UN clinches global deal on cutting mercury emissions

Tom Miles and Emma Farge in Planet Ark: More than 140 countries have agreed on the first global treaty to cut mercury pollution through a blacklist of household items and new controls on power plants and small-scale mines, the United Nations said on Saturday. The legally-binding agreement aims to phase out many products that use the toxic liquid metal such as batteries, thermometers and some fluorescent lamps, through banning global import and exports by 2020.

The treaty will require countries with coal-fired power plants such as India and China to install filters and scrubbers on new plants and to commit to reducing emissions from existing operations to prevent mercury from coal reaching the atmosphere.

...The deal also includes measures to reduce mercury use in small-scale gold mining, although stopped short of an all-out ban. Gold prices near $1,700 a metric ton have spurred the use of mercury as a catalyst to separate gold from its ore.

...The Minamata Convention on Mercury - named after the Japanese city where people were poisoned in the mid-20th century from industrial discharges of mercury - needs ratification from 50 countries and is expected to be formalized later this year....

Soot's role in warming underestimated

Matt McGrath in BBC News: New research says that black carbon, or soot, is making a much larger contribution to global warming than previously recognised. Scientists say that particles from diesel engines and wood burning could be having twice as much warming effect as assessed in past estimates.

They say it ranks second only to carbon dioxide as the most important climate warming agent. The research has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

Black carbon aerosols have been known to warm the atmosphere for many years by absorbing sunlight. They also speed the melting of ice and snow. This new study concludes the dark particles are having a warming effect approximately two thirds that of carbon dioxide, and greater than methane.

"The large conclusion is that forcing due to black carbon in the atmosphere is larger," lead author Sarah Doherty told BBC News. "The value the IPCC gave in their 4th assessment report in 2007 is half of what we are presenting in this report - it's a little bit shocking,"...

An open wood fire, shot by Edoddridge, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Global warming has increased monthly heat records by a factor of five

A press release from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research: Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent, as measurements from around the world indicate. On average, there are now five times as many record-breaking hot months worldwide than could be expected without long-term global warming, shows a study now published in Climatic Change. In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia the number of monthly records has increased even by a factor of ten. 80 percent of observed monthly records would not have occurred without human influence on climate, concludes the authors-team of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Complutense University of Madrid.

“The last decade brought unprecedented heat waves; for instance in the US in 2012, in Russia in 2010, in Australia in 2009, and in Europe in 2003,” lead-author Dim Coumou says. “Heat extremes are causing many deaths, major forest fires, and harvest losses – societies and ecosystems are not adapted to ever new record-breaking temperatures.” The new study relies on 131 years of monthly temperature data for more than 12.000 grid points around the world, provided by NASA. Comprehensive analysis reveals the increase in records.

The researchers developed a robust statistical model that explains the surge in the number of records to be a consequence of the long-term global warming trend. That surge has been particularly steep over the last 40 years, due to a steep global-warming trend over this period. Superimposed on this long-term rise, the data show the effect of natural variability, with especially high numbers of heat records during years with El Niño events. This natural variability, however, does not explain the overall development of record events, found the researchers.

If global warming continues, the study projects that the number of new monthly records will be 12 times as high in 30 years as it would be without climate change. “Now this doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today – it actually is worse,“ Coumou points out. For the new records set in the 2040s will not just be hot by today’s standards. “To count as new records, they actually have to beat heat records set in the 2020s and 2030s, which will already be hotter than anything we have experienced to date,” explains Coumou. “And this is just the global average – in some continental regions, the increase in new records will be even greater.”....

Record-breaking hot months have become much more frequent. (For full graphic see Fig. 4 in the study) Graphic: PIK

Davos group sees troubled economies, climate change as interlocking risks in coming years

Washington Post via AP: The widening income gap between the rich and poor and burgeoning government deficits are the risks most likely to have a global impact over the next decade, according to experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum.

Climate change, water shortages and aging populations rounded out the WEF’s top five risks. The 1,000-plus experts surveyed for the Switzerland-based forum’s annual risk report also warn that risk factors could combine to produce unique problems. These risk combinations included climate change putting a heavy burden on a global economy and a declining economy in turn hurting efforts to fight global warming.

 “These global risks are essentially a health warning regarding our most critical systems,” said report editor Lee Howell, a managing director at the forum. “Resilience to global risks needs to be a priority so that critical systems continue to function despite a major disturbance.”

