Future Path: Mount Everest at approximately 29,092 feet or 8,845 metres stands as a moumental challenge for mountain climbers world wide. Climbers have been ascending Everest for decades. Hundreds of climbers have ascended Everest since the first successful expedition by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1951. Everest stands as a omnipresent sentinel standing [...]

The Daily Star: For the last three decades scientists and world leaders have been trying to cope with the consequences of exponential growth of humans and their increasing demand for resources that only nature can provide. They have been working to save threatened species from extinction and give nature’s process the chance to maintain a [...]

ResponseNET: A new survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, shows that 68% of cities are pursuing adaption planning for climate change but “only 7 per cent of cities surveyed believe that their national governments fully understand the realities of adaptation planning at the local level.”  The global [...]

SciDevNet: Pakistan’s outdated crop yield forecasting system needs a revamp, says Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar. Like most developing countries, Pakistan is staring at the spectre of food insecurity, with its food production out of sync with population growth. The food availability scenario is further complicated by changing weather patterns with recurring severe droughts and floods [...]

Nature: Recent studies have focused on the short-term contribution of the Greenland ice sheet to sea-level rise, yet little is known about its long-term stability. The present best estimate of the threshold in global temperature rise leading to complete melting of the ice sheet is 3.1 °C (1.9–5.1 °C, 95% confidence interval) above the preindustrial climate1, determined [...]

Discovery News: As the climate changes this century, the ranges of most mammal species will shrink – in many cases because animals won’t be able to get to areas suitable for them, says new research. And while some animals will do just fine or even better than before, certain animals could face catastrophic losses of [...]

The Tibet Post: His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorjee addressed the “Bodh Dharama-Vishva Shanti” summit, a large gathering of Indian and Tibetan Buddhists at Dharamshala on Wednesday. His Holiness thanked the Government of Himachal Pradesh and its people for their assistance and hospitality to the Tibetan people. “I think, Himalaya is an [...]

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 [...]

weADAPT: Basically, climate modelling involves converting theories of atmospheric physics, solar radiation, phase state physics, etc. into mathematical formulas that can be solved by a computer. The relevant values are worked out for discrete areas (called grid cells) across the whole world, over a number of time steps. The result is a simulation of the [...]

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 [...]

Zee News: Climate change will be an additional stress on Indian forests, especially in Upper Himalayan stretches, which are already subjected to multiple challenges including over-extraction, livestock grazing and human impact, a government report said here today.   India’s second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, released by Environment Minister [...]

Scidevnet: The multi-billion dollar cassava industry of South–East Asia may already be suffering from multiple pest and disease outbreaks triggered by climate change, cassava researchers have told a conference in Bangkok. Although the crop can thrive in hotter and dryer conditions in the region, an increase in pests and diseases could easily wipe out recent [...]

Climate Adapt Asia: Adaptation Knowledge This policy brief reflects on the role of knowledge in the adaptation to climate change. It is not meant to be prescriptive but rather to provoke critical thinking about how information is mobilized, collated and disseminated in support of adaptation. There are four key messages. First, knowledge important to adaptation [...]

The News Pakistan: A Bangladeshi disaster management expert, Khurshid Alam, on Friday emphasised the need for training the local community in playing an effective role in recovering from natural calamities and minimising the adverse effects of an emergency. Local knowledge should be incorporated in designing a disaster management plan. It is very important to learn [...]

Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma: I’m indeed grateful to all the members who made written submissions to the discussions on ‘rewriting mountain perspective‘. At bilateral level, many others have contributed their unwritten thoughts and reflections. While many have gone public with their inputs, others have restricted themselves to drawing-room conversations such that they remain ‘unidentified’ in the [...]

Sudan Division: Rio+20 offers the world a unique chance to advance the sustainable development agenda. The conference has three main objectives: to secure renewed political commitment to sustainable development, to assess progress and gaps in implementation of agreed commitments, and to address new and emerging challenges. The two themes of the Conference are a green [...]

Zee News: Loss of biodiversity apparently impacts ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to a new study.   The study is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the effects of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes. [...]

CDKN: Thousands of researchers and sustainable development practitioners gathered in London for the conference ‘Planet under Pressure: Knowledge towards solutions’, (26-29 March, 2012). The conference aimed to bring together the latest scientific knowledge and practical thinking on sustainability to feed in to the Rio+20 Summit in June. The focus of participant discussions and subsequent ‘calls [...]

WRI: This working paper provides regular updates of the Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PPs) and National Programme Documents (NPDs) submitted by REDD+ Country Participants to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and to the United Nations’ Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD). The World Bank administered [...]

Dawn (PESHAWAR): To offset the effects of climatic change and global warming in the country, the Pakistan Forests Institute (PFI), Peshawar has completed a comprehensive study to determine the climatic change scenarios in Pakistan’s various ecological zones and its impact on forests resources. “It is the first professional attempt to address the emerging issues of [...]

Alertnet: At present, close to one billion people suffer from hunger. Experts agree that there is a high risk of climate change affecting food security at the global level, with the most negative impacts in the poorest and most vulnerable countries. The additional risk of climate change could put several hundred million at risk of [...]

