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 [...]
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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 [...]
IRIN News: The needs of millions of indigenous mountain people across Nepal are overlooked, imperilling their food security and hindering their economic progress, activists and experts say. “People in the mountains of Nepal are worse off in terms of total poverty – food and non-food poverty,” said Jean-Yves Gerlitz, co-author of a recent study on [...]
Vancouversun: Experts seek ways to boost production; World will need 70 per cent more food by 2050 In flood-damaged fields in the Philippines, farmers are testing a hardy new variety of rice that can survive completely submerged for more than two weeks. In Kenya’s Kibera slum, poor urban families are turning around their diets and [...]
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 [...]
CDKN [Sam Bickersteth, CEO]: The Government of Vietnam, IIED and BCAS (Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies) have just hosted the Sixth annual Community Based Adaptation (CBA) conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, 16-22 April. I participated, together with CDKN’s Asia Director, Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, many members of CDKN network and some 300 others from 61 countries: it [...]
UN Solution Exchange: The query on ‘Flood resistant tree crops for ensuring food security’ was floated by UN Solution Exchange India to its members. The responses got are interesting one and could be replicated in the mountains as well. The UNSE members opined that though India has rich traditional knowledge and wisdom to mitigate disasters, [...]
Climate Central: Dramatically reducing emissions of one of the key contributors to global warming – nitrous oxide – will require farmers to change their ways of growing food, and citizens in the developed world to slash their yearly meat consumption, according to a new study published Friday. The study by Eric Davidson, the director of [...]
Newswise — MADISON – An independent commission of scientific leaders from 13 countries today released a detailed set of recommendations to policymakers on how to achieve food security in the face of climate change. In their report, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change proposes specific policy responses to the global challenge of feeding [...]
BBC News- By Richard Black Environment correspondent: Major changes are needed in agriculture and food consumption around the world if future generations are to be adequately fed, a major report warns. Farming must intensify sustainably, cut waste and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms, it says. The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change spent [...]
Delegates continue to negotiate the outcome document for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) during back-to-back meetings from 19-27 March 2012, at UN Headquarters in New York, US. The first “informal informal” consultations to negotiate the draft outcome document will take place from 19-23 March, and will be followed by the Third [...]
Mr. Cyril R Raphael: In this article Mr. Raphael writes the agony of mountains in general by taking an example of overall development in one of the Indian mountain states called Uttarakhand. His discourse covers the social and economic development, governance, leadership, availability of basic amenities, health, education, livelihood, effectiveness of information and communication, role [...]
As I kid I liked to get up early with Grandma and sit with her in the kitchen while she cooked breakfast. She’d give me coffee, southern-style — thin, sweet and creamy. It was a treat because it was so wrong. Coffee, as any medical professional could have explained at the time, stunted your growth. [...]
Australia’s farmers must ”demand more from science” to help them adjust to the challenges of climate change, a leading agricultural scientist says. Addressing a rural leadership forum in Canberra this week, CSIRO chief research scientist Professor Mark Howden said there was ”a political economy in science” that often encouraged a repetitive publication of research data [...]
Developing countries can only build a green economy by adopting “profound policy reforms” to transform small-scale agriculture, argue Peter Messerli, from the Centre for Development and Environment in Switzerland, and colleagues. The green economy — one where growth comes with environmental and economic benefits — is dominating policy debates, including those linked to the UN [...]
ICAR says knowledge of climate change impact in India is ‘fragmentary’. A recent international conference on climate change and sustainable agriculture in New Delhi brought forth the shocking realisation that there are no conclusive studies in India on the prospective impact of climate change on the agriculture sector including livestock and fisheries. Much of the [...]
Improved integrated water management practices could increase agricultural production, protect natural systems and improve regional food security A major new survey of the likely effects of climate change on India’s water resources identifies huge challenges to maintaining adequate supplies in the next few decades, but argues that these can be overcome with an integrated, multi-sectorial [...]
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 [...]
National Geographic: We have the knowledge that can contribute to finding solutions to the crisis of climate change. But if you’re not prepared to listen, how can we communicate this to you? — Marcos Terena, Xané leader, Brazil. The precipitous rise in the world’s human population and humankind’s ever-increasing dependence on fossil fuel-based ways of living [...]
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 [...]
Suman K A : Close to a billion population on this planet lack access to safe drinking water, modern energy services and food to lead healthy and productive lives; a great majority of them residing in the SSA and South Asian regions. The problem is likely to be exacerbated with ever growing population, climate change, [...]
