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Africa-wide Civil Society Climate Change Initiative for Policy Dialogues - ACCID
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| Week ending 7 August 2009 |
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Climate change: extract from communique from the US-China dialogue
US Treasury, 3 August 2009 Washington: The United States and China, being the world's largest producers and consumers of energy, face common challenges and share common interests in combating global climate change, developing clean and efficient energy, protecting the environment and ensuring energy security. The two sides commit to respond vigorously through ambitious domestic action and recognize that cooperation between the United States and China is critical to address these challenges... John Kerry: Who lost the earth? Huffington Post, 3 August 2009 New York: When Richard Nixon first visited China back in 1972, his journey seemed far longer than the seven thousand miles that actually separate Washington from Beijing. He was bridging the gap between two worlds separated for a generation... Degrees of doubt over 2°C: Is it too much for India? The Times of India, 3 August 2009 New Delhi: On July 29, many wondered why the Prime Minister was explaining the complicated science of climate change to fellow parliamentarians. “This is the first time that India has accepted a reference to 2°C as a possible threshold guiding global action, but this is entirely in line with our stated position on global warming,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said... China most important ally in climate talks: Minister Thaindian.com, 3 August 2009 New Delhi: “India considers China its most important ally in Copenhagen negotiations,” Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said here Friday. Negotiations for the UNFCCC summit in Copenhagen have often been fractious, with developed and major developing countries like India and China often taking opposing stands on who should do more to combat global warming... World Bank initiates carbon footprint analysis Worldchanging, 3 August 2009 Responding to pressure from the environmental community and US lawmakers, the World Bank plans to estimate the carbon footprints of its future projects. The Bank, in collaboration with the world's leading multilateral development banks, is creating a common method for estimating a project's associated greenhouse gas emissions... Farmers overcome water scarcity Inter Press Service, 3 August 2009 Beni Mellal: Researchers in the central Moroccan region Beni Mellal are introducing new agricultural techniques that increase production while reducing water usage. Climate change seems to have driven the new measures. Before 1990, drought struck once every five years, now it comes once every two years... Flood damages top US$241 million, climate change effects imminent Namibia Economist, 3 August 2009 Windhoek: The director-general of the National Planning Commission, Peter Katjavivi, has said that, apart from facing the challenges posed by the current financial and economic crises, Namibia is faced with the direct consequences of climate change... PM's climate change panel discusses roadmaps Indian Express, 4 August 2009 New Delhi: As international pressure mounts on India to undertake greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, the government on Monday reviewed the progress on its internal strategy to deal with climate change and discussed the feasibility of an ambitious programme to harness solar energy... Nobel halo fades fast for climate change panel New York Times, 4 August 2009 New York: Two years ago, an international scientific panel seized worldwide attention by reporting that human activity was warming the planet in ways that could greatly disrupt human affairs and nature... Uganda to host youth climate change conference The Monitor, 4 August 2009 Kampala: Uganda will host a regional youth conference on climate change that aims at steering young people to participate in environmental conservation for sustainable development in East Africa states. The conference, dubbed the Eastern Africa Regional Model, aims at attracting about 300 delegates from all five East African states... Wangari Maathai: Nature destroys those who disrespect it The East African, 4 August 2009 Nairobi: The gradual degradation of Kenya's Mau Forest Complex has been attributed to decades of mismanagement, compounded by irresponsible and corrupt practices by the very people who were expected to protect it... ‘Trees of life’ are vital food source BBC News, 5 August 2009 The “famine food” of trees can keep drought-hit communities alive when all other food crops fail, says Miranda Spitteler. In this week's Green Room, she argues that policy makers need to recognise the important role trees play in providing emergency food aid. Food insecurity is a defining characteristic of life for many of the world's poorest people, exacerbated now by climate change and the rise in food prices... Millennium Project report issued on the future of the world Environment News Network, 5 August 2009 A major report issued by the United Nations Millennium Project has just been released. It finds that half the world appears vulnerable to social instability and violence due to increasing and potentially prolonged unemployment from the recession as well as several longer-term issues: decreasing water, food, and energy supplies per person; the cumulative effects of climate change; and increasing migrations due to political, environmental, and economic conditions... US says African farming has role in green push Reuters, 5 August 2009 Nairobi: Africa can boost global efforts to curb emissions through the absorption of greenhouse gases by developing its farming sector. US firms unable to stay within greenhouse-gas thresholds at home might well want to invest in such projects to offset their emissions, Tom Vilsack added during a visit to