Shalini Dhyani: Writes about hill agriculture, agro-forest and such ecosystem practices from Indian Himalayan region. She emphasizes on improving the socio-economic condition of mountain people by adopting a range of animal husbandry, agro-forestry and traditional agriculture practices through better scientific and technical inputs. Entire Himalayan ecosystem is undergoing rapid land-use and climatic changes in last

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Dr. Madhav Karki writes about the commitments made by the member countries during Rio+20 summit on various sustainable development goals (SDGs) on low carbon green economy principles and good governance practices, in socio-economic and environmental perspectives. He argues that post Rio+20 actions should be more cohesive, participatory, multi-disciplinary and simple in approach, so that they

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Times of India: Popular for its sweetness, apples produced in the Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh are now gradually losing their taste and even turning sour as a result of climate change. With the weather becoming erratic and a clear variation in temperature, snowfall and rainfall pattern being recorded, apple crops are no more getting

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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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Nepal Times: Eastern Nepal’s model township is on its way to becoming the country’s first Green City. Nepal’s easternmost district of Ilam is known for its diligent citizens and scenic tea gardens, but it is also showing the way about how towns can be cleaner and greener with community participation and competent leadership. The main

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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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CHI: In recent disasters in Indian Himalayan region we lost many human lives, livestock population, agriculture land, livelihood opportunities and huge infrastructure overnight.  The most affected states due to these calamities in India are Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim and part of West Bengal. The flood in Kosi and Indus basins in Nepal and Pakistan

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Science Daily: The insurance industry, the world’s largest business with $4.6 trillion in revenues, is making larger efforts to manage climate change-related risks, according to a new study published December 13 in the journal Science. “Weather- and climate-related insurance losses today average $50 billion a year. These losses have more than doubled each decade since

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A two days stakeholders workshop that was attended by over 130 stakeholders from 37 different institutes of 12 Indian Himalayan states, representatives of 7 State Governments, 27 Experts from various national and State level institutions, members of DST’s Expert and Steering committees, representatives of NGOs/Civil Society organizations, Senior officers of Central Ministries concluded at CSIR-

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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

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J.C.Moore: Science is about using observation and reason to understand the physical world. Some people are suspicious of computer models and theories; so here is some of the the basic data in pictures and graphs. Ice core data gives a good picture of what has happened to the Earth in the last several ice ages. Please

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Ground Report: Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system; it is not the nearest to the sun but it is so hot that it can melt hard metals if placed on its surface. Greenhouse effect from the action of Green House Gases (GHGs) is the chief factor for this hotness. Venus is next

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The Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region is highly dynamic as there are many socioeconomic and environmental drivers of change at play, including climate change. The impacts of these changes challenge the resilience of natural and human capacities and environments in the region. Climate change is believed to contribute to extreme weather events and possibly to increase

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Times of India: Isolating the human imprint on global warming amid natural climate fluctuations requires long-term analysis and not short term studies, satellite data reveals. The data indicates that the lower troposphere (up to eight km above the earth’s surface) has warmed roughly by 17 degrees Celsius since the beginning of satellite temperature records in

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Guardian: While government leadership is unlikely to be strong, companies are taking the lead and there is a serious business agenda. A dim light is shining on Durban: what does this mean for the climate talks? After a hectic year of meetings in three continents and soon in Africa, the annual climate platform is attracting

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Deccan Herald: Some time back, a lot of heat was generated over the controversial UN panel report on the melting of the Himalayan glaciers.  This case study is from Andes, where a project on Painting mountains with White is going to be considered as solution. While the report on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers

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The Bhutan Climate Summit for A Living Himalayas was successfully convened in Thimphu on 19 Nov 2011. Presided over by the Honourable Prime Minister of Bhutan, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley; Environment Ministers from the four countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal adopted a declaration on behalf of their Governments wherein a regional ‘framework of

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One Earth: In India, extreme weather basically means the annual monsoon, and this season’s rains, which ended a few weeks ago, were a constant topic of conversation during the five days I’ve just spent traveling around the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh. U.P., as people call it here, is one of the poorest states in

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UNDP Regional Centre: As a matter of national urgency, the Bhutanese Government – with assistance from an international climate change adaptation fund that was established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and partner organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility, the World Wildlife Fund and the Government

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Kuenselonline: While world over livestock population is experiencing an alarming increase to cater to as alarming an increase in demand for meat and diary products, Bhutan is headed the other way. That is quite befitting of the country’s emphasis and priority for environmental protection that draws its essence from its guiding philosophy of Gross National

