The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Forests: For the South, this is perhaps the most crucial and most difficult battle ahead. The North has been insisting on a legal framework to manage the world's forests. Each preparatory meeting saw bitter negotiations as southern countries rallied together to prevent this assault on their sovereignty. This time again, …
Global warming, but so what? The data on its impact is still uncertain and contradictory. USA's Environment Protection Agency commissioned a study which involved 50 scientists from around the world for three years. The scientists found that the total cereal production by 2060 could be 1 per cent to 7 …
WILL HE go? Will he sign? Will he give money? All these and many more questions on the behaviour of the US President George Bush are threatening to overtake the Earth Summit at Rio. Bush's cat and mouse strategy is an effort to push the Europeans, Asians and Africans to …
BIG PROBLEMS cannot be solved without a big vision. And big visions do not come without big dreams. The Rio conference, which will bring together more heads of state and government than any conference ever before, could have made it big if it was born out of a big dream. …
THOUGH a great deal of fuss has been raised in scientific circles over methane production by rice paddies and cattle in the developing world, which is likely to heat up the earth, the atmospheric chemistry of methane is still a grey area. Scientists-are finding that it is quite possible that …
RISING sea levels and drowning areas is one of the much publicised consequences of global waarming - in fact, sea levels do rise, the effect on island countries like the Maldives and those with long coast lines like India and Bangladesh could be catastrophic. However, according to P K Daformer …
THIS fortnight the European Commission unveiled a plan, which its environment comissioner, Carlo Ripa di Meana, called "revolutionary" to staise a carbon dioxide emissions at their 1990 levels by the year 2000. Half of this reduction is to be achieved through a tax on carbon fuels - of $3 on …
What are the main issues at the UNCED summit? The various conventions. These have to be ratified at the summit. Are these conventions going to be on a partnership basis or on the old psyche of aid and assistance? When I see the rigidity and inflexibility of some of the …
ADVANCE copies of the World Bank's prestigious World Development Report, 1992, duly printed on recycled paper, focusses on development and environment this year. It came bound with a paper seal bearing the words, "Embargo until May 18". The report, taken in its entirety, is truly an embargo on greening the …
It was something that nobody would have expected to hear at a global environment conference. The scene: the last preparatory committee meeting for the Rio conference. The US delegation suddenly threw a bombshell. It demanded that all references to control of overconsumption be deleted as these had -very low priority" …
What will UNCED discuss? Theoretically, everything. But it will focus on: Long-term issues like global warming. National resources in the South like tropical rain forests and conservation of biological resources. Mechanisms to transfer aid to the South. Quantum of aid that the South should get to avoid exacerbating global environmental …
IF it were not for the widespread pollution caused by human beings, global warming caused by green- house gases like carbon dioxide and methane would have made the earth a lot warmer than it is. The world is thus in a bind: reduce pollution and save the ozone layer, but …
Hot aluminium THE aluminium industry is responsible for spewing out two potent greenhouse gases - CFC-14 (tetrafluoromethane) and CFC-116 (hexafluoroethane). In terms of their global warming potential, they are over 8,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide, their atmospheric lifetime being over 10,000 years, according to Dean Abrahamson of the …
HUMANITY never needed a global social contract more than it does today. With the nations of the world jointly facing a global ecological crisis but sharply divided in economic terms, there never was a greater need for humanity to live as one. The forthcoming United Nations Conference on Environment and …
Observations made during the 1987 El Niño show that in the upper range of sea surface temperatures, the greenhouse effect increases with surface temperature at a rate which exceeds the rate at which radiation is being emitted from the surface. In response to this 'super greenhouse effect', highly reflective cirrus …
The Doha climate conference stretched beyond deadline but ended in what can best be described a nail-biting finish. This was the 18th conference of parties (COP) to the climate convention, which meets once a year to push for action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which are so intertwined with economic …
For growing economies the stress has to be on patterns of natural resource use and not on the status of natural resources; that is, dealing with the causes rather than the symptoms of the problem of climate change. The time has come for rapidly growing Asia to distinguish between the …
Small changes in urban human behavior and increased energy efficiency will have a positive impact on our natural resources. Mukul Sanwal[1] The recently released report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established by the United Nations, “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” details the impact of climate …
Author: Chandra Bhushan @Bh_Chandra Posted on: 18 Apr, 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group Report III suggests historical emissions are a thing of the past; it endorses carbon removal options, allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue its polluting operations Two weeks after the Working Group 2 report …
MukulSanwal[1] Global climate policy is being reframed, moving away from an exclusive focus on emissions, the symptoms, to the causes of the problem, use of energy, and new sustainable development architecture. The Co-chair’s Non-Paper, as the draft negotiating text,shows that divergent perspectives on how best to achieve the Objective of …
