Guardian: More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes – 98% of displacement related to climate change. Asia and west and central Africa bore the brunt. Some 1.3 million people were displaced in rich countries, with the US particularly affected. Floods in India and

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CNN: New research suggesting that the Earth may be warming a little more slowly than expected certainly does not  mean climate change is a false alarm, experts say. Several leading authorities on climate change have given a guarded welcome to research suggesting the Earth may warm more slowly than scientists had expected. An international research

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CNN: Although hundreds of the world’s glaciers are shrinking fast, far more are losing ice much more slowly, new research has established. But it shows that, almost everywhere, the glaciers are in retreat. Forget, for the moment, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets: what about all the other stuff? What kind of difference does the

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D+C: The impacts of climate change make the poorest people on earth suffer more than others. This is evident in Mustang, a northern district of Nepal. Entire villages are thinking of relocating because water scarcity is getting worse. Swiss researchers assessed the options. Mustang is a tough place to live because of desert-like drought, freezing

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EJNet: The most comprehensive survey of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming ever done reveals a 97.1 per cent consensus. The research team surveyed the abstracts of over 12,000 scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 on the subjects of “global climate change” or “global warming” to see to what extent they endorsed or

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Over the past three years RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have brought together regional experts to reflect on the outcomes of the 15th, 16th and 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The resulting booklets “Forests

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Indian Himalayan basins are earmarked for widespread dam building, but aggregate effects of these dams on terrestrial ecosystems are unknown. We mapped distribution of 292 dams (under construction and proposed) and projected effects of these dams on terrestrial ecosystems under different scenarios of land-cover loss. We analyzed land-cover data of the Himalayan valleys, where dams

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Cancún, Mexico — Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world’s tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest

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The Earth’s climate is more sensitive to changes in CO2 than previously thought, according to new research. New data taken from an Arctic sediment core that has recorded the climate for the past 3.6m years, suggests climate models, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have not given enough weighting to

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Neoclassical realism and international climate change politics: moral imperative and political constraint in international climate finance. In this article, I present a neoclassical realist theory of climate change politics that challenges the idea that cooperation on climate change is compelled alone by shared norms and interests emanating from the international level and questions if instead

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What does successful adaptation look like? This is a question frequently asked by planners, policy makers and other professionals charged with the task of developing and implementing adaptation strategies. While adaptation is increasingly recognized as an important climate risk management strategy, and on-the-ground adaptation planning activity is becoming more common-place, there is no clear guidance

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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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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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Skeptical Science: Skeptic Argument: Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2

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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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Nature: Dengue is a systemic viral infection transmitted between humans by Aedes mosquitoes1. For some patients, dengue is a life-threatening illness2. There are currently no licensed vaccines or specific therapeutics, and substantial vector control efforts have not stopped its rapid emergence and global spread3. The contemporary worldwide distribution of the risk of dengue virus infection4

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Springer: Climate Change and the Law is the first scholarly effort to systematically address doctrinal issues related to climate law as an emergent legal discipline. It assembles some of the most recognized experts in the field to identify relevant trends and common themes from a variety of geographic and professional perspectives. In a remarkably short

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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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CNN: Ice in parts of the Antarctic Peninsula is now melting during the summer faster than at any time in the last thousand years, and the most marked speed-up in the thaw has occurred since 1960, scientists say. Summer ice melt in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased almost 10-fold in the last 600 years,  weakening

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World Bank: Looking Beyond the Horizon: How Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Responses Will Reshape Agriculture in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Food security remains a key development challenge across the globe, with some projections estimating the need for an increase in agricultural production of 70-100 percent by 2050. Shifts in temperature and precipitation are

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weAdapt: Climate change vulnerability and adaptation planning can be taken into consideration across many sectors and at different levels and scales. Different scales of planning have different contexts and may require different approaches. In a landscape context, inter-linkages between sectors within the landscape form the context of adaptation planning, as the response of any one sector may have consequences

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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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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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BioOne: This comprehensive textbook on upland management in the British Isles combines a critical understanding of upland agriculture and related environmental issues with an assessment of the political decisions that have affected these regions over the past 50 years. Lois Mansfield, an agricultural geographer, has delivered this well, in a detailed and well-illustrated textbook suitable for

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BioOne: Recent studies of future food production in South Asia generally agree that the conditions for production will radically change in the years to come, in particular due to climate change and market variations. However, because we do not know how conditions will be modified and what adaptations will be required by farmers, the article

