greenhouse gases
In failing to tackle climate change with urgency, rich countries are effectively violating the human rights of millions of the world’s poorest people. Continued excessive greenhouse-gas emissions primarily from industrialised nations are – with scientific certainty – creating floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability. The result is failed...
Climate change is set to undermine human rights on a massive scale. International human-rights law states that, 'In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.' But - as the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has documented in detail - rich countries' continued excessive greenhouse-gas emissions are depriving millions of people of the very water, soil, and...
Greenhouse gas emissions which are the major contributors to climate change are on the increase in both industrialised and developing countries. This paper indicates key linkages between trade and climate change and reviews how their respective policies interact. Questions are posed as to how trade and climate change can be mutually supportive.
The paper notes that most sectors of...
Oxfam estimates that adapting to climate change in developing countries is likely to cost at least $50bn each year, and far more if global greenhouse-gas emissions are not cut fast enough. Yet international funding efforts to date have been woeful. In the year that the world's scientists made the science irrefutable, the world's policitians must now deliver the finance needed so that the most...
Though community forests have a vital role in environmental services and sustainable development in developing countries such as in India and Nepal, the credit cannot yet to be claimed under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It is due to difficulties of assessing the biomass and carbon storage in the community forests for monitoring and verification. However, forest carbon monitoring is...
Well over a billion people in 100 countries face a bleak future. In these, the nations most vulnerable to climate change, resilience has already been eroded by entrenched poverty, degraded or threatened environments and other problems. The harsher, more frequent natural disasters that are predicted could tip them over the edge into chronic famine or forced migration. Yet these are also the...
The problem of human-induced climate change first came to the attention of the global public and international policy makers when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first assessment report in 1990. This drew attention to the significant increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations observed over the last 150 years (i.e. since the start of the industrial...
The growing market for carbon offers great opportunities for linking greenhouse gas mitigation with conservation of forests and biodiversity, and the generation of local livelihoods. For these combined objectives to be achieved, strong governance is needed along with institutions that ensure poor people win, rather than lose out, from the new challenges posed by climate change. This briefing...
Remember the scenes from New Orleans of flooded streets and scavenging people? One year on and little progress is evident in achieving the step-change needed in controlling greenhouse gases. Hurricane Katrina showed only too vividly the massive power of natural forces combined with inadequate preparation. The flood waters washed away and exposed fully the lack of planning and low priority...
Climate change as a global challenge has evolved through a series of stages in the last few decades. We are now on the brink of a new era which will see the terms of the debate shift once again. The different eras are characterised by the scientific evidence, public perceptions, responses and engagement of different groups to address the problem. In the first era, from the late 1980s to 2000,...
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