Seventeen activities that serve as shining examples of the enormous groundswell of action underway across the globe to address climate change were honoured on Wednesday at an Oscar-like ceremony at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Warsaw, Poland. The projects were selected as 2013 Lighthouse Activities under the Momentum for Change initiative of the United Nations Climate Change secretariat. Taking place in countries ...

As the World marked this year’s World Toilet Day on Tuesday, a new report jointly published by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council,  WaterAid and Unilever has called on governments, including that of Nigerian, to keep their promises and implement the commitments made at national, regional (AfricaSan, SACOSAN) and global levels (Sanitation and Water for All). Furthermore, they must ...

An environmentalist, Professor Emmanuel Oladipo, has said that Nigeria still has a lot to do in terms of protecting the environment. Oladipo observed that there is desert encroachment up north of the country while gully erosion was fast degrading and destroying the environment. Professor Oladipo who once taught Geography at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, called for an immediate establishment ...

Louis Verchot is normally an optimist, but even he is doubtful: “It’s been four years since the debate on measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) carbon emissions started and yet we still see disagreements on how to make decisions.” Verchot, a research director at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), is referring to the meeting that never was. Earlier this ...

As the global climate continues to change, the costs and damages from more extreme weather related to a warming planet are growing. While all countries are impacted, developing nations bear the brunt of mounting losses in lives and livelihoods from increasingly severe floods, droughts, and storms. “Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful typhoon ever to hit the Philippines, has brought into sharp ...

Civil society organisation (CSOs) across Africa have demanded that developed countries fulfil and implement their commitments under the UN climate convention, in order to fairly share a necessary “emissions budget,” and avoid catastrophic climate change. At a press conference held immediately after the opening session of the 19th session of the UN Warsaw Climate Conference, the group said that Africa ...

Nigeria has taken up a campaign to build the capacity of national planners in order to strengthen the integration of climate change in national development plans and strategies. The initiative is based on a training module developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) office in partnership with the Department of Climate Change (DCC) in the Federal Ministry of Environment ...

A team of civil society organisations (CSOs) that met recently in Lagos has joined the global campaign to eliminate Lead in paint. The activists observed that, in 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), governments (including the Nigerian government) agreed a goal that, by 2020, chemicals should be used and produced in ways that lead to the minimisation ...

The amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2012, continuing an upward and accelerating trend which is driving climate change and will shape the future of our planet for hundreds and thousands of years. A GHG is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse ...