Click Green: A new study from the University of California, Davis, provides a deeper understanding of the complex global impacts of deforestation on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, reports that the volume of greenhouse gas released when a forest is cleared depends on how the trees [...]
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Gadling: The Himalayan Stove Project is a non-profit organization that has a very clearly defined message and goal. The group looks to improve the lives of those living in the Himalaya Mountains while simultaneously preserving the environment there as well. To accomplish this lofty goal, the HSP intends to deliver 10,000 clean cooking stoves to [...]
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 [...]
Scientific American (blog): One day after new test results showed that only 32 percent of U.S. 8th graders are proficient in science, a group of 26 states has helped draft a document that may bring about a major overhaul of science education in this country. Known as the Next Generation Science Standards, the draft sets ambitious [...]
The Independent: Waste milk creates a carbon footprint equivalent to thousands of car exhausts, according to a study that highlights the environmental costs of inefficient farming and the aggressive marketing of supermarket food. Scientists have calculated that the 360,000 tonnes of waste milk that is poured down British drains each year creates greenhouse gases equivalent [...]
National Geographic: Giant sauropods produced huge amounts of greenhouse gases, study suggests. Dinosaurs may have helped warm ancient Earth via their own natural gaseous emissions, a new study says. Like modern-day ruminants, giant plant-eating dinosaurs likely had microbes in their guts that gave off large amounts of methane—a potent greenhouse gas even more effective at [...]
Environmental Research Web: University of California, Berkeley, scientists are drilling into ancient sediments at the bottom of Northern California’s Clear Lake for clues that could help them better predict how today’s plants and animals will adapt to climate change and increasing population. The lake sediments are among the world’s oldest, containing records of biological change [...]
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 [...]
Devex: Global demand for food will double in coming decades, through population growth and rising levels of consumption. Ensuring the planet produces enough food for all in a sustainable way will be a real challenge, and climate change will hamper our efforts if it is not tackled. Food security is crucial to helping the poorest [...]
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 [...]
The News: Siachen is the only Glacier of Karakorum range melting with unprecedented rate, the cause of which is the military presence in the area and not global warming. The high-resolution images of the Siachen glacier show deep cracks every 10 feet (crevasses), both in longitudinal and transverse directions. The retreat of the glacier is [...]
Yale 360: With soaring human populations and rapid climate change putting unprecedented pressure on species, conservationists must look to innovative strategies — from creating migratory corridors to preserving biodiversity hotspots — if we are to prevent countless animals and plants from heading to extinction. By Lee Hannah Throughout much of the Pleistocene era, which began [...]
Reuters: To figure out what is likely to happen to Earth’s climate this century, scientists are looking 3 million years into the past. They have concluded that the most revealing slice of time is the Pliocene Epoch, a warm, wet period between 3.15 million and 2.85 million years ago, when the world probably looked and [...]
SNV Nepal: Given the high potential for renewable energy technologies (RETs) to contribute to both climate mitigation and adaptation, it is increasingly important to address climate change issues when planning for RET dissemination. However, sustainable utilisation of Nepal’s available energy resources will only be possible if planning is carried out at the local level with [...]
PHYS.ORG: Kimberly Casey is a glaciologist who spends a fair amount of time in the office analyzing satellite data. But when she talks about her fieldwork on remote glaciers, one suspects she could do pretty well in a triathlon, too. Casey has carried 70-pound backpacks up mountain crossings in the Himalayas and waded ice-cold streams [...]
The world’s poorest countries can jump directly from the pre-electricity era into a new industrial revolution through an “energy Internet” — the uptake of renewable energy shared through communication technologies, argues economist Jeremy Rifkin. “The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems”, writes Rifkin. And now — [...]
Many of the world’s rarest and richest forests, located in high-altitudes, could be all but wiped out by the combined impact of man-made climate change and habitat destruction. An international scientific team has warned of the near-total loss of one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, the Mexican cloud forest, along with 70 percent of [...]
Low-tech experiment produces accurate data on threat to plant biodiversity and may also help with carbon capture. The fresh snow covers the Aubonne valley overlooking Lake Geneva. Clumps of beech, maple and juniper trees cling to the slopes of the Jura highlands. Scientists from Lausanne Polytechnic (EPFL) and Switzerland‘s Forest, Snow and Landscape Research Institute [...]
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 [...]
Researchers have posted carbon stock data for the world’s tropical forests on ArcGIS Online, a web-based mapping platform developed by ESRI. The data, based on satellite measurements from NASA including LiDAR and MoDIS data as well as on-the-ground field measurements, reveals the biomass of tropical forests at a 500-meter resolution, the highest resolution ever published [...]
Livestock production systems in Nepal are experiencing a significant downturn as critical resources such as water, soil, forests, agricultural productivity and farm labor are affected by rapid land use changes and climate change impacts. To ensure livestock climate change adaptation and strengthen livestock production systems, it is critical to understand and enhance feed, nutrition, and [...]
In a series of articles over the last several decades, I have reported on the major first-order role of land use change as a regional and global climate forcing. A sample of the papers we have authored on this subject include: Pielke, R.A. and R. Avissar, 1990: Influence of landscape structure on local and regional [...]
Preening over plantations and weeds, green statistics conceal the alarming loss of natural, old-growth forests. One of the many miracles of India is that it has maintained one-fifth of its area under forest cover since Independence. The population has jumped three-and-a-half times since 1947 and with it the demand for agricultural land. During 1951-80, India [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Meat and cheese top the list of foodstuffs that have a negative impact on the environment, according to research If everyone in the UK went vegetarian or vegan it would have the same environmental benefit as talking half of all cars off the road, according to new research. Scientists have calculated the impact of 61 [...]
SciDevNet: Current climate models and projections may be inaccurate because measurements are based on guidelines that do not include the effects of trees on the local climate, according to agroforestry experts. This in turn may be hindering effective adaptation by local farming communities, as the true effect of climate change on their crops is not [...]
BBC News: Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said. An international conference agreed that the region’s surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years. As a result, they are better suited [...]
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, [...]
The Interdependent: In the birthplace of the potato, things are heating up. Over the past decade, the Quechua farmers working at the El Parque de la Papa, outside Cusco, Peru, started noticing that the potato varieties they used to grow at lower altitudes can now only be cultivated much higher up the mountainside. “Temperate zones [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Noreen Haider: Writes from her visit to the beautiful Naran valley of Khyber Pakhtunkwa province in Pakistan, where she observes various dimensions of social and environment development. Noreen came across various developmental projects and activities in the region and finds that poor education and poorly planned social and environmental projects lead to acute poverty natural [...]
Amrit Banstola: It is surprising to see that after 61 years of initiation of improved cook stove (ICS) by Government of Nepal (such initiative dates as far back as 1950 with the introduction of Indian models of Hyderabad and Magan stoves) traditional and primitive chulas (stoves) are still in extensive use in Chidipani rural community. [...]
Deccan Herald: A team of US and Korean scientists blame high levels of air pollution in South Asia for a sharp rise in the intensity of tropical cyclones over the Arabian Sea during and before the monsoon, writes Kalyan Ray . Increased air pollution in South Asia including India is pushing up cyclone intensity in [...]
World Agro-Forestry: How trees and people can co-adapt to climate change: reducing vulnerability through multifunctional agroforestry landscapes. Climate changes, especially increased variability, affect landscapes, human livelihoods and trees in many ways. They are the consequence of a wider set of global change issues, including population increase, more consumption per capita and trade globalisation. Both people [...]
Earth Times: Flecks of soot from a smoky open stove in India blacken more than just the roofs of the hut it is smoldering in. Fine particles of such smoke lodge deep in the lungs of women preparing meals, gifting them a dark scourge of ill-health and premature death. That same black soot floats higher [...]
Amrit Banstola: The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that ―warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from scientific observations of increases in global average temperature, melting of snow and ice, and rising of global average sea level. And from various evidences from recent studies, the climate change [...]
IUCN: Businesses around the world are adjusting to a rapidly-shifting economic landscape but should we expect them to lead the way to a green global economy? Olivia Pasini asks the question for our latest World Conservation Debate. The concept of a green economy has been around for a while now. For many years there have [...]
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 [...]
New York Times: Nepalganj (Nepal)-Here’s an unlikely starting point for clean energy: No toilets, and plenty of dung. In developing countries where domestic animals are ubiquitous and sewage systems rare, biogas technology — in this case methane derived from feces — can provide both valuable fuel and improved sanitation. Unlike directly burning animal dung, the [...]
UN-REDD Drafting Committee invites you to comment on a new version of the UN-REDD Programme Draft Social and Environmental Principles and Criteria. REDD+ has the potential to deliver substantial benefits beyond carbon. However, fulfilling this potential depends on careful planning and implementation that effectively address such issues as monitoring, transparent and effective governance, participation, inclusiveness [...]
Two Circles: India will engage 100,000 educated youths to execute an ambitious Green India Mission (GIM) which seeks to increase the country’s forest cover to 33 percent from 20 percent within 10 years, says a top forest official. P.J. Dilip Kumar, director general of India’s forest department, says that in order to cope with climate [...]
