By Matt McGrathBBC News, Copenhagen The prospects of saving the world’s coral reefs now appear so bleak that plans are being made to freeze samples to preserve them for the future. A meeting in Denmark took evidence from researchers that most coral reefs will not survive even if tough regulations on greenhouse gases are put […]
Satellite measurements of winter multi-year ice cover in the Arctic Ocean between 2004 and 2008, along with the corresponding downward trend in overall winter sea-ice volume, and switch in dominant ice type from multi-year ice to first-year ice. During the last few decades of the 20th century, the positive phase of the Northern Annular Mode […]
By Staff Writers, Addis Ababa (AFP) Oct 22, 2009 Twenty-five years after Ethiopia’s famine killed a million people and spurred a massive global aid effort, the government appealed Thursday for help for more than six million facing starvation. State Minister for Agriculture Mitiku Kassa said the drought-stricken country needed 159,000 tonnes of food aid worth […]
African leaders recognised climate change as a major cause of human displacement during a two-day summit on the plight of the continent’s refugees which closed Friday in Kampala. Several African nations adopted a document on the rights of the continent’s 17 million internally-displaced persons (IDP), refugees and returnees. “The important thing about this convention is […]
Visiting a semi-arid region of Uganda where the economic and environmental effects of climate change have been added to humanitarian needs and chronic under-development, the top United Nations emergency relief official today saw first-hand an area of potential conflict over increasingly shrinking resources. “They are living on the edge, daily facing the biggest challenges we […]
By Ben Arnoldy | The Christian Science Monitor, Oct 22, 2009 Stakmo, India — Chhewang Norphel makes artificial glaciers. The reason: The real ones have rapidly receded up the Himalayan slopes in his home district of Ladakh in northernmost India. Himalayan communities like Ladakh rely on glacial runoff to grow food, making them – along […]
By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 (IPS) – As African leaders meet in Ethiopia to discuss the devastating impacts of climate change, the United Nations has released a report warning that the economically-troubled continent will be one of the hardest hit by the ravages of global warming. “Projected climatic changes for Africa suggest a […]
Deep in the Himalayas, the disappearance of glaciers is threatening the kingdom of Bhutan. Anjali Nayar trekked through the mountains to see how the country is adapting to a warming world. By Anjali Nayar …Glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating faster than in any other part of the world and they could disappear completely by […]
By Tristan McConnell in Mwingi “The last time I had a good harvest was 2003 — there has been nothing at all for the last three years,” said Mutindi Maithya, 36, a widow who lives with her six children on a four- acre plot of sun-baked land. Sitting beneath a thorny acacia tree, she picks […]
By Lester R. Brown, October 22, 2009 Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of […]