WRI Publication: This report introduces the National Adaptive Capacity (NAC) framework, a tool to help governments bring institutional capacity development into their adaptation planning processes. The NAC framework enables its users to systematically assess institutional strengths and weaknesses that may help or hinder adaptation. National adaptation plans may then be better designed to make best [...]

(Reuters) – Whether it is melting glaciers, coastal erosion or drying lakes, a new app displays the impact of climate change on the planet by using before and after satellite images. Called Fragile Earth, the app for iPhone and iPad shows how our planet is impacted by global warming by featuring more than 70 sites [...]

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 [...]

Times of India: The fight against climate change will take a strategic jump in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-2017) with the government intending to plough in almost Rs 2 lakh crore through the various missions, the working group on climate of the 12th Five-Year Plan has said. The report seeks setting up of a dedicated [...]

Business Bhutan: A shared vision and collaborative efforts at public and the private sector level can mitigate the impact of climate change. Climate change affects everyone and while countries around the world are failing to reach a global agreement on the issue, it is at the local levels that global action must begin. This is [...]

Prevention Web: Using new ways to confront persistent challenges is one of MIT’s greatest strengths, and an idea reinforced this week in regard to climate change by the New York Times writer Andrew Revkin, author of the Dot Earth blog. “There’s never been a better time to share and shape and collaborate” to help communicate [...]

ABC Science (Anna Salleh ): The greenhouse effect is accelerating the global water cycle almost twice the rate predicted by climate change models, say researchers. Oceanographer Dr Susan Wijffels of the CSIRO and colleagues report their findings today in the journal Science. “The models predict a 4 to 5 per cent amplification of the global [...]

IISD: The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) Sixth International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA6) brought stakeholders and practitioners together to discuss community-based adaptation (CBA) planning and practices. The conference focused on communicating how communities are adapting to climate change, and addressed the following themes: scaling-up CBA; water resources; biodiversity and forests; coastal zones; [...]

The Hindu: India’s space and security capabilities are poised for a big leap with the launch of an entirely indigenous radar imaging satellite, RISAT-1. In the popular mind, radar satellites have a swashbuckling image that is often associated with covertly watching over other countries and tracking their military hardware. These satellites can certainly serve that [...]

NPR (by Richard Harris) : The Himalayas are sometimes called the world’s “third pole” because they are covered with thousands of glaciers. Water from those glaciers helps feed some of the world’s most important rivers, including the Ganges and the Indus. And as those glaciers melt, they will contribute to rising sea levels. So a [...]

Himalayan Times: Ace mountaineer Appa Sherpa, who has conquered Mount Everest for 21 times, is planning to announce a greater alliance for the preservation of Himalayan region in the country and taking an initiative to form an international support group for the overall development of the region. “With an aim to preserve the entire Himalayan [...]

Sciencecodex: Recognizing the knowledge gap between the existing evidence of climate change and adaptation on the ground, researchers in Asia launched a novel learning platform to improve agricultural resilience to changing weather patterns, and to reduce emissions footprint. The Climate Smart Agriculture Learning Platform for South Asia, established by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate [...]

Deccan Chronical: Indian and Pakistani glaciologists have crossed swords over whether the Siachen glacier is melting or not. Leading Indian glaciologist Dr Vijay Kumar Raina, formerly of the Geological Survey of India and author of a report on glaciers prepared for the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) in 2010 has stated categorically that the [...]

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) film Himalayan Meltdown won the prestigious Platinum Award in the broadcast documentary category last weekend at the 45th Annual Worldfest International Film Festival, the oldest independent film festival in the world. The one-hour film examines the shrinking glaciers of the Himalayas and the effects they have on the lives and [...]

Enterprise and Glacierworks: After 30 years climbing majestic Himalayan peaks, mountaineering filmmaker David Breashears has seen the vast glaciers that feed Asia’s rivers melting beneath his boots. The Emmy Award-winning cinematographer, who has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest five times, is showing his revelatory photographs in a cautionary exhibition at the MIT Museum [...]

The Guardian: is setting out to create world’s best layman-friendly guide to all aspects of climate change – and we need your help. Take one arcane and evolving scientific discipline. Add the future of energy security, economics and geopolitics. Throw in a handful of ideological baggage from across the political spectrum, season with ulterior motives, [...]

Science Daily: Several hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia depend, to varying degrees, on the freshwater reservoirs of the Himalayan glaciers. Consequently, it is important to detect the potential impact of climate changes on the Himalayan glaciers at an early stage. Together with international researchers, glaciologists from the University of Zurich now reveal [...]

Planet Save: Information regarding the health and fate of glaciers across the planet is rare and often misunderstood, causing some experts to make claims that bear no weight in fact. Now, an international team of scientists is planning a long-term campaign to monitor 25 glaciers in Tibet. The region contains some 46,000 glaciers and has [...]

The Week: Around the world, ice caps are melting due to climate change, scientists say. But a few icy masses in the Himalayas are, weirdly enough, getting bigger Glaciers around the world are slowly melting, and scientists are quick to point their fingers at manmade climate change. But new research suggests that a few glaciers [...]

