FIBL: Climate change mitigation is urgent, and adaptation to climate change is crucial, particularly in agriculture, where food security is at stake. Agriculture, currently responsible for 20-30% of global greenhouse gas emissions (counting direct and indirect agricultural emissions), can however contribute to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. The main mitigation potential lies in the [...]
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The Bhutanese: Weather forecast is a piece of information that can be used by anyone, from a farmer to a tourist, or for construction projects, or to simply planning a picnic! Have you ever wondered where and how the country gets its weather forecast? The Department of Hydro-Met Services (DHMS) under the Ministry of Economic [...]
CDKN: On February 15-17, the UNFCCC Technology Executive Committee (TEC) held its second meeting. On May 28-29, it will meet again. The TEC is informally called the “policy arm” of the UNFCCC Technology Mechanism, which aims to enhance climate technology development and transfer for mitigation and adaptation. Despite its importance, the TEC has not been [...]
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 [...]
PHYS.ORG: For algae to power our cars and planes, production needs to be low carbon and cost effective, which means working with natural processes, not against them, say scientists. Algae could become an important source of sustainable biofuel, as production doesn’t compete with food crops for land. But we may need to change the way [...]
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 [...]
Environment News Service: India is considering integrating Israeli water technologies into a national initiative to clean up the polluted Ganges River, which provides water for 40 percent of India’s population in 11 states through which it flows. Indian engineers, scientists and officials from water technology companies visited Israel late last month to explore the possibilities. [...]
Nature: Some countries could save money by switching from solar to wind. Generating wind energy is more than twice as cheap as solar photovoltaic (PV) energy production, a study of alternative energy in six developing countries has found. The findings, published in Nature Climate Change last week1, could help inform global debates on financing initiatives [...]
(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 [...]
Institute of Hazard Risks and Resilience: Last week Archinect website carried a slightly intriguing design concept for ‘Landslide Mitigation Housing‘ by Jared Winchester and Viktor Ramos, which are residential units to be intentionally constructed on a landslide site. The inspiration is a location in California at Rancho de Palos Verdes , near to Los Angeles, [...]
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 [...]
Alertnet: Indigenous communities around the world are highly vulnerable to climate change but instead of seeing them as victims, policy-makers should tap into their centuries-old knowledge of adapting to extreme weather patterns, aid workers say. In Iran, which has some 700 nomadic tribes, pastoralists have been successfully adapting to climate fluctuations for 12,000 years, development [...]
EVI: The changing dynamics of agriculture sector and the emerging threat of climate change The agriculture sector and its remarkable advances during the middle of 20th century is considered to be the basis for securing the food supply of a rapidly expanding human population especially in the developing countries that was enjoying the fruits of [...]
SciDevnet: Israeli researchers have designed a table that can withstand falling debris in the event of an earthquake. The table’s designers, Arthur Brutter and Ido Bruno of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, said it could be particularly valuable in schools, especially those built near geological fault lines or in developing countries, [...]
SciDevnet: Durable food security and agricultural growth depend on development strategies with resilience built in from the start, says Gordon Conway. Economic growth with resilience to environmental threats will be central to the agenda of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June this year, which aims to map out a pathway of sustainable development [...]
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 [...]
ScienceDaily: A project running almost 10,000 climate simulations on volunteers’ home computers has found that a global warming of 3 degrees Celsius by 2050 is ‘equally plausible’ as a rise of 1.4 degrees. The study, the first to run so many simulations using a complex atmosphere-ocean climate model, addresses some of the uncertainties that previous [...]
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 [...]
IPS News-By Catherine Wilson: In Papua New Guinea (PNG), which has no national power grid but large river systems and abundant sunshine, renewable energy has tremendous potential to transform remote rural lives with clean and sustainable electricity. Ten years ago Nick Nait, who lives in a small village near Mount Sion in the Eastern Highlands [...]
SciDevNet: Decisions on whether and how to use massive technical solutions known as ‘geoengineering’ to mitigate or reverse climate change must involve developing countries, a session on geoengineering governance at the Planet Under Pressure conference agreed yesterday (28 March). Geoengineering proposals have included reflecting sunlight away from the Earth by spraying ocean water into [...]
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 [...]
Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased 10-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective green opportunity. According to Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, “People should believe [...]
This publication “ICTs & Climate Change Adaptation: Enabling Innovative Strategies” has been published by Cambridge University Press and written by Angelica V. Ospina & Richard Heeks This publication covers information regarding the impacts of climate change intensification, developing countries must implement innovative strategies to adapt to changing climatic conditions and uncertainty. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play a significant role in strengthening adaptive capacity. This Brief identifies ICTs’ contribution to national adaptation strategies including NAPAs and to [...]
