greenhouse gases
The economic recovery packages put forward by many countries amount in total to a large amount of money, some of which may have a beneficial impact on greening the global economy. But many packages are woefully small, few contain adequate detail for full assessment and some indeed are actually counterproductive if the aim is to move rapidly to a low carbon economy in the face of the climate...
Up to 25 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are caused by deforestation, and Indonesia is the third largest greenhouse gas emitter worldwide due to land use change and deforestation. On the island of Sulawesi in the vicinity of the Lore Lindu National Park (LLNP), many smallholders contribute to conversion processes at the forest margin as a result of their agricultural...
Here is a valuable synthesis of the contemporary knowledge about the state of world glaciers, taking into account the global importance of the phenomenon of recent glacial retreat, its recent evolution especially in the context of global warming, and the social, cultural, and political aspects of their presence and retreat. This book follows an important symposium held in Wengen (CH), where...
Climate change results from an increased concentration of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane associated with economic activities, including energy, industry, transport, and land use patterns. Rich countries emit the majority of these gases, while poor countries are more vulnerable to their negative effects. Further, developing countries are more vulnerable and...
As concerns about climate change and energy security rise, bioenergy is often proposed as a renewable energy source that can be cost-effectively scaled up to a level that would allow it to contribute significantly to meeting global energy demand. Given that bioenergy can be generated in myriad ways, however, using various feedstocks and various energy technologies, few universal conclusions...
Much of the technology development for bioenergy to date has been geared toward competing with cheap fossil fuels. Bioenergy technologies have focused on reducing the cost per unit of energy produced, often exclusively by exploiting very cheap feedstocks and processing them on a large scale. But as the era of cheap fossil fuels comes to an end and as societies become more willing to pay for...
The promise of bioenergy is that it may help cope with rising energy prices, address environmental concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and offer new income and employment to farmers and rural areas. In principle, there is a high degree of congruency between these three objectives for bioenergy production and the poverty reduction targets embodied in the Millennium Development Goals. But...
Forest loss, primarily tropical deforestation and forest degradation, accounts for approximately 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in developing countries is thus an important component of a viable global climate policy framework, and has captured international attention as a potentially effective and low-cost...
This newletter contains four short articles discussing the potential for financing carbon sequestration services. The articles particularly focus on this issue in the context of the Kyoto protocol and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Below are the titles of the four articles and some of the key points made by their authors:
Access to finance for...
Climate models are predicting a hotter, drier and less predictable climate in the Middle East, a region already considered the world's most water-scarce and where, in many places, demand for water already outstrips supply. This report addresses the links between climate change, peace and conflict.
It finds that the legacy of conflict in the region undermines the ability of countries and...
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