The experts also identified the global health threat from increasing resistance of germs to antibiotics. Another new worry is a “digital wildfire” of wrong or controversial information going viral across online communities, such as outrage last year in the Muslim world over an anti-Islamic film. The report’s authors also noted that more and more people are living in disaster-prone areas such as coastal regions, increasing the economic costs of storms and flooding blamed on global warming....

Photo from the US Department of Transportation

How to regulate geo-engineering efforts to fight climate change?

Tom Snee in Iowa Now: With policymakers and political leaders increasingly unable to combat global climate change, more scientists are considering the use of manual manipulation of the environment to slow warming’s damage to the planet. But a University of Iowa law professor believes the legal ramifications of this kind of geo-engineering need to be thought through in advance and a global governance structure put in place soon to oversee these efforts.

“Geo-engineering is a global concern that will have climate and weather impacts in all countries, and it is virtually inevitable that some group of people will be harmed in the process,” says Jon Carlson, professor of law at the UI College of Law. “The international community must act now to take charge of this activity to ensure that it is studied and deployed with full attention to the rights and interests of everyone on the planet.”

Carlson is an expert in environmental law and international law who believes geo-engineering is inevitable and will likely happen sooner than later. He considers the issue in a new paper, “Reining in Phaethon’s Chariot: Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering,” published in the current issue of the journal Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems. His co-author, Adam D.K. Abelkop, is a UI law graduate now in the doctoral program at the Indiana University School of Public Health and Environmental Affairs.

...Carlson says geo-engineering comes with obvious international legal implications because no one country can implement its own geo-engineering plan without causing weather or climate changes in other countries. There’s also the law of unintended consequences, because while many geo-engineering concepts have proved hopeful in the lab, nobody knows what will happen when actually put into practice. For instance, Carlson says that while manually cooling the ocean may be seen as a generally good idea, what impact will that have on farmers in India whose crops depend on rain from heat-induced tropical monsoons?

To address these issues, Carlson urges the creation of an international governing body separate from any existing organization that approves or rejects geo-engineering plans, taking into consideration the best interests of people and countries around the world. He says any legal regimen involving geo-engineering activities should require they be publicly announced in the planning stage, and all countries are notified so they have a voice in deliberations....

Shot by Willow20*12, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Supporting climate-friendly food production

Seed Daily via SPX: This summer, record temperatures and limited rainfall parched vast areas of U.S. cropland, and with Earth's surface air temperature projected to rise 0.69 degrees Celsius by 2030, global food production will be even more unpredictable, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute.

Although agriculture is a major driver of human-caused climate change, contributing an estimated 25 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, when done sustainably it can be an important key to mitigating climate change, write report authors Danielle Nierenberg and Laura Reynolds.

Because of its reliance on healthy soil, adequate water, and a delicate balance of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, farming is the human endeavor most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

But agriculture's strong interrelationships with both climatic and environmental variables also make it a significant player in reducing climate-altering emissions as well as helping the world adapt to the realities of a warming planet.

"The good news is that agriculture can hold an important key to mitigating climate change," said Reynolds, Worldwatch's Food and Agriculture Research Associate.

"Practices such as using animal manure rather than artificial fertilizer, planting trees on farms to reduce soil erosion and sequester carbon, and growing food in cities all hold huge potential for reducing agriculture's environmental footprint."...

Science key to reducing impacts of future natural hazards in developing countries

University of Cambridge Enterprise: The use of science to reduce the effects of future natural hazards such as floods, droughts and earthquakes must be stepped up and adopted more widely, according to a newly published Foresight report.

The report, 'Reducing Risks of Future Disasters: Priorities for Decision Makers' sets out how the threat of future disasters resulting from natural hazards can be stabilised if decision makers make better use of technological developments and existing risk assessment methods. This will save lives, livelihoods and resources in developing countries.

The report also urges that disaster risk reduction is routinely built in to developments as diverse as urban infrastructure, ecosystem protection and mobile telephone regulation. These measures would help reduce the cost of disasters, which has outstripped the total international aid investment over the past 20 years and has led to the loss of 1.3 million lives and $2 trillion of damage.

Professor Peter Guthrie, Thalia Konaris and former PhD student Faye Karababa, all from the Department of Engineering, have been involved in the report. The work was undertaken through Consultancy Services at Cambridge Enterprise.

