The report highlights the collaborative action already happening between cities, states, regions, business, and national government, using data reported by over 1000 cities, states and regions through
Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa has left the country for Rome to attend a high-level conference on world food security. President Rajapaksa is to participate in the High-Level Conference on World Food Security and the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy to be held in Rome, Italy from June 3-5, 2008 on an invitation from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The High-Level Conference, open only to the invited participants will address food security and poverty reduction in the face of climate change and energy security.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Sunday he would seek to convince world leaders gathering in Rome this week that ethanol is not to blame for global food inflation threatening millions with hunger. Brazil is the world's largest ethanol exporter and a pioneer in sugar-cane based biofuels, making it a target of critics who say ethanol is behind increases in world commodity prices.
The G8 climate scorecards provide a comparable snapshot of the current situation across the G8 countries as well as the five major developing countries. They provide recent and expected emission developments of each country and various other indicators. The scorecards also provide an overview of the most important activities by the governments to respond to the threat of climate change.
the Indian Meteorological Department (imd) has predicted a normal monsoon for this year. But such predictions are known to fail often. A recent study says predictions fail because most models do not
Twenty-two mainly African countries are "especially vulnerable' to soaring food and fuel prices, according to a report by the UN food agency ahead of a summit on food security next week in Rome. "Large increases in food and fuel prices threaten macroeconomic stability and overall growth, especially of low-income, net-importing countries,' the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) notes in the report published on Wednesday.
Italy should keep its ban on nuclear power and should boost solar and wind energy instead to resolve its energy supply problems, Italian environmentalists said on Thursday as nuclear revival debate heated up. Italy banned nuclear power in a 1987 referendum after the Chernobyl disaster. But calls for a nuclear renaissance have intensified this month under the new government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as oil prices stormed record highs.
Giovanni Marchitelli has something to show Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when Italy's leader arrives Wednesday: a month's worth of garbage piled next to his pizzeria. Marchitelli, 64, hopes that Berlusconi will force local officials to solve the continuing problem due to full landfills, or his family's pizzeria will be out of business. "We can't stand to work anymore because of the garbage smell," he says. "People won't stop and eat because of the garbage."
Angry residents in Naples attacked fire-fighters trying to extinguish burning garbage in the trash collection crisis in the southern Italian city, said authorities. Fire-fighters said the residents threw stones. No injuries were reported. Fire-fighters said the police had to escort them while putting out fires. Premier Silvio Berlusconi would preside over a Cabinet meeting in Naples this week to resolve the garbage collection crisis, which broke out in December 2007 when collectors stopped picking up trash because there was no more room at the dumps.
Soaring food prices, a devalued currency and drought mean millions of people in Somalia cannot feed themselves, the United Nations said on Monday. And the crisis will get much worse if April-June rains fail or are well below average, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said. Somalia, a country of nine million people, already imports more than half its grain needs. Soaring commodity prices and a weakening currency have made those staples 375 percent more expensive than a year ago, the FAO said in a statement.
Eighteen months before a new climate pact must be agreed, the world appears to be drifting in negotiations that could be the most complex ever, experts said. The pact is needed to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol on tackling global warming, whose first round ends in 2012. Some 190 countries have agreed to clinch by November 2009 a new or amended pact, mindful it would take at least two years for so many national governments and parliaments to ratify it.