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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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CNN: The amount of ice in the Antarctic is increasing, scientists say – as a strange consequence of global warming. But at the other end of the world melting is proceeding apace. The Arctic may be shrinking as the world warms but Antarctic sea ice is expanding. Blame global warming for that, too, say Dutch

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Winner of the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz 2012 Book Award The battles of yesterday were fought over land. Those of today are over energy. But the battles of tomorrow may be over water. Nowhere is that danger greater than in water-distressed Asia. Water stress is set to become Asia’s defining crisis of the twenty-first century,

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This bulletin provides an overview of recent discussions about the impact of corruption on environmental governance, with a focus on emissions trading. It reviews new definitions and the latest corruption assessment methodologies in order to illuminate the broader challenges faced by GHG trading mechanisms and climate finance. Why is this issue important? The trading of

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This book provides a great overview of practical and early examples of actual adaptive actions already taking place across Europe. It provides detailed information on each identified measure: to which sector it belongs, (i.e. water safety, agriculture, cities), specific climate effects adapted to, length of the project and costs and benefits, including the proportion of

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is inviting experts to take part in a second round of comments on the Working Group II contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report that starts on Thursday, 28 March. For the second round of expert reviews, Working Group II, which covers climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, is

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Nature: The vulnerable north eastern states of India — which bear a significant brunt of the global climate change phenomena — have finally got some serious attention from climate scientists. The eight states, least studied so far, have been thoroughly analysed over a 34-year period in a new study.1 Based on the trends observed from

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UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark today launched UNDP’s 2013 Human Development Report, which charts the unprecedented rise of developing countries to create a new “global middle class.” “The development landscape is very different today from when the first Human Development Report was launched 23 years ago,” Helen Clark said, releasing UNDP’s 22nd flagship

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According to many authorities the impact of humanity on the earth is already overshooting the earth’s capacity to supply humanity’s needs. This is an unsustainable position. This book does not focus on the problem but on the solution, by showing what it is like to live within a fair earth share ecological footprint. The authors

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PR Web: University of Massachusetts Boston professor and leading conservation biologist Kamal Bawa and conservation photographer Sandesh Kadur announce the release of their book Himalaya: Mountains of Life. Five years in the making, the book focuses on the Eastern Himalaya—the first time the region’s threatened biodiversity and cultures have been documented together by a preeminent

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IISD: Reports summarizing the risks associated with climate variability and change in selected sectors, ecosystems and/or regions in three African and four Latin American and Caribbean countries are now available. African reports: Kenya: Climate risk management for malaria control in Kenya: the case of the western Kenyan highlands Niger: Sustainable wetland management in the face

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Nature: Tropical forests are unlikely to die off as a result of the predicted rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases this century, a new study finds. The analysis refutes previous work that predicted the catastrophic loss of the Amazon rainforest as one of the more startling potential outcomes of climate change. In the most extensive study

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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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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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New Scientist: We are on the cusp of a tipping point in the climate. If the global climate warms another few tenths of a degree, a large expanse of the Siberian permafrost will start to melt uncontrollably. The result: a significant amount of extra greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, and a threat – ironically

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Science Daily: Climate change could see dozens of lizard species becoming extinct within the next 50 years, according to new research published today. The often one-directional evolutionary adaptation of certain lizard species’ reproductive modes could see multiple extinctions as the global temperature increases. Globally it has been observed that lizards with viviparous reproduction (retention of

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PHYS.ORG: Plants can adapt to extreme shifts in water availability, such as drought and flooding, but their ability to withstand these extreme patterns will be tested by future climate change, according to a new study by researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and UTS. The research, recently published in the prestigious journal Nature,

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CNN: If seeing really is believing, then James Balog’s film Chasing Ice is probably prompting a widespread outburst of faith. It shows the graphic evidence of how fast glaciers are melting worldwide. You’d have to worry about James Balog’s knees. He has an operation on one leg and then, for a bit of gentle recuperation,

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Around 2 years ago, I was honoured to be invited by geologist and long-time educator Tom Farmer to collaborate on a textbook that expounded on the principles of climate science as well as put climate change denial in perspective. That collaboration has now been published by Springer; the textbook is Climate Change Science: A Modern

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Climate Central: One of the Climate News Network’s editors, Kieran Cooke, was among a group of journalists recently investigating the impact of climate change in Nepal and the Himalayas. In the last of his reports from the region he describes the difficulties of establishing why so many of Nepal’s glaciers appear to be shrinking. Mohan

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Dawn: Today, it is becoming increasingly clear that no country — whether rich or poor — can escape from the impacts of climate-related disasters. Hurricane Sandy, a late-season cyclone, swept through the Caribbean and up the East Coast of the United States in late October 2012, leaving dozens dead, thousands homeless and millions without power.

