Nepal has made significant efforts towards low-emission development, using government tools to encourage finance flows towards climate action. However, achieving its ambitions will be difficult given current
UN climate talks in Ghana are making progress on ways to help developing nations slow deforestation and have eased disputes over use of greenhouse gas targets for industrial sectors, delegates said on Monday. "It's moving pretty well now," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters of the Aug. 21-27 talks which are defining the building blocks of a new UN global warming pact meant to be agreed by the end of 2009.
Abolishing subsidies on fossil fuels could cut world greenhouse gas emissions by up to 6 percent and also nudge up world economic growth, a UN report showed on Tuesday. Subsidies on oil, gas or coal are meant to help the poor by lowering the price of energy but the report, issued on the sidelines of a 160-nation UN climate meeting in Ghana, said they often backfired by mainly benefiting wealthier people. The study estimated that energy subsidies, almost all for fossil fuels, totalled about US$300 billion a year or 0.7 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP).
The country is preparing to face the aftermath of climate change in around 50 different sub-sectors under six thematic areas of agriculture, health, livelihoods, disasters management, environment and development. Bangladesh will present its national action plans at a conference in London in September, according to a presentation at the international symposium on "Climate Change and Food Security in South Asia".
One of the country's largest builders of coal-fired power plants will give investors detailed warnings about the risks that global warming poses to its business under a deal with New York's attorney general. The agreement Wednesday between the attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, and the company, Xcel Energy of Minneapolis, is the first of its kind in the country. It could open a broad new front in efforts by environmental groups to pressure the energy industry into reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Conservation zones in the Indian Ocean set up to protect fish stocks are not preventing coral reefs from collapsing due to warmer temperatures or helping to speed their recovery, researchers reported on Wednesday. The reason is many of these non-fishing areas are located in warmer waters where coral reefs have a harder time surviving when temperatures rise suddenly, said Newcastle University marine biologist Nick Graham, who led the study.
Yvo de Boer said Africa was still lagging in attracting investments in green technology to help slow rising greenhouse gases and in getting help to adapt to the effects of droughts, floods, rising seas and less predictable rains. Speaking during 160-nation Aug. 21-27 climate talks in Accra, de Boer urged African nations to insist on their interests regarding a new UN climate treaty due to be agreed by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.
Akshaya Kumar Sahoo THE ORISSA government has woken up to take damage control measures against the global warming related sea erosions at Satabhaya and Kanhupur villages in Kendrapara district as well as Puri and Konark beaches. For Puri and Konark, the government has decided to prepare a blueprint to construct seawalls to protect tidal waves of the Bay of Bengal frequently inundating parts of the two major tourist spots.
Vibha Sharma In the endevour to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions to achieve a clean environment, humble algae appears to be taking a lead over the more-talked-about biodiesel source jatropha. Experts say that algae farming in less than 1 per cent of India's total land can make the country self-sufficient in liquid fuel. Algae yield from one acre of wasteland can be 10 times more than jatropha and by a conservative estimate over 10,000 litres of oil can be produced from one acre of waste/degraded land, they add.
Paris: Climate change could release unexpectedly huge stores of carbon dioxide from Arctic soils, which would in turn fuel a vicious circle of global warming, a new study warned on Sunday. And according to one commentary, current models of climate change have not taken this extra source of greenhouse gas into account. Scientists have long known that organic carbon trapped inside a blanket of frozen permafrost covering one fifth of the world's land mass would, if thawed, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Raghvendra Rao Indian Railways' plan to use state-of-the-art technology to operate Electrical Multiple Units (EMUs) in the Mumbai suburban area, primarily aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and earning them carbon credits, is now on track with the Railways Ministry finalising the project design and initiating the process of getting approval from the Environment Ministry. The project essentially envisages adoption of a three-phase Insulated Gate Bi Polar Transistor (IGBT) technology on the three-phase EMUs in the Mumbai suburban area of the Western and Central Railways.
