Climate Change

Governments the world over have been handed a warning by the world’s leading climate scientists that society is vastly underprepared to deal with the increased risks posed by climate change impacts that the world is no longer able to avoid. The second instalment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), released in Yokohama, Japan on Monday, ...

A five-day meeting that commenced on Tuesday involving government representatives and scientists, and convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to finalise a report assessing the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems, options for adaptation, and the interactions among climate changes, other stresses on societies, and opportunities for the future, ended Saturday. The meeting, the ...

Global warming, an offshoot of the climate change phenomenon, is being transformed from a threat of environmental doom to a promise of financial boom, thanks to a range of emerging profit-spinning prospects. As the unsavoury impacts of climate change persist on one hand, the positive side, on the other hand, is throwing up numerous opportunities for investors. “It doesn’t mean ...

In the last few weeks, global attention has been drawn to the United Kingdom where the wettest winter in 250 years has emptied more than an ankle deep of flood onto the streets of the City of London and other parts of the Kingdom. The phenomenon, which the Government is still battling to contain, has flooded over 300 properties along ...

The No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) and its allies have condemned the evictions and forced relocation of the Sengwer Indigenous People in Kenya’s Cherangany Hills, as well as the World Bank-funded Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme in the country. In an open letter to the United Nations and the Kenyan government, the NRAN states: “The forced relocation of the Sengwer People proves the urgency of cancelling ...

Our planet is fast heating up by the burning of fossil fuels with several tons of carbon pollutants entering the atmosphere everyday through landfills, transportation (traffic), power plants, forest burning, oil exploration & production, fertilizer application, industrialised agriculture, and coal/mining plants, to mention a few. Carbon pollution is disrupting our lives daily and destroying the earth. How long will we ...

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, human influence on the climate system is clear, and limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. These are the key conclusions from an assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was released on Thursday in its full and finalised form. The Summary for Policymakers ...

The nineteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP19) to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the ninth session of the  Conference of Parties Serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP/MOP9, among other associated meetings, held from 11th to 23rd November, 2013 in Warsaw, Poland. One of the major outcomes of the ...

Oil producing countries in Africa have been urged to partner on climate change. This will provide the synergy needed to promote acceptable international best practices in oil production and services across the world. The French Minister of Development, Pascal Canfin, stated this recently in Abuja at a dinner during a working visit to Nigeria on environmental issues and innovative finance. “Nigeria ...

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 ...