“Death and destruction are not the inevitable consequences of natural hazards,” said Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir John Beddington, who led the research. “We need to grasp this. Urbanisation over the next three decades, particularly in Africa and Asia, will continue. While this could lead to greater exposure and vulnerability, it also presents the greatest opportunity to protect large concentrations of people....

Farmers need to grow climate smart

Busani Bafana in IPS: Farmers cannot wait much longer for negotiators to reach an agreement on including a work programme on agriculture in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And until one is approved, “it will continue to be difficult for farmers to produce the food needed, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

This is according to Anette Friis from the Danish Food and Agriculture Council and spokesperson for Farming First, a global coalition calling on world leaders to increase agricultural output in a sustainable and socially responsible manner.

“Countries failed to get an agreement on agriculture at this year’s (Conference of the Parties) COP18 in Doha, which means that discussions will not move to the next level and a work programme on agriculture is not foreseen for the near future,” Friis told IPS. A work programme is a blueprint for action.

Friis said that agricultural organisations needed to pressure leaders to ensure that a future COP deal would include agriculture. She said that discussions on including an agricultural work programme would continue at the next COP in Bonn in June 2013. But this, Friis said, would be without further submissions from parties, which could have informed and moved the process forward.

Farming First is one of 18 leading agricultural organisations that have called for a work programme on agriculture under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), an advisory body established under the UNFCCC....

No-till farming in Switzerland, outside Bern, shot by Volker Prasuhn, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Agricultural research 'key to easing climate-change impacts'

Rasha Dewedar in SciDev.net:  Agricultural research should be a strategic priority of the UN's efforts to lessen the impacts of climate change, according to a report launched at a UN climate change conference in Doha, Qatar.

The report, released by a group of leading international experts in climate change and agriculture last month (30 November), is intended to inform policymakers and agricultural planners about the risks climate change poses to dry areas. It offers practical solutions to reduce these threats and boost the productivity of this type of land.

'Strategies for Combating Climate Change in Drylands Agriculture' was produced by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) with two CGIAR research programmes — on Dryland Systems and on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) — and the Qatar National Food Security Programme.

Drylands constitute more than 40 per cent of the world's land surface and are home to 2.5 billion people, says the report. Those lands have less than eight per cent of the world's renewable water sources and are vulnerable to temperature extremes, frequent drought, land degradation and desertification, it adds....

A dry field in Chandeni, India, shot by Nitin.i.azam, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Insurance industry paying increasing attention to climate change

Science Daily: The insurance industry, the world's largest business with $4.6 trillion in revenues, is making larger efforts to manage climate change-related risks, according to a new study published December 13 in the journal Science.

"Weather- and climate-related insurance losses today average $50 billion a year. These losses have more than doubled each decade since the 1980s, adjusted for inflation," says the study's author Evan Mills, a scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)'s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. "Insurers have become quite adept at quantifying and managing the risks of climate change, and using their market presence to drive broader societal efforts at mitigation and adaptation."

Hurricane Sandy is only the most recent U.S. example of the kinds of increasing liabilities posed by severe weather events in a changing climate.

Managing a portfolio of $25 trillion in assets, similar in size to mutual funds or pensions globally, the insurance industry has become a significant voice in world policy forums addressing the issue, as well as a market force, investing at least $23 billion in emissions-reduction technologies, securities, and financing, plus $5 billion in funds with environmental screens, seeing risks to investments in polluting industries and opportunities in being part of the clean-tech revolution.

"Where there are risks, there are opportunities," writes Mills. Responding to shareholder, regulatory, and market forces, three global initiatives [UN Environment Program Finance Initiative (1995), ClimateWise (2007), and the Kyoto Statement (2009)] have compelled 129 insurance firms from 29 countries to engage in activities including: supporting climate research; developing climate-responsive products and services; raising awareness; reducing in-house greenhouse gas emissions; quantifying and disclosing climate risks; incorporating climate change into investment decisions; and influencing public policy. The ultimate goal of these industry activities is reducing climate-related losses among their customers as well as reducing their own exposure to risk, which is rising in step with the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather-related events....

Damage from Hurricane Ike in Crystal Beach, Texas, in 2008. Photo by FEMA

Climate adaptation: saviour or false hope?

