate Ethics: I. Introduction: What Is Missing In Reporting About The Durban Outcome? It has now been two weeks since negotiations at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were completed in the early morning of Sunday, December 11, 2011 in Durban, South Africa. We [...]

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 [...]

Green Conduct: The last COP in Durban ended in a success for the UNFCCC process, but has more nebulous implications for the climate itself, with Kyoto put on artificial respirator and a more comprehensive agreement being pushed back to a later date. The most significant progress at Durban for climate change adaptation came in the [...]

Industrialized countries are still against the idea of bearing their share of burden in tackling climate change. The 17th Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was convened in Durban when the membership of this multilateral body faced two exceptional challenges. First, a critical component of the convention, [...]

Dawn: There is now near consensus in the international climate community that Asia will be the most severely affected continent because of the changes associated with global warming. And Bangladesh, the Maldives, parts of India and almost all of Pakistan are likely to suffer the most. Bangladesh and the Maldives will be hurt because of [...]

Financial Express: The ambitious plans of the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) of Government of India to conserve lakes and rivers in the country have failed to deliver, with more than 80% of the projects not being completed on time and others not being utilised despite being constructed. These are the findings of a [...]

Business Green: Support for $100bn Green Climate Fund will help overhaul the UN’s carbon market and financing for forestry projects While reactions have been mixed as to the overall success of the Durban climate summit, some progress has been made in terms of agreeing a fund to help poor countries combat climate change, reform of [...]

Zee News: (Durban) The US today shocked observers at the climate change conference here by saying that the 2 degree Celsius limit for increase in the Earth’s temperature is not like a “national target” but only a “guidance”. The 2 degree limit to global temperature rise was agreed in previous climate talks in Bali in [...]

Business Live Zambia: Negative perceptions of business strategies toward climate change have hurt the potential for profit, said UNFCCC boss Christiana Figueres. A panel of business leaders and investors echoed this sentiment at the World Climate Summit (WCS), an industry-focused side event at COP17. “Over the years we’ve boxed ourselves in to a very difficult [...]