Squatting in a dusty field in the village of Rataul, two hours north of Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a young woman, like uncounted generations of women before her, is shaping a small mountain of cow dung into Frisbee-size cakes that will fire the family’s cookstove. Perhaps she will make a couple of [...]
Case Study: Conventional agricultural practices in tropical latitudes, using modern plant breeding techniques, fertilizers, and irrigation, have resulted in an increased grain yield (Huxley, 1999). However, these agricultural practices have also played a major role in increasing the global total area of marginal land that is now substandard for the long-term production of food and [...]
This book provides an interdisciplinary view of how to prepare the ecological and socio-economic systems to the reality of climate change. Scientifically sound tools are needed to predict its effects on regional, rather than global, scales, as it is the level at which socio-economic plans are designed and natural ecosystem reacts. The first section of [...]
The Climate Games and Problem Solving Tools are divided into 4 categories; Climate Dynamics, What Can I Do?, What Can We Do?, and Negotiations Materials. Some tools and games are available in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. Climate Dynamics: In this section explore the factors and processes that affect climate change and learn to avoid common [...]
Green Growth and Climate Technology Innovation Economies around the world are reorienting towards low-carbon, green growth paths. Technology, and its deployment and diffusion, is acknowledged as a key factor in efforts to mitigate and adapt to the current and future impacts of climate change. Therefore, accelerating innovation and technology transfer is in global focus. India, [...]
Housed within 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya Mountains sits 40 percent of the world’s fresh water. The massive ice sheets are melting at a faster-than-ever pace due to climate change, posing possible dire consequences for the continent of Asia and the entire world stand, and especially for the villages and cities that sit on the [...]
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 [...]
Climate change and the accompanying threat of ocean acidification from anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are among the most daunting environmental problems in the world, posing major socioeconomic, technical and environmental challenges. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average global temperatures should not rise by more than 2oC above pre-industrialized levels [...]
Researchers from Burkina Faso and France have developed a low-cost construction material made of clay and sand mixed with fibres from the kenaf plant. Kenaf is member of the cotton family, and its fibres are already widely used in Burkina Faso to make bags and ropes, as well as other products typically made from wood, [...]
Addressing climate change effectively is not only a challenge, it is also an opportunity. Growth that is based on high resilience and low carbon is at the centre of all efforts to address climate change. There are myriad opportunities to benefit people directly, while at the same time contributing to global efforts to control emissions [...]
The instant communications technology that nurtured grassroots revolutions in the Arab world could also help farmers cope with climate change, according to Iowa State University researchers. And so the researchers – Steven Fales, a professor of agronomy; and Gene Takle, director of Iowa State’s Climate Science Program, a professor of agronomy and of geological and [...]
A new climate change tool will not only help farmers to prepare for the future, it may also spur implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Although 127 countries rushed to ratify the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, far fewer have implemented it in [...]
The use of electric cars in China produces more particulate matter pollution than gasoline-fueled vehicles, according to a new study. In an analysis of five vehicle technologies, in 34 major Chinese cities. U.S. researchers found that the power generated to run electric cars produces significantly greater particulate matter emissions because 80 percent of China’s electricity [...]
Climate change has impacts on forests, fields, rivers – and thereby on humans that breathe, eat and drink. To assess these impacts more accurately, a comprehensive comparison of computer-based simulations from all over the world will start this week. For the first time, sectors ranging from ecosystems to agriculture to water supplies and health will [...]
The United Nations launched today an information system to improve and expand the exchange of weather, climate and water data, which can be used for disaster risk reduction, water management, food security and health purposes. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Information System will facilitate access to meteorological observations and products, making it easy to share [...]
Ask any industrialist and you will be told it is much cheaper to bribe the inspectors than to install and maintain pollution control equipment. When the rich and powerful of the world gather at an alpine ski resort, and the conversation turns to topics like “Is Capitalism Failing?” and “Global Risks 2012: The Seeds of [...]
The Himalayan Stove Project is dedicated to preserving the Himalayan environment and improving the health of the people living in the trans-Himalayan region. We provide clean cookstoves to individuals and families living in the Himalayas who now cook with traditional, rudimentary cookstoves or over open fire pits inside their homes, consuming excessive amounts of precious [...]
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 [...]