Telegraph UK: Glaciers in parts of the greater Himalayas are growing despite the worldwide trend of ice melting due to warmer temperatures, a study has found. In the Karakoram mountain range on the border of Pakistan and China, glaciers have defied global warming to become marginally larger over a decade, researchers said. The French scientists [...]

Nature: Despite a warming climate, some glaciers in southern Asia are holding their own. By: Sid Perkins While most of the world’s glaciers are shedding ice at a brisk clip, many in one mountain range along the rim of the Tibetan plateau have been posting measurable gains in recent years, a new study confirms1. The [...]

The Economic Times: (R K Pachauri) Tackling climate change: Adapt to changes at local levels but mitigate release of greenhouse gases Much has been written and discussed recently on the subject of climate change in response to growing scientific evidence that has been assessed and disseminated in recent years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate [...]

ScienceDaily: Global warming may initially make the grass greener, but not for long, according to new research conducted at Northern Arizona University. The study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, shows that plants may thrive in the early stages of a warming environment but begin to deteriorate quickly.” “We were really surprised by the [...]

Scientific American 28 Mar: The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned. The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists [...]

GlacierWorks: is pleased to present Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya for a limited engagement at Everest Base Camp (April 10 – May 10, 2012). Sponsored in part by Mountain Hardwear, the Base Camp exhibition showcases mountaineer David Breashears’ modern, high-resolution glacier imagery alongside matched archival photographs taken over the past century [...]

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 [...]

Livelihoods.EU: Christian de Perthuis is professor of economics at Dauphine University in Paris, and Director of the Climate Economics Chair, a think-tank focusing on shaping economics to fight agains climate change. He is also a member of the Livelihoods Advisory Board. The short text that follows is the English translation of a lecture he made [...]

RECOFTC (A Grassroots Capacity Building document for REDD+ in the Asia-Pacific Region): This publication serves as a resource for community level facilitators to provide explanations about the basics of climate change and the role of forests. It aims to raise the awareness of grassroots stakeholders for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) through [...]

Glacial melt. Invasive species. Mudslides. Erosion. Mountains around the world are seeing major changes accelerated by a warming planet. Mountains represent 25% of the earth’s surface and host 13% of the world’s population. Warming-fueled changes are threatening sensitive ecosystems, water resources, climbing routes, and, in turn, the way of life in local communities (see “As [...]

SciDevnet: Earth has only one decade to pull itself back from various environmental ‘tipping points’ — points at which the damage becomes irreversible, scientists have said. If it fails to do so, it is likely to witness a series of breakdowns in the systems that sustain people, such as oceans and soil, according to a [...]

After an introduction from recent literature on how climate change influences the livelihood of rural people, we discuss and illustrate what climate change really means for farmers in Asia, including global warming, increasing climate variability, more and more severe climate extremes, and contributions from agriculture in diminishing greenhouse gases. (I) I. INTRODUCTION Vulnerable communities across [...]

SciDevNet (Science Communication): The shortage of credible and diverse voices in science undermines the capacity of journalists to respond to development challenges. When reviewing the agenda of the first Africa Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya, this week, I was reminded of my initiation at SciDev.Net. The team has [...]

The snow and ice stored within this resplendent arc of nearly 50,000 high-altitude glaciers are vital sources of water for the major rivers of Asia. GlacierWorks is a non-profit organization that vividly illustrates the changes to Himalayan glaciers through art, science, and adventure. Founded by acclaimed mountaineer, photographer, and filmmaker David Breashears, GlacierWorks is a [...]

Seattletimes: Environmentalists and several major insurers argue policymakers must move quickly to cut carbon emissions and devise strategies to adapt to climate impacts. WASHINGTON — Scientists are increasingly confident that the uptick in heat waves and heavier rainfall is linked to human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, posing a heightened risk to the world’s population, according to two [...]

Nature (Jane Qiu): High-tech stations on track to monitor third-largest ice store. With the health of the world’s highest glaciers in dispute, an international team is planning a long-term campaign to measure the vital signs of the ice atop Tibet and its surrounding mountains. The 46,000 or so glaciers in the region — known as [...]

Times of India And Business Recorder: The productivity of staple grain wheat could decline by upto 18% by 2020 due to adverse impact of climate change which is causing rise in temperature, Parliament was informed today. The yield of another major food crop rice might also fall by up to 6 per cent by 2020, [...]

Indian country today media network: Mother Earth is in for a destructive ride into the future, according to the full report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released this week called “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation,” or SREX for short. Tribal nations and Indigenous Peoples, who [...]

SciDevNet-(Bernard Appiah): A pilot version of an online mapping tool has been launched in Africa which enables researchers and policymakers to identify how climate change vulnerability, conflict, and aid intersect. Researchers from the Strauss Center’s Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) programme, United States, integrated data from areas of climate change vulnerability and active [...]

APC- Alan Finlay, Shawna Finnegan, Johannesburg: In collaboration with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), APC is releasing a series of reports discussing opportunities for information and communication technology (ICT) to help individuals and communities adapt to water scarcity as a result of climate change. Climate change is having a profound and worsening effect on [...]