Kenya... ‘GDP means Green Domestic Product’ The Times of India, 5 August 2009 The Congress Party's former brand manager's new ministerial office is decorated with lots of green plants. Coffee table books on glaciers, Brazil and forests add even more colour as Jairam Ramesh, minister of environment and forests prepares to answer questions from Narayani Ganesh: Has India diluted its position on climate change? I don't think so... Africa united at climate change Engineering News, 5 August 2009 Johannesburg: Africa's position at climate change negotiations was viewed as unified and strong. In fact, as a region, Africa was “probably the most unified”, said Department of Environmental Affairs international cooperation DDG Alf Wills... A scrap of decency New York Times, 6 August 2009 Among those suffering from the global recession are millions of workers who are not even included in the official statistics: urban recyclers — the trash pickers, sorters, traders and reprocessors who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse. Their work is both unrecorded and largely unrecognized, even though in some parts of the world they handle as much as 20 percent of all waste. The world’s 15 million informal recyclers clean up cities, prevent some trash from ending in landfills, and even reduce climate change by saving energy on waste disposal techniques... A different take on the US-India climate change “spat” Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2009 New Delhi: The battle lines between India and the U.S. on climate change seem to be clearly drawn ahead of December's key summit in Copenhagen that will try to craft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Simply put, the U.S. wants India and others to agree to CO2 emissions caps if the process is to move forward... Climate change reporting: keep it simple Bizcommunity.com, 6 August 2009 Johannesburg: Environmental journalists, like financial journalists, have sometimes been accused of being ‘in disharmony' with their audiences for using purely scientific and ‘sophisticated’ language when reporting on issues related to their respective fields. Some observers now believe that could be one of the main reasons why the message of climate change awareness has never been received adequately... Saliem Fakir: SA needs holistic view on energy Mail and Guardian, 6 August 2009 Johannesburg: At first impression, if somebody were to ask who is in charge of South Africa's energy policy the answer they'd get would probably be Eskom, or perhaps the department of energy.This may be followed by other lesser-known state and quasi-state players... Pigeon peas, the new maize? Irin, 6 August 2009 Mbeere South: Faced with increasingly unreliable rains, farmers in Kenya's eastern district of Mbeere South have started growing drought-tolerant crops to meet their food and subsistence needs instead of the staple maize... Farming is Africa's lifeline, Clinton says America.gov, 7 August 2009 Nairobi: For millions of Africans, farming is a lifeline, the only source of income and food. For the continent, agriculture is the primary economic sector and the engine of future growth, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said... Norman Borlaug: Farmers can feed the world Wall Street Journal, 7 August 2009 New York: Earlier this month in L'Aquila, Italy, a small town recently devastated by an earthquake, leaders of the G-8 countries pledged $20 billion over three years for farm-investment aid that will help resource-poor farmers get access to tools like better seed and fertilizer and help poor nations feed themselves... Ghana launches agric sustainable land management strategy Ghana News Agency, 7 August 2009 Accra: Land degradation, exacerbated by traditional farming systems, is estimated to be cost the nation around two per cent of the gross domestic product annually, Mr Kwesi Ahwoi, Minister of Food and Agriculture, said on Wednesday... Rural communities turn to traditional climate mitigation Inter Press Service, 7 August 2009 Madurai: In Tamilnadu, southern India, and Uttar Pradesh, northern India, villagers have revived ancient systems of storing surface and groundwater that are putting them in a good position to contend with today’s changing climate... Rural Democrats flex muscle in Congress AJC.com, 7 August 2009 New York: Climate change legislation was moving along in the House in June when it ran into a tractorcade. Dozens of farm-state lawmakers, led by the blunt-talking Minnesotan who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, blocked the way. Only after Democratic leaders agreed to a raft of changes drawn up by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) did the bill squeak through the House, 219 to 212... ‘Africa responsible for 3.5% of global climate change gases’ Daily Trust, 7 August 2009 Abuja: Africa which accounts for about 14% of the world population, is only responsible for 3.5% of the most serious global climate changing gases which include, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide as well as fluorinated gases, the Special Adviser to the President on NEPAD, Amb.Tunji Olagunju has said... UK's Miliband sees clean coal forming part of future energy mix Engineering News, 7 August 2009 Johannesburg: UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband on Thursday said that he certainly saw coal playing a role in the energy mix in the future, with the assistance of carbon capture and storage (CCS), because the coal of the future must be clean. He said that there was no feasible solution to climate change without coal in the energy mix, but added that there was a lot of scientific, test and demonstration work that needed to be done in order to convince the public of the safety of CCS technology, as well as its economic feasibility... |
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Africa-wide Civil Society Climate Change Initiative for Policy Dialogues - ACCID
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