Ben Castle in the New Internationalist blog: ...In recent years, adaptation has become a key focus of international climate change negotiations. Once a fringe issue, it is now at the centre of the climate debate. The pledge by developed countries to raise $100 billion in climate finance per year by 2020 (with much of this for adaptation in developing countries) was one of the few positives to come out of the much derided Copenhagen COP meeting in 2009. Much of this year’s negotiations in Doha have also been focused on the question of funding.

On the one hand this could be seen as an encouraging sign that the COP process may yet deliver some tangible results for those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A couple of weeks ago I reported from farming communities in the mountains of Bolivia, where climate change is already a reality. Such communities urgently need support to help them adapt to the changes that are underway. Yet many Bolivian civil society groups remain unconvinced that a growing focus on adaptation within international negotiations offers much reason for optimism.

For activists such as Martin Vilela from the Bolivian Climate Change Platform the pledges of adaptation support are all too often ‘empty promises’. He doubts that significant resources will ever arrive and says that the ambiguity of the $100 billion figure ‘does not offer any kind of clear commitment (on adaptation financing)’. Martin points to the way developed countries are already trying to ‘reduce expectations’ and are blaming the economic crisis for not being able to provide more funds. Recent research by IIED seems to support Martin’s reservations, showing that adaptation finance has been inadequate to date, with many donors simply relabelling pre-existing aid as climate finance – so it is not in fact ‘new and additional’, as was promised at Copenhagen....

A rainbow in the Faroe Islands, shot by Erik Christensen, Porkeri, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Multilateral development banks join forces to track climate financing

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: The African Development Bank led a team of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to develop a new joint approach to track climate financing including Adaptation and Mitigation Financing. The reports were launched during a side event panel at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP18) in Doha on December 5.

The new common methodology to track climate financing and value its impact was launched during a panel discussion on the topic, featuring representatives from each of the MDBs involved - the AfDB, Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Investment Bank (EIB), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank.

Simon Mizrahi, Director of the AfDB's Quality Assurance and Results Department (ORQR), expressed the urgent need to take on climate financing and its tracking and make it a moral obligation. "Climate change is already taxing the lives and future of millions of people in Africa specifically, as they will be the hardest hit. Drought, storms, floods are destroying the livelihood of millions in the most vulnerable countries on earth," Mizrahi continued. "Addressing climate change needs a worldwide team effort as the numbers are staggering and a collective partnership is the only way forward."

AfDB Chief Climate Change Specialist Mafalda Duarte introduced the joint MDB reports on Adaptation and Mitigation Finance and how these will support better project design and allow better accountability to stakeholders, whether they be member countries, institutions or private donors. "Commitments have been made in terms of climate finance because of the recognition that climate finance is needed to address the climate change impacts we are facing and we will face," Duarte said. "These joint reports provide a system to monitor these commitment trends and progresses, in climate-related investments. -We believe also that this tracking and monitoring will mobilize resources from capital markets into green investments and will also define what these investments are going to be."…

Canada invests in climate change solutions in developing countries

Canada Newswire: Today, the Honourable Peter Kent, Canada's Environment Minister, announced a number of key initiatives to support climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in developing countries.

"Canada continues to deliver on its commitment to support developing countries in their efforts to address climate change," said Minister Kent. "Canadian fast-start financing is providing concrete help for some of the most vulnerable countries and is reducing greenhouse gas emissions through investments in climate-friendly growth."

Some of the funding from the third wave of the Canadian contribution will support: 

• $75 million to support the Catalyst Fund, managed by the International Finance Corporation. The Fund will invest in venture capital and private equity in developing countries, with a focus on sectors such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, water, agriculture, and forestry.
• $76 million to the Asian Development Bank to establish a Canadian Climate Fund for the private sector in Asia. The Fund will encourage private investment in climate change projects in 33 low and lower-middle income countries and small island states within Asia. These funds will be invested in projects related to renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transportation and infrastructure, and climate resilience.
• $16.5 million to the United Nations Development Programme for adaptation projects in least developed countries.

The investment is part of Canada's fast-start financing commitment under the Copenhagen Accord to provide $1.2 billion in new and additional financing to support climate change action in developing countries….

Agriculture takes a backseat again

IRIN: Discussions about much-needed support for agriculture - which is seen both as a victim and a cause of climate change - at the UN’s climate change conference in Doha have been postponed until next year.

Agriculture is a contentious and emotionally fraught issue. It results in the emission of major greenhouses gases, such as nitrous oxide and methane; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates agriculture accounts for 13.5 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

But climate change also threatens agriculture, which most developing countries’ populations rely on for income. The impact of climate change also threatens global food security; projections show that yields from food crops could decline by five percent for each degree Celsius increase in global warming. Many poor farmers are already experiencing the impact of increasingly variable rainfall.

Because of sharp divisions over the kind of support agriculture needs, little progress has been made in addressing these issues in the new climate deal being negotiated under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Some at the UN talks - known as the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP18) - see agricultural issues playing a more dominant role in reducing global warming. These participants emphasize the need to reduce agriculture-related emissions.  At the same time, developing countries are arguing they need more money and better technology to help farmers adapt to the impact of climate change, including frequent droughts, flooding and increased soil salinity....

Abraham Janssens, "Scaldis and Antwerpia," 1609

Climate change will mean more malnourished children

John Vidal in the "globaldevelopment" blog at the Guardian (UK): Food prices will more than double and the number of malnourished children spiral if climate change is not checked and developing countries are not helped to adapt their farming, food and water experts warned on Tuesday at the UN climate talks in Doha.

As the UK energy secretary, Ed Davey, and ministers from 194 countries arrived for the high-level segment of the talks, the UN's Committee on World Food Security said the world would need a 75-90% increase in food production to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive in 2050. But climate change could reduce yields worldwide by 5-25% over the same period.

"The poor are especially vulnerable. Climate change will increase the number of malnourished children substantially. Smallholder farmers will be particularly hard hit," said Gerald Nelson, a spokesman for the high-level panel of experts convened by the committee to report on food prospects in the coming 30 years.

Research from Oxfam suggests rice, maize and wheat prices could rise by up to 177% in the next 20 years if climate change is not checked. A combination of extreme events like the drought that affected North America this year and the Russian heatwave in 2008 could raise prices further than two decades of long-term prices, it said...

Teniers, David the younger, 1610-1690

Rich nations alone can't halt global warming

Space Daily via AFP: Poor nations must make haste to curb greenhouse gas emissions as even an impossible zero-percent pollution target for the developed world by 2030 won't stop calamitous climate change, a report warned Tuesday.

Co-authored by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the document said that while rich countries are responsible for the bulk of Earth-warming gas emissions since the industrial age, the world could not afford to play the blame-game.

All countries, rich and poor, were moving "recklessly slow" on reducing emissions, said the report issued on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar.

"There is a deep inequity in that rich countries grew wealthy on high-carbon growth, and poor countries will be hit particularly hard by climate change," it said.

"Recognition of that inequity must play a strong part in building international collaboration, but must not be allowed to block progress: that would be the most inequitable of all outcomes"....

Nicholas Stern in 2000

New report warns developing cities to act now against a perfect storm of environmental risks

A press release from Atkins, the engineering consulting firm: A major new report ‘Future Proofing Cities’ published today by Atkins in a unique partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID) and University College London (UCL) assesses the risks to cities from climate hazards, resource scarcities, and damage to ecosystems and how they can act now to future proof themselves. Covering 129 cities totalling 350 million people in 20 countries, this report identifies practical measures that cities can take to manage these future risks.

Around 75% of the world’s population will live in cities within 40 years. Almost all of this population growth will happen in the developing world, with 4.6 billion people projected to live in already rapidly growing cities.How will these cities in the developing world cope socially, environmentally and economically with such accelerated urbanisation?

Future Proofing Cities assesses the risks from mega cities like Bangkok to smaller cities such as Zaria in Africa. It looks at their risk profile from climate hazards, resource scarcities, and damage to ecosystems and urges action now to future proof against these risks.

This report provides a fresh approach to the urgent issues arising from rapid urbanisation. It assesses the environmental risks facing cities in an integrated way and identifies more than 100 practical policy options that are most relevant and will be of most benefit to people living in different types of cities. It builds on the collective work on urbanisation by DFID, Atkins and UCL with forewords by the World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation.

The report is set against a growing awareness of the need for increased funding for infrastructure development in developing countries at the city level.This report provides an early warning for people living and working in these cities, while providing market intelligence for investors....

A slum in East Cipinang, near Jakarta, shot by by Jonathan McIntosh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Global irrigated area at record levels, but expansion slowing

KTIC Radio: In 2009, the most recent year for which global data are available from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 311 million hectares in the world was equipped for irrigation but only 84 percent of that area was actually being irrigated, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute for its Vital Signs Online service (www.worldwatch.org). As of 2010, the countries with the largest irrigated areas were India (39 million hectares), China (19 million), and the United States (17 million), writes report author Judith Renner.

...The increasing availability of inexpensive individual pumps and well construction methods has led to a shift from public to private investment in irrigation, and from larger to smaller-scale systems. The takeoff in individual groundwater irrigation has been concentrated in India, China, and much of Southeast Asia. The idea of affordable and effective irrigation is attractive to poor farmers worldwide, with rewards of higher outputs and incomes and better diets.

"The option is often made even more appealing with offers of government subsidies for energy costs of running groundwater pumps and support prices of irrigated products," said Renner, a senior at Fordham University in New York. "In India's Gujarat state, for example, energy subsidies are structured so that farmers pay a flat rate, no matter how much electricity they use. But with rising numbers of farmers tapping groundwater resources, more and more aquifers are in danger of overuse."

If groundwater resources are overexploited, aquifers will be unable to recharge fast enough to keep pace with water withdrawals. It should be noted that not all aquifers are being pumped at unsustainable levels----in fact, 80 percent of aquifers worldwide could handle additional water withdrawals. One troubling aspect of groundwater withdrawals is that the world's major agricultural producers (particularly India, China, and the United States) are also the ones responsible for the highest levels of depletion....

A floating pumping station on the Nile River, shot by Rémih, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate change hits Africa

Sarah Bomkapre Kamara in Deutsche Welle: Africa is reeling from climate change. Floods, drought, famine, food shortages are buffeting the vulnerable continent, which lacks the resources to protect itself. A UN climate conference has just opened in Qatar.

Climate change is already hitting the continent hard. Floods in Nigeria, famine and drought in the Sahel, the shrinking of Lake Turkana are all just a preamble of what is to come if the continent does not act fast. As the two week UN climate conference gets underway in Doha, Qatar, the African UN regional group at these talks is hoping for a "second commitment" and funds that will help their countries adapt to climate change and its effects.

"African countries are looking forward to a commitment period that doesn't carry over excessive emission rise or hot air," Ruth Mhlanga, youth and solutions coordinator, Greenpeace Africa told DW's Africalink show.

This commitment is an extention of the Kyoto protocol of 1997 which binds developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between the years 2008 and 2012. The African UN regional group at the conference says failure to extend Kyoto would leave only national actions, with no legally binding U.N. framework.

A UN survey warns the world is on target for a rise in temperatures that will cause more floods, drought, heat waves and rising sea levels. Africa should prepare for the worst. "The average increase in temperature in Africa is likely to be higher than the average increase globally," Micheal Kliene, deputy executive director of IUFRO - The World's Network of Forest Science told DW....

On the road to Timbuktu in Mali, shot by Annabel Symington, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Why disaster warning and development go hand in hand

Andrew Collins in SciDev.net:  Disaster predictions have significant uncertainty that tends to undermine efforts to act on early warnings. In Bangladesh, for example, where there are extensive climatic hazards, people risk their lives by not taking refuge in a cyclone shelter, choosing instead to guard livestock or their homes.

Such risk-taking is repeated by poor people around the world, so early action must be linked to the wider development concerns that underpin their decisions. For many people in communities most at risk of disaster, this means a risk reduction culture that is embedded in poverty reduction efforts.

When people find a way to reduce their daily workload they free up time, energy and capacity for plans to cut the risk of hazards. Early action will follow when communities can take ownership of the design and implementation of early warning systems, and become motivated by how they can benefit.

Beyond the availability of knowledge and technology, the effectiveness of early warning depends on the factors that drive individual and group behaviour. People put greater trust in one another when precautions for a disaster need to be taken, and governments and relief services need to be aware of such trust at the individual and community level (e.g. in the workplace), to avoid working against it.

But the building of trust, and governments' capacity to work with it are not simple processes. Perceptions and complex social relationships need to be understood to promote sustainable and effective early action....

An avalanche in Vrsic, Slovenia, shot by ismeretlen, public domain