Greenfudge: One European bicycle culture consulting firm, Copenhagenize Consulting, released there results for a study exploring the world’s most bicycle friendly cities. By no coincidence, this index is named after the world capital for bicycle culture, Copenhagen. The index takes 20 major cities and analyzes them on 13 categories, including; advocacy, bicycle culture, bicycle infrastructure, perception [...]
The National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) attached to the Department of Space, government of India, is planning to set up a network of LIDAR (Laser Radar System) with the help of indigenously developed sensor tools in ten locations across the country in the first phase to study the aerosol distribution over India. This was disclosed [...]
NASA: Hubble Solves Mystery on Source of Supernova in Nearby Galaxy 01.12.12 Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have solved a longstanding mystery on the type of star, or so-called progenitor, which caused a supernova seen in a nearby galaxy. The finding yields new observational data for pinpointing one of several scenarios that trigger [...]
Telegraph Nepal: Though Climate Change (CC) has moved to the centre stage of public affairs, there is no effective policy of CC. Publications like “The Climate Change Risk Atlas” 2010[i] ranked Nepal as the fourth most vulnerable country in the world after Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan. Why is this country so vulnerable to CC for [...]
SciDevNet: Reducing methane and black carbon emissions could quickly tackle climate change while improving food security and people’s health, especially in developing countries, a study reports. Scientists identified 14 emission control measures that, when applied together, could reduce global warming by around 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, avoid up to 4.7 million premature deaths, and [...]
UNSE: Based on its experience in Koraput district in Odisha (India), the MSSRF floated a query at UN Solution Exchange India’s food and nutrition community recently, and asked responses from community of practice to suggest following: What cost-effective and simple technologies for water conservation are available for hilly areas such that agricultural activities can be [...]
Environmental Expert: An ensemble of climate and weather simulations could help developing countries better prepare for extreme events such as tropical cyclones, droughts and floods, scientists have said. Many poorer countries rely on traditional weather forecasting techniques, in which an initial set of weather conditions is fed into a single model to predict future adverse [...]
IPS News: In his quest to make the most efficient possible use of energy generated through wood combustion, Salvadoran René Núñez developed a simple but highly efficient wood stove that produces no smoke and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent. A whole meal can be cooked on a Turbococina or “Turbostove”, as he dubbed [...]
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 [...]
Renewable Energy Magazine: The Himalayan nation of Nepal has found it has become an expert in using cow dung to produce biogas, and is now sharing its knowledge with other countries around the world. It has installed over 200,000 biogas plants serving close to 300,000 homes across the country. Nepal is a poor country which, [...]
IntelNews: The United States Central Intelligence Agency tried at least twice to install a nuclear-powered surveillance device atop the Indian Himalayas, in an effort to spy on China. The decision to plant the device was taken in 1964, soon after communist China detonated its first nuclear bomb. In 1965, a team of CIA operatives attempted [...]
SciDevNet: Science and technology can seem remote from the unfolding dramas of the world but they were never far from the front line in the first months of the Arab Spring. When revolution broke out in Egypt’s Tahrir Square in January, scientists were there in force, helping to plant the seeds of change. When dictatorship [...]
A growing number of municipalities in Argentina are joining a movement aimed at tackling the problem of waste disposal while producing clean, inexpensive energy. Since 2006, more than 650 people have taken part in biogas production courses offered by the Fundación Proteger (Protect Foundation) in the municipality of Cerrito, in the eastern Argentine province of [...]
Bhutan is soon expected to have a strong information database on environment with the establishment of Environment Research Centre by Royal Society for Protection of Nature (RSPN). Currently being planned, the research centre will provide researchers, students, government agencies and the public updated information and critical scientific data on environment. The programme manager of RSPN, [...]
Chikagoist: Notre Dame researchers want to turn your house into a power plant. No, not like the Fisk coal plant in Pilsen. In fact, their vision is quite the opposite, turning every building into a passive solar collector with little more than a paintbrush. And in Chicago, with our monumental skyline and sprawling neighborhoods, the [...]
BioOne: Offsetting Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Himalaya? Clean Development Dams in Himachal Pradesh, India. The carbon-offsetting scheme Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has evolved into one of the most important instruments for the funding of renewable energy projects in mountain regions in developing and newly industrializing countries. The CDM allows industrialized states to compensate for [...]
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 [...]
National Science Foundation: In February 2012, the journal Nature Climate Change will publish a paper on rainfall extremes in India by principal investigator Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota’s computer science and engineering department and co-principal investigator Auroop Ganguly of the civil and environmental engineering department at Northeastern University in Boston, members of the [...]