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Alertnet: No-till farming is a response to climate change that fits well with the needs of the Caribbean: it increases the ability to capture water, while withstanding both drought and excessive rains, says expert Theodor Friedrich, representative of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Cuba. The Caribbean islands are in dire need

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IIED: Accurate cost benefit analysis of climate change adaptation actions is not only critical in designing effective local-level adaptation strategies, but also for generating information that feeds into national and global climate policy agreements. One of the main challenges of this type of CBA is accommodating the wide-ranging impacts of climate change on diverse individuals

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The UN-REDD Programme is pleased to launch the UN-REDD Programme Guidelines on Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) (Working Final version). Recognizing the critical role of indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communi­ties to the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of REDD+, the UN-REDD Programme has prioritized stakeholder engagement from its inception. Recognizing that a key component

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Guardian: Team of scientists use radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure historic melting rates. A global temperature rise of 1.5C would be enough to start the melting of permafrost in Siberia, scientists warned on Thursday. Any widespread thaw in Siberia’s permanently frozen ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers

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Mongabay: The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a global set of statistics on carbon emissions from deforestation, agriculture and other forms of land use for the 1990-2010 period. The dataset, which is part of the FAO’s database of statistics known as FAOSTAT, is based on FAO estimates of forest biomass, deforestation,

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FIELD: The purpose of this guide is to assist developing country negotiators and others who are working on REDD-plus*. FIELD provides this information on a neutral basis. The guide is available in English, French and Spanish. Electronic versions can be found at www.field.org.uk This version has been updated in February 2013. Please note that final

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Environmental Expert: Four UN Agencies to Assist 30 Countries in Transition to a Green Economy.  Nairobi — A new partnership launched today by four UN agencies aims to support 30 countries over the next seven years in building national green economy strategies that will generate new jobs and skills, promote clean technologies, and reduce environmental

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CDKN has announce the publication of a new Working Paper by Karen Ellis, Ali Cambray and Alberto Lemma, entitled Drivers and Challenges for Climate Compatible Development. The paper sets out CDKN’s initial thinking on the drivers and challenges affecting climate compatible development (CCD) policy processes, based largely on the programme’s own national and subnational-level experiences.

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CDKN: Embarking on a climate compatible development pathway now has a price tag. The cost of tackling climate change in developing countries could reach some hundreds of billions of dollars annually over the coming decades.i Low-emission and climate-resilient development options often require upfront investments that can be costlier than conventional solutions. It will require tremendous

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ICIMOD: The Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) is a mountain system of extremes with great influence over the Asian continent. The system stretches 3,500 km over eight countries, from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east. It is the world’s largest and highest mountain system, with more than 30 peaks measuring over 7,600 m.

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ClimateNewsNetwork: One of the Climate News Network’s editors, Kieran Cooke, was among a group of journalists recently investigating the impact of climate change in Nepal and the Himalayas. He reports on some of the problems facing farmers in the region. KATHMANDU, 15 February – Life has been good in the past few years for Saraswati

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The GLOBE Climate Legislation Study THIRD EDITION. A Review of Climate Change Legislation in 33 Countries. On 14 January 2013 the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) released the 3rd Climate Legislation Study – produced in partnership with the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. This is the most comprehensive research project that

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RTCC: The latest Globe Climate Legislation Study was published in January 2013, focusing on 33 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. For the first time climate policymakers have a clear idea of how countries around the world are attempting to control their greenhouse gas emissions. We have selected the highlights from Globe’s analysis

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Zee News: Posing serious threats to the survival of ecosystem in Arunachal Pradesh and having deeper socio-economic impacts, large parts of the eastern Himalayas may become devoid of snow if temperature continues to rise due to climate change, experts say. “In the event of an increase in temperature by 0.5 degree Celsius about 912 sq

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