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Archive for Climate Change and Civil Society

Worldwide Efforts to Combat Drought, Desertification to Take Shape in Namibia This Year

Efforts to tacle accelerating drought and desertification take shape this year an Namibia  Land degradation – more specifically drought and desertification – have become increasingly pressing problems for a growing number of countries around the world, threatening efforts to alleviate poverty, improve basic health and sanitation and address socioeconomic inequality, as well as spur agricultural and sustainable economic development.

The only multilateral, international agreement linking development and environment to sustainable land management (SLM), high-level representatives from 195 nations will be gathering in Windhoek, Namibia from September 16-27 for the 11th bi-annual Conference of Parties (COP) to review implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Meeting for the first time in southern Africa, UNCCD delegates will review implementation of the convention to date and plan for the ensuing two years of programs and actions. Read More→

Video Friday: Our Grandkids Future

This short video from John Price, a retired Australian physician and university teacher, speaks eloquently of our responsibility to future generations. Visit his website grandkidzfuture for more.

Resiliency Index Will Assess Climate Risks for Cities

New resiliency index announced with C40 Cities at the Clinton Global InitiativeWorking under the umbrella of C40 Cities, an international collaborative  of cities working to assess and reduce their climate risk impacts, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and former president Bill Clinton are launching a climate change adaptation and resiliency measurement program aimed at identifying the cities most at risk. Clinton and Bloomberg announced the initiative on Monday at the midyear meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

The new effort will work alongside a separate and ongoing c40 initiative that now accounts for the greenhouse gas emission for 75 percent of C40 member cities. The new program adds a “resiliency yardstick” to help governments and insurers assess and plan for future damage and what specific areas and cities are most vulnerable to the worst damage.

As we’ve written about in past articles, cities are at the nexus of change and effective action; planning and implementing strategies at the regional and municipal level can be the most effective means in many cases of protecting citizens from climate disruption and preparing for the future.

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Climate Negotiations Wind Down in Bonn, Seek a More Flexible Approach on the Road to Paris and COP 21

Climate negotiations in Bonn end on a guardedly positive noteThe latest round of climate negotiations wound down last Friday in Bonn, Germany with most delegates from the nearly two hundred countries represented expressing guarded optimism that progress has been made toward laying the groundwork for an international agreement to be signed in 2015 at the COP 21 climate conference in Paris.

In learning lessons from the past, especially with the disappointing outcome of the COP15 conference in 2009, negotiators are coalescing around the idea of creating a more “fluid” pact, freeing countries from the need of endless rounds of negotiations as they respond to new scientific understanding and technological breakthroughs in their efforts to cut carbon emissions.

“The agreement of 2015 cannot be cast in stone, and it cannot be frozen in time,” said Christiana Figueres, the current Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “It needs to accompany the efforts of countries over time, and it needs to be able to bring on board consistently and constantly the emerging science on the one hand and the growing capabilities of stakeholders on the other.”

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Rising Temperature, Sea Level On Track to Wipe Out Major World Cities Former Shell Exec Tells UN

Global community risks catastrophic sea level rise if current fossil fuel and c02 emissions stay on trackConsensus among the world’s leading climate scientists has established a 2°C rise in global mean temperature as the tipping point for runaway climate change, but even that could result in catastrophic rises in sea level of as much as 6-7 meters (23 feet), energy expert Ian Dunlop and policy planner and scholar Tapio Kanninen told audiences at packed meetings and panel discussions at UN headquarters in New York City organized by the Finnish Mission to the United Nations, the Club of Rome, the Temple of Understanding and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Sea level rises of 6-7 meters would wipe out coastal cities, including London, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo, and that’s even if we could somehow manage to limit global average temperature rise to 2°C this century, Dunlop and Kanninen told shocked audiences at the UN, according to a Club of Rome report. Read More→