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The Canadian: Since the NATO invasion and the subsequent terror wars in Islamic world the there have been drastic climatic horrors affecting the routine patterns of life on earth. Fast changing climatic behaviour could affect regions, human activities, and global progress, irreversibly unsettling the masses. However, the scientists who work to earn money from colonial

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IndiaChinaInstitute: Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalayas is a multiyear initiative that endeavors to uncover new dimensions to the current discourse on global environmental policy. The project aims to create an enabling environment for knowledge-sharing and production on the complex role of religion with particular emphasis on sustainable environmental issues. Given the diversity

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Reuters: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday urged governments in rich nations to work around troubled economic times and scale up donations to a global climate change fund that is at risk of becoming an “empty shell”. The world’s poorest nations are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, more extremes of droughts and floods

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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

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Pak Observer: The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its annual World Energy Outlook Report has warned that the world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario of perilous climate change and extreme weather events. It warned that the current trends of rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially

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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

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Practical Action: This briefing focuses on the impact of climate change on Nepal’s rural poor. A great deal has been written  on the challenges of providing clean energy and the risks to urban populations but, as this paper outlines, climate change also has many other consequences. Rural communities, whose livelihoods are intimately tied to the

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The News: The federal government would help provinces achieve Millennium Development Goals’ targets by bringing one million hector of new land under tree cover by 2015, a senior official said here on Thursday. He said devolution of the environment ministry would not affect the targets set by the federal government and introduction of National Forest

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CLIMATE 2011: Relatively little scholarly work has focused on comparative evaluation of South Asian countries’ environmental performance (EP) in addressing issues of vulnerability to climate change. It is an accepted fact that climate change induced problems in South Asia have been increasing over many years, but their effects largely have been blamed on extreme poverty

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Business Recorder: The humanitarian emergency caused by the few last months’ devastating floods in Asia is a warning that the situation could get worse, The people affected by this crisis have lost everything, and their difficulties are only just beginning. Two countries Pakistan and Thailand have been badly hit by the disaster. Hundreds of thousands

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This has been an eventful year for natural calamities – drought in the Horn of Africa, floods yet again in Pakistan, and now also in Thailand. NGOs, think-tanks and scientific organizations eager to share their insights or shed some light on what could be causing these events have tried to keep pace with nature by

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WorldWatch: Scientists, policymakers, and community representatives from across South Asia met earlier this month to discuss the many threats that climate change poses to the continent’s Greater Himalayan region. Across Nepal and Tibet, average temperatures have been up to six times warmer in the mountains than in the plains, triggering changes in regional weather patterns.

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SEI: Publication- Climate Economics the State of the Art by Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center November 2011 Climate science paints a bleak picture: The continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly likely to cause irreversible and catastrophic effects. Urgent action is needed to prepare for the initial rounds of

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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

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World Crunch: Melting glaciers in the Himalayas put the small Kingdom of Bhutan at risk. Not only are the “frozen reservoirs” a fundamental water source, but the melting can also cause GLOFS – aka: ‘mountain tsunamis’ – killer flash floods that occur when glacial lakes suddenly burst. The Kingdom of Bhutan, tucked between India and

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CNN: Bhutan is the last of the Himalayan kingdoms. The small country is situated in the nooks and crannies of the highest mountain range on earth. It’s a special place that didn’t have paved roads until the 1960s, was off-limits to foreign tourists until the 1970′s, and didn’t have television until 1999, the last country

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WWF-Nepal: A five-year program to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change and threats to biodiversity in Nepal, was officially launched at a ceremony in Kathmandu on 8 Nov 2011. The Hariyo Ban program is a new investment in biodiversity conservation in Nepal, funded by the US Agency for International Development​ (USAID). The program will

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Huffingtonpost: A tally of lost lives and health care expenditures arising from just six recent weather-related or epidemiological events suggests that the economic toll of future climate change is likely to be even more staggering than previously thought, according to a study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs. The analysis, conducted by a team

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IISD: Insanity has famously been described as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Does this maxim apply to the UN climate negotiations? If so, are those of us flying to Durban later this month about to join an exercise in mass madness? THE MADNESS OF KING COP Since the Conference of

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Telegraph: And why?” my wife Lucy demanded yesterday as she peeled off her gardening gloves, “are my clematis and roses in full bloom on November 1, and why am I still being bitten by gnats and midges?” Standing in shirt sleeves and muddy-kneed cords, brandishing a pair of secateurs, she sounded cross. “I’m supposed to

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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

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The Sunday Morning Herald: ‘THE claim ‘the science is settled’ is plainly false due to the many problems with the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] hypothesis (e.g. global temperatures have not risen since 1998 despite rising CO2 levels; alarmism is based on flawed models that do not reflect empirical measurements.)” STEPHEN HARPER ”Why is the Australian

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CSDi is presenting a compilation of Community Based Adaptation Field Activities—complete with links to source materials and technical information. The content of field activities is given broadly in following heads: 1. Agriculture a. Soil and water conservation for agriculture. b. Developing water for agriculture. c. Agriculture in flood-prone or waterlogged areas. d. CBA techniques for agriculture.