Suman K A: The National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency, one of the key missions, of the National Action Plan for Climate Change has at its core – unlocking staggering INR 74,000 crore energy efficiency opportunities, reducing annual fuel savings by 23 mtoe, avoiding energy capacity addition worth 19000 MW, and achieving 98 million tCO2-e [...]
The Hindu: Believe it or not, the humble earthworm can be the latest weapon in the war against climate change. A major four-year-old study has revealed that instead of just wriggling around and providing food for birds, earthworms – have been burrowing their way through the ground for 300 million years – can help prevent [...]
Economic Times: Increasing pollution levels are threatening fresh water bodies worldwide, but the problem is assuming the shape of an environmental crisis in a developing country like India. A study of lakes in Thane, Maharashtra, undertaken by environmental chemist Pravin Singare of Bhavan’s College, Mumbai, and colleagues, shows how they are being contaminated by the [...]
Womens eNews: The documentary “Weathering Change,” released today, shows how climate change is disproportionately impacting women. In one Nepali woman’s village, the forest has been depleted and only a quarter of the inhabitants have enough to eat. Walking into the forest near her home, Sarada Chaudhary likes to look up. Above her head, branches weave [...]
Down to Earth: Advisory panel members want independent experts to assess large projects. An evaluation report on the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha by a retired forest official could not differentiate between a tiger and a hyena. The report relates to Vedanta’s controversial bauxite mining bid and is one of the instances of shoddy evaluations quoted [...]
Mongabay: Organic farming can be more profitable in the long-term than conventional agriculture: Organic farming is more profitable and economically secure than conventional farming even over the long-term, according to a new study in Agronomy Journal. Using experimental farm plots, researchers with the University of Minnesota found that organic beat conventional even if organic price [...]
Environment Expert: There is a big potential to cut greenhouse gases (GHGs) from municipal solid waste management, according to a new report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). The report, ‘Waste opportunities – Past and future climate benefits from better municipal waste management in Europe’, covers the EU-27 (excluding Cyprus), Norway and Switzerland. It estimates [...]
Climate Connect News: The Biogas Support Program of Nepal has been issued 31,874 CERs by the UNFCCC. The project’s DOE is DNV and buyers of the CERs include KfW, Swiss RE and Community Development Carbon Fund among others. The methodology adopted for the CDM project was AMS-I.C. The project activity had the Alternative Energy Promotion [...]
Next generation biofuels and synthetic biology For some, biofuels hold out the promise of a win-win-win solution. They claim that biofuels will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote energy independence, and encourage rural development. This enthusiasm translates into significant government support. Annual global subsidies for biofuel production were $11 billion in 2006 and could rise to [...]
EurekaAlert: A new study shows that as climate change enhances tree growth in tropical forests, the resulting increase in litterfall could stimulate soil micro-organisms leading to a release of stored soil carbon. The research was led by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Cambridge, UK. The results are published [...]
Environmental Expert: Imagine a community where residents voluntarily separate their household wastes into 24 discrete categories for recycling, where recycling centers are located in almost every neighborhood, and where local coordinators actively promote recycling and waste minimization. It’s happening now in Oizumi, a small rural community about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Tokyo, Japan. [...]
The NEWS: Pakistan’s energy sector crisis is posing challenges to the country’s national security now. Around six to eight hours of daily loadshedding in the urban areas and a twelve to eighteen hours in rural areas, coupled with unemployment also caused by energy shortage in the industrial sector, has led to significant vulnerabilities that are [...]
IGES: An ambitious Indian biofuel program initiated in 2003 by the Planning Commission of India, envisaging 30% mandatory blending of diesel by 2020, involved raising Jatropha curcus on wastelands across India. In mobilizing millions of lowest income farmers and landless poor with the promise of high returns the powerful Commission may have relied too heavily [...]
Kuensel Online: Farming has been identified as the highest GHG emitter. Lush green paddy or maize fields on which most Bhutanese depend for livelihood may be a carbon sink, but its contribution to the greenhouse gas emission could far outstrip other sectors. A study, which is being undertaken by the national environment commission (Bhutan), states [...]
Alertnet: Bangladesh is getting involved in carbon credit trading with the certification of a recycling plant that converts organic waste into compost. “We collect some 100 tonnes of vegetable waste from two city markets daily and recycle it in our plant in the city’s suburbs through composting. If that waste had been dumped in the [...]
Alertnet: In March 2007, the United Kingdom took the landmark step of putting the issue of climate change as a priority security risk to the United Nations Security Council. Four years on, Germany, which currently holds the presidency of the body, has reignited the debate, placing global warming and security back on the council’s agenda [...]
