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 [...]

IPS (Durban): Negotiators at the 17th Conference of Parties owe it to the world’s more than seven billion people to deliver a deal with a work plan for agriculture, a sector that is expected to be the worst affected by climate change. Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of Food Agriculture Natural Resources Policy Advocacy Network told [...]

December 4, 2011 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — “Bolivia came out swinging at its first press conference of the climate change conference” on December 1, reported the Durban Mercury’s Yusuf Omar on December 2. Head of the Bolivian delegation Rene Orellana criticised the Green Climate Fund “– which is meant to help [...]

Tribune Pak: Pakistan won the ‘Robin Hood’ award at the UN climate talks for proposing financial transaction tax (FTT) as an innovative source of financing the Green Climate Fund (GCF), on Saturday. The award was given to Pakistan by the youth constituency of the UNFCCC, known as YOUNGO. “The Green Climate Fund is very important [...]

IPS: Just a few days into the United Nations climate change negotiations, deep divides on the conference’s key issues have arisen. Serious doubts about the adoption of the Green Climate Fund have cropped up, while a second period of the Kyoto- Protocol looks more and more unlikely. A number of South American countries, the United [...]

The goal of holding global warming to 2C will be missed if the world’s largest economies insist on delaying negotiations. When psychologists identified the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance – the ability to believe two contradictory things at the same time – they might have been describing the world of international climate change negotiations. Only this [...]

Durban Post: Dr. C. S. Silori* writing from Durban on Day-II & III, 29-30 November 2011 I had promised to come back, and here I am again with a short report of what happened on day 3 of the ongoing conference of the parties (COP 17) in Durban. It was a hectic day, as I [...]

K N Vajpai: Writes on the expected outcomes from Durban Climate Change Conference (CoP 17)in terms of growing momentum of action and alarm bells from new researches. His discourse is about the meager role played by the leaders from most vulnerable regions like Himalayas and Andes during this important global conference.   With the representation [...]

Durban Post: Dr. C. S. Silori* writing from Durban on Day-I, 28 November 2011 The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP 7) to the Kyoto Protocol, [...]

New York Times: With intensifying climate disasters and global economic turmoil as the backdrop, delegates from 194 nations will gather in Durban, South Africa, starting Monday to try to advance, if only incrementally, the world’s response to dangerous climate change. To those who have followed the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate [...]

Suman K A: The UNFCCC Secretariat in partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will create a series of platforms to encourage adaptation and mitigation projects that have promise to deliver high resilience and low carbon growth. This will be done through the Momentum for Change Initiative to be launched in Durban at CoP17. The [...]

United Nations Development Programme and National Institute of Administrative Research sign USD500, 000 agreement to strengthen training of officials on climate change issues. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Institute of Administrative Research (NIAR), Government of India,  signed a partnership in support of national efforts to address climate change through strengthening the [...]

International Business Times: Polar ice sheets have accelerated their retreat while global temperatures added up 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the onset of frenetic industrial activities, prompting scientists to suggest that time may be running out to arrest the ill-effects of climate change. This according to the latest report issued on Monday by the U.N. World [...]

NRDC: The highly anticipated report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) directly linking climate change and extreme weather was released on Friday.  This report follows last month’s release of a statement from medical experts worldwide warning that climate change, and its resulting extreme weather, poses the “greatest threat to public health.” Both [...]

MND: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2008: we carry out an assessment of climate change based on peer-reviewed literature, so everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry [the] credibility of peer-reviewed publications, we don’t settle for anything less than that. [source - see bottom [...]

Guardian: IPCC expected to confirm link between climate change and extreme weather. Report likely to conclude that man-made emissions are increasing the frequency of storms, floods and droughts.  Climate Change is likely to cause more storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather events, according to the most authoritative review yet of the effects of global [...]

MRD Journal: Winter Tourism and Climate Change in the Alps: An Assessment of Resource Consumption, Snow Reliability, and Future Snow making Potential The winter tourism industry is facing considerable challenges with climate change; it is increasingly responding with investments in snow making facilities. We present a study on 3 tourism destinations in the Swiss Alps [...]

Kuenselonline: Lack of equipment and trained personnel impedes analysis of available met data Climate Change A major part of the Eastern Himalayas, where  Bhutan is located, is undergoing a warming trend of about one-degree Celsius per year. The director of department of hydro meteorology services, Karma Tshering, yesterday in his presentation  “climate change over Bhutan from [...]

Daily Star: 17th Saarc Summit ends in Maldives with 20-point Addu Declaration; South Asian leaders also agree to forge effective cooperation for full implementation of Safta, better connectivity and steps towards Saarc Market for Electricity. The 17th Saarc summit ended at Addu in the Maldives yesterday with the adoption of a 20-point Addu Declaration to [...]

Assam Tribune: The Planning Commission has accorded investment clearance to implement anti-erosion works to protect Brahmaputra dykes. This project is estimated to cost Rs 8.35 crore. The dyke works relate to 69 km (Uluberi) and 78 km (Borigaon). The proposed scheme envisages anti-erosion measures for a 9000-m long reach on the south bank of the [...]

WWF-Nepal: A five-year program to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change and threats to biodiversity in Nepal, was officially launched at a ceremony in Kathmandu on 8 Nov 2011. The Hariyo Ban program is a new investment in biodiversity conservation in Nepal, funded by the US Agency for International Development​ (USAID). The program will [...]

Guardian: Action cannot be put off until the economic storm has passed. The poor countries most vulnerable to the extreme weather associated with climate change need help now. Critics often accuse world leaders of being able to focus on no more than one problem at once. So with the economic crisis, and the eurozone’s problems [...]

The minutes of First meeting of the Working Group on “Mountain Eco-systems and Challenges Faced by the People living in the Hilly Areas” for formulation of the 12th Five year Plan” is given below, that was held on 28 October 2011 at Yojana Bhavan in New Delhi. It was chaired by Shri B.K. Chaturvedi, Member, [...]

The UNFCCC Compendium on methods and tools to evaluate impacts of, and vulnerability and adaptation to, climate change is designed to assist Parties and other potential users in selecting the most appropriate methodology for assessments of impacts and vulnerability, and preparing for adaptation to climate change. The Compendium was developed in 1999 and updated in [...]

Himalayan Times: The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, is now warming up, and preparations are taking place. It will bring together representatives of the world’s governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, [...]

Himalayan Times: Nepal’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Gyan Chandra Acharya has stressed on the strong need for providing continued support for strengthened and effective voice and participation of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in decision- and rule-making and standard- and norm-setting areas in all relevant international forums. Delivering a speech on behalf of LDCs [...]

Indian Express: After getting the Mid-Himalayan Watershed Development Project registered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Himachal Pradesh has become the first state in India to implement the clean development mechanism (CDM) project. Under the project, world’s largest, the World Bank will buy carbon credits from the new forests being developed [...]

The Adaptation Fund has been established by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to finance concrete adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Fund is financed with 2% of the Certified Emission Reduction (CERs) issued for projects of [...]

CBS News: A food versus fuel debate has raged for the past few years as ethanol consumes more and more of the U.S. corn supply. Ethanol will use about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop this year, and for the first time ever, more corn will go into motor fuel production than into feed [...]