Biodiversity and the ecosystem services it underpins can be the basis for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies as they can deliver benefits that will, according to the outcomes of a recent technical workshop on ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, increase the resilience of people to the impacts of climate change. The key ...

The World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry has filed a petition urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reduce the use of amalgam – a dental filling that is 50% mercury – in order to conform with the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Other petitioners include the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, Asian Center for Environmental Health, African Center for Environmental ...

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council in Washington DC on Wednesday October 21, 2015 approved what it has described as “a first-of-its-kind multi-million-dollar” project to help protect over 80 percent of the Amazon and boost efforts to combat climate change. The GEF will commit $113 million for the Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Programme, a regional programme spanning Brazil, Colombia and Peru ...

Following the exit of Odigha Odigha – erstwhile chairman of the Cross River State Forestry Commission (CFSFC) – as the State Coordinator for the REDD+ Programme in the state, the authorities have begun shopping for a replacement. But civil society operatives are frowning at the seeming monopolisation of the position by the CRSFC, stressing that UN-REDD+ is indeed a national ...

The City of Oslo in Norway on Monday October 19, 2015 became the first capital city in the world to ban investments in fossil fuels, as it announced it would divest its $9 billion pension fund from coal, oil and gas companies. The announcement follows a previous pledge in March to ban investment in coal. Lan Marie Nguyen Berg of the Green Party ...

France has frowned at Nigeria’s inability to submit its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) ahead of the 1st October 2015 deadline. Stephane Gompertz, France’s Ambassador for Climate Change, who was in Abuja recently, wondered why Nigeria, a major stakeholder in the 2015 Paris climate talks, is yet to submit its climate action plan. The ambassador stated that every country is supposed ...

On 13 October, China switched on the $1.5 billion Zam Hydropower Station, set at the highest altitude among all hydel power plants in the world. And that should worry India. The river that the Zam plant is built on is known as Yarlung Zangbo in China; in India it is called Siang and is among the main tributaries of the ...

As the eleventh part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) (ADP2.11) kicks off this morning in Bonn, Germany courtesy of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), capacity building will be a key aspect of the deliberations. The meeting will take place from 19 – 23 October ...

The Green Climate Fund has published its first set of funding proposals that will be reviewed by the Fund’s Board on the occasion of its eleventh meeting in Livingstone, Zambia, next month. The fact sheet presents an overview of GCF’s early portfolio development. Since July 2015, the Fund received a total of 37 initial funding proposals for projects and programmes ...

Healthy forests protect our climate and moderate our weather. As the ‘Godzilla’ El Niño builds in the weeks ahead of Paris talks, it is a timely warning that deforestation is partly to blame for its impacts Indonesia is smouldering and Godzilla is to blame. But even though this is reality, not a monster movie, there is still a hero: the tropical ...