The significant negative impacts of climate change have become an interest shared not only on an international and national level but also on a local community level. Farmers in rural areas face the negative impacts of climate change in the form of harvest failure, the reduction of farming production and also the degradation of the [...]
TIME: Climate change might hit us in the most vital place of all — the dinner plate Why do we care about climate change? Obviously we worry about what warming temperatures might do to the geography of the planet — particularly melting polar ice and raising global sea levels. We fear the impact that climate [...]
Scientists should increasingly make critical contributions to ensure food security and environmental sustainability, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) systems ecologist Dr Bob Scholes said on Friday, adding that there was a need to better understand the link between climate change and food production. More attention should be given to developing agricultural practices that [...]
EurekaAlert: Modest advances for agriculture in Durban signal need for scientific input While last month’s climate negotiations in Durban made incremental progress toward helping farmers adapt to climate change and reduce agriculture’s climate footprint, a group of international agriculture experts, writing in the January 20 issue of Science magazine, urges scientists to lay the groundwork [...]
RECOFTC: At Durban’s Forest Day 5, the resounding message was that REDD+ will not work if people are hungry. How can we expect the poor to conserve forest resources if their food security – their very survival – rests on the use or consumption of those resources? Part of the problem is a perceived trade-off [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Book: Because of the importance of mountains and the many services they provide, sustainable mountain development does not only regard mountain communities, but is a global concern.. Climate change, increasing natural disasters, food and energy crises, population growth, water scarcity and desertification, loss of biodiversity, degradation of ecosystems, migration, and growth of cities – the [...]
It’s intrinsically scary: 7 billion people, growing to 9 billion. Can we feed them all? Already, obviously, we don’t. But climate change could make global food insecurity much, much worse. This week, coinciding with the opening of the United Nations’ climate talks in Durban, we’ve seen Oxfam warn that extreme weather threatens food security – [...]
Reuters: Sammad Sheikh of Tangchekh village in north Kashmir cannot understand why the rice fields that his family cultivated for generations are drying up. “It is a mystery as to why water is getting scarcer in summers,” he says. “This has been happening for the past few years though there have been one or two [...]
Daily Times: Since 2006, the food insecure population in Pakistan has increased by 12 million while the number of the severely food insecure population (consuming less than 1,700 kcal per day) has risen by 9.6 million to 45.3 million people – 28 percent of the population. Two thirds of these new severely food insecure people [...]
From the Atkins to the Dukan, protein-based diets are big news in the celebrity world. But what effect is our love affair with meat, fish and cheese having on the environment? Barely a week goes by without news of another ‘wonder diet’ hitting the headlines. Along with the bedroom antics of the Premier League’s finest [...]
MyRepublica: Experts from different countries including Nepal have expressed concerns over decreasing pollinator populations, as it results in low pollination rate posting threat to food security. About 25 experts and pollination management project managers from seven countries, who recently participated at international workshops in Chitwan and Kathmandu, stressed the need to formulate country strategies to [...]
Hindustan Times: Real-time SMS alert for farmers on impact of climate variation on crops. Farmers now get an alert on their mobile phones of sudden climate variations that can harm their crops. This is one of the innovative projects taken up by the central government to help farmers adapt to climate change in the country’s [...]
Radio Netherlands Worldwide: The Climate Change Risk Atlas ranked Nepal as the fourth most vulnerable country in the world last year. Given the vulnerability of the Himalayan country, USAID donated $30mn for the Hariyo Ban project last week. The programme hopes to build mechanisms that will help Nepal cope with climate change risks. Along Nepal’s [...]
Global Commission Charts Pathway For Achieving Food Security in Face of Climate Change. Scientific experts outline concrete steps toward a sustainable global food system. In the lead up to UN global climate talks in Durban, South Africa later this month, an independent global commission of eminent scientists today released a set of concrete recommendations to policy [...]
Mountain Partnership: Water, energy, forests: regional experts identify key issues for Central Asia. Dushanbe, Tajikistan: Effective adaptation strategies are required in response to the impact of climate change in mountain regions. With a view to better integrating scientific evidence and mountain people’s experience into international discussions, experts from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Tajikistan met [...]
Commodity Online: The implementation of climate smart agricultural practices will go a long in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The theme has now become the main agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) scheduled to start later in November at Durban, according to carbon-investments.co.uk. The importance of the reduction of greenhouse gas [...]
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 [...]
WWF: Himalayan nations must move rapidly to commit to efforts that build resilience to the impacts of climate change and generate resources for adaptation, capacity building and technology transfer. The Himalayan glaciers are the water towers of Asia, and the source of many of the world’s great rivers: The Yangtze, the Ganges, the Indus and [...]
Opinion Inquirer: There’s a horror story to scare us out of our wits today. No, it’s not any movie that’s currently showing in our movie houses. And no, it’s not the ongoing bloodletting in the South if you want a horror story from real life, even if the faces of the Muslim women that appeared [...]
Mountain Partnership: The Mountain Products Programme — implemented by FAO in the context of the Mountain Partnership — aims to improve the income and livelihoods of mountain communities through improved production and marketing of local, quality products. There is increasing demand around the world for quality, high-value products. In particular, for foods and beverages such [...]
UPI: More than half of tree species in eastern U.S. forests aren’t adapting to climate change as quickly or consistently as predicted, researchers said. Nearly 59 percent of the species examined in a study by Duke University researchers showed signs that their geographic ranges are contracting from both the north and south, a Duke release [...]
Times of India: Janez Potocnik is the European Union’s commissioner for the environment. Visiting India in the run-up to Rio+20, Potocnik spoke with Srijana Mitra Das about ways to develop a green economy and the importance of the world uniting to preserve its shared resource – the environment: What are our biggest environmental challenges today? [...]
Digital Journal: Of late, all is not well with the world’s most wanted caterpillars: the Cordyceps mushrooms, grown exclusively in the Himalayan region. Cordyceps is a rare species of mushroom widely used both in clinical medicine and as a household remedy. There are few countries where Cordyceps grow in the wild. These are Nepal, Bhutan [...]
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 [...]
CCAF has just published under CCAFS a paper in the journal Environmental Science and Policy which outlines the entry points for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. The paper essentially presents the CCAFS research for development framework, consisting of adaptation to short- and long- term climate variability and mitigation opportunities for smallholders. Some of the key [...]
Shalini Dhyani: Writes about the increasing pressure on the Himalayan ecosystem in Indian Himalayan region due to tourist influx, immigrants from neighboring country, environmental degradation and increasing population pressure. She suggests Payment for Environmental Services- PES a way forward through appropriate planning. “The most striking feature of earth is the existence of life, and the [...]
Tehelka: As Greenpeace completes 10 years in India, it chalks up its successes and faces some flak. Kunal Majumder looks at both sides of the story. WHEN GREENPEACE India listed 33 successful campaigns to celebrate its first decade in the country, the Copenhagen meet on climate change held two years ago was missing from that [...]
Bhutan Today: Carrying candles, the students of Gaddue College of Business Studies walked around Phuentsholing town on October 6. It was neither a celebration nor a demonstration. It was an advocacy march to inform people about global warming and the measures to combat it. According to the president of the College, Chen Tshering, people around [...]
Times of India: India’s food security situation continues to rank as “alarming” according to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index, 2011. It ranks 67 of the 81 countries of the world with the worst food security status. This means that there are only 14 countries in the world whose people have a [...]
Farm chiefs have a narrowing chance to diversify vital crops at rising threat from drought, flood and pests brought by climate change, food researchers warned on Monday. The world’s nearly seven billion people are massively dependent on a dozen or so crops that, thanks to modern agriculture, are intensively cultivated in a tiny number of [...]
GRAIN: Climate change endangers food security in Himalayan communities such as Dunche, in Nepal’s Rasuwa District. In this photo Tamang women pound and sift wheat. (Photo credit: Minority Rights Group/Jared Ferrie) Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around [...]
The Atlantic: From the increase in frequency of heatwaves to the spread of infectious diseases, changing weather patterns are already affecting us all. The consequences of climate change sometimes appear far off. But warming and changing weather patterns are already driving changes in public health. The following are seven ways in which climate change affects [...]
International Rivers: When the World Commission on Dams reviewed the development effectiveness of dams, multipurpose projects with large dams, power plants and irrigation schemes had the worst social, environmental and economic track record. As the world is grappling for appropriate answers to climate change, influential actors such as the World Bank want to give these [...]
Suman K A: The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), one of the eight missions under the NAPCC, lays emphasis on four key functional areas and ten important dimensions. Through these, the mission seeks to target both; the imminent challenges from the likely impacts of climate change on Indian agriculture and the more fundamental ones [...]
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 [...]
Tribune Pakistan: The government is waking up to the need for permanent solutions to tackle malaria, dengue and flooding given that the country “may have to learn to live with heavy rains and floods due to global climate change”. According to President Asif Ali Zardari’s spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, this was the outcome after a slew [...]