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WRI: East Coast snowstorms in October. The suburbs of Bangkok under water. Extreme droughts in the Horn of Africa. Such “freak” weather events have dominated headlines for over a year, and with good reason. Now, a new report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is making the connections between these extreme weather events

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Guardian: Action cannot be put off until the economic storm has passed. The poor countries most vulnerable to the extreme weather associated with climate change need help now. Critics often accuse world leaders of being able to focus on no more than one problem at once. So with the economic crisis, and the eurozone’s problems

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Asian Age: Wetlands consist of marshes, swamps, bogs and similar areas. The functions of wetlands are filtering out of sediments and nutrients from the surface water and support all life forms through extensive food webs and bio-diversity. Wetlands contribute to a number of important processes including movement of water into streams and rivers, decay of

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The UNFCCC Compendium on methods and tools to evaluate impacts of, and vulnerability and adaptation to, climate change is designed to assist Parties and other potential users in selecting the most appropriate methodology for assessments of impacts and vulnerability, and preparing for adaptation to climate change. The Compendium was developed in 1999 and updated in

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Eurekalert: Some people may consider them pests, but ants are key to many plants’ survival. In the eastern US, ants are integral to plant biodiversity because they help disperse seeds. But ants’ ability to perform this vital function, and others, may be jeopardized by climate change, according to Nate Sanders, Associate Professor of Ecology and

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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

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Himalayan Times: The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, is now warming up, and preparations are taking place. It will bring together representatives of the world’s governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan,

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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

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Daily Times: President says devastation caused by climatic changes is a wake-up call to search permanent solutions to natural disasters ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari, on Friday, called upon the international community, especially the countries advanced in disaster management, to assist Pakistan in capacity building so that it could meet eventualities caused by natural calamities

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The New Indian Express:  India’s first climate change conclave to be held in Hyderabad will help raise awareness on alternative energy resources and improve the existing energy policies in the country. Climate change is for real and India, as a growing economic and industrial power, has an increased role in global climate change control. The

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Sudhirendar Sharma: Even at the cost of being refuted, it wouldn’t be out of context to prophesize that globalization of climate change will convert the Himalaya into a new playground for capitalism! Not only will the Himalaya get converted into a repository of carbon to counter what others have voluntarily emitted but will charge for

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Himalayan Times: There is uncontestable evidence that human induced climate change is inevitably leading the world to ecological disaster with grave human implications. With steady but sure irreversible impacts on human life and livelihood, the disaster is particularly threatening the most vulnerable developing countries of the world. The question often raised is about the role

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The climate summit to be held in the capital on November 19 expects to adopt and endorse a 10-year road map for adaptation to climate change in the eastern Himalayas sub-region for ensuring food, water and energy security, and mechanisms to ensure financing and implementation of the road map. It also expects to make a

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We are pleased to inform you that we are currently collecting inputs for the International Mountain Day 2011 (IMD) products. This year’s International Mountain Day theme will focus on Mountains and Forests as a link to the International Year of Forests 2011. It aims to raise awareness about the relevance of mountain forests and the

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Collective thinking and engagement around Community-Based Adaptation: Creating a shared global community Over the last several years there has been a growing interest in Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) to climate change in the developing countries, which has led to a significant and growing number of actions on the ground by NGOs and research organizations. Many of

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IISD:The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has released a report titled “Accounting for Health Impacts of Climate Change.” The report highlights that Asia and the Pacific host the greatest number of people vulnerable to the projected adverse impacts of climate change, which will challenge the public health community at the global, national, and local levels with the appearance of

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ACT: Dr. Urs Herren, Ambassador of Switzerland to Bangladesh, celebrated the National Day of Switzerland by addressing the government and citizens of Bangladesh in a published letter that highlights Swiss dedication to assisting with adaptation to climate change. The letter acknowledged that Switzerland and Bangladesh share the challenge of mitigating, and adapting to, climate change:

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