What should be the response/strategy of Civil Society? As per the news, there seem to be no involvement of others apart from Govt! Is anybody privy to further details?



High-level committee to finalise action plan on climate change



BS Reporter / Kolkata/ Bhubaneswar March 20, 2010, 0:44 IST

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/high-level-committee-to-finalise-action-planclimate-change/389146/


The process of finalizing the State Action Plan (SAP) on climate change for Orissa got further impetus with the government constituting a High Level Co-ordination Committee (HLCC) headed by the chief secretary, Tarunkanti Mishra.

The secretary, forest and environment department of the Orissa government has been nominated as the member convener of the committee.

The committee has development commissioner (DC), Agricultural Production Commissioner (APC), secretaries in the departments of finance, fisheries, housing and urban development, steel and mines, agriculture, water resources, revenue and disaster management, energy, commerce and transport, health and family welfare, industry and managing director of Orissa State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) as its members.

The chief minister Naveen Patnaik has approved a proposal to this effect, sources said.

The Draft Action Plan (DAP) will undergo sectoral discussions and inter-sectoral consultations before being finalized. It would then be submitted to the government for approval. “The World Bank has roped in experts of international repute to carry forward the process of framing the SAP on climate change. It would be finalized by the end of April 2010 as scheduled”, Bhagirathi Behera, director, environment department, Orissa government told Business Standard.

Sources said, the experts who have been roped in by the World Bank to assist the government in its endeavor to frame the SAP, included Mala Rao of Indian Institute of Public Health, Anil Markandeya (scientific director, Basque Centre for Climate Change), Atul Agarwal (Transport specialist in the World Bank), K P Nyati (expert in sustainable mining initiatives), Arivudai Nambi (Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai).

The experts would hold discussions with different sectoral groups from March 25-31, 2010. On the advice of DFID and World Bank, the government has already formed nine sectoral committees that would work on nine different impact areas of climate change

These areas include health and social vulnerability, energy, transport, agriculture, urban development, water resources, coastal and disaster, mining and forest among others. Meanwhile, eleven working groups headed by the secretaries have held one round of discussion with the experts from March 1-6.

Call for papers: Climate change and the sustainable management of water resources


The Hamburg University of Applied Sciences is pleased to inform that the call for papers for the third worldwide online climate conference CLIMATE 2010/KLIMA 2010 has just opened. Be part of this worldwide climate-friendly event and use this unique opportunity to present and discuss your work with fellow researchers, practitioners, NGOs and the interested public from all around the world.

CLIMATE 2010 is being organised in cooperation with UNEP, IPCC, WMO, FAO and further world bodies. Building on the success of the previous online conferences CLIMATE 2008/KLIMA 2008 and CLIMATE 2009/KLIMA 2009 with more than 1m visits and over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, this year's interactive, free of charge online vent will specifically focus on “Climate Change and the sustainable management of water resources”.

Please click on full details link for more information.

Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?item=50275&em=110210⊂=clim

Adapting to climate variability and change: a guidance manual for development planning

Adapting to climate variability and change: a guidance manual for development planning

Produced by: USAID Global Climate Change Program (2007)

It is important to consider the potential impact of climate change when planning and designing development projects. Understanding, planning for and adapting to changing climate enables individuals and societies to make the most of opportunities and reduce risk.

This guidance manual looks at how to understand climate change as it may impact on project cycles and incorporating a six-step approach for assessing vulnerability and implementing adaptation. These include:

• screen for vulnerability: a preliminary assessment of whether climate variability or change could compromise the integrity, effectiveness and longevity of a project
  
• identify adaptation options: working with stakeholders to identify alternative designs or management processes to better cope with climate variability
  
• conduct analysis: examine the consequences of climate variability and change as well as the effectiveness, costs and feasibility of adaptations that can reduce vulnerability to climate variability and change
  
• select a course of action: meet with stakeholders to review analysis results and determine if changes to current project design are needed
  
• implement adaptations: prepare an implementation plan to identify next steps
  
• evaluate adaptations: it may be difficult to evaluate effectiveness in a relatively short time period following implementation, however, an evaluation can be done to see if adaptations were properly put in place and whether there were any problems or excessive costs associated with them.

The manual also gives various concrete examples of USAID projects applying this in many different countries as well as helpful learning tools such as explanatory flow-charts, further resources and links.

Available online at: http://w ww. eldis. org/cf/rdr/?doc=35292

Bali poised for political breakthrough
The United Nations Climate Change Conference - Bali, 2007 got underway Monday, poised for a breakthrough in international climate change negotiations. The two-week conference is expected to result in negotiations on a climate change deal for the period post-2012, the year the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

"It is essential that vulnerable developing countries are in a position to draw up plans to prepare for climate change impacts," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. "It is also essential that agreement is reached on how the Kyoto Protocol's Adaptation Fund is managed so that the Fund can begin financing real adaptation projects," he added.

more...at CARBONyatra.com

India a new hub for climate change research
Sreelatha Menon in New Delhi

November 23, 2007

India has emerged as a hub for climate change research in Asia with UK emerging as a key partner.

While the Chief Scientific Advisor to UK David King has been on a lecture tour of India exhorting scientists to move fast on climate change, the government on its part is moving fast.

It is all set to announce the first research institute for climate change to be set up in the Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology in Pune.

The proposal, which awaits Cabinet approval, is expected to boost studies into climate predictions and impacts.

This apart, the UK India Education and Research Initiative formed in 2005 is backing joint research activities with top institutions in the country, while the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), another arm of the British High Commission, is engaging in research with the ministry of environment and forests.

This week the UKERI launched its first ever climate change projects worth Pounds 1.5 million which are expected to help take forward work being done in IIT Delhi, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology Pune on climate predictions and also impacts of climate change.

Prakash Rao researcher on climate change for World Wildlife Fund attributes the rush of interest in India to the presence of a good number of credible research institutes in India.

The fact that R K Pachauri, an Indian, heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2001 may also have added to the attraction to India, he said.

According to Matthew Coyne, who works in the climate change impacts and adaptation division of DEFRA, India's large rural population and dependence of economy on climate makes it very vulnerable unlike a country like Mexico.

The DEFRA project with MoEF is yet to identify a research institute in India and the bidding process is to start now, Coyne added. However some green groups in India look at this rush for climate change research in India as a ruse to promote technologies like genetic engineering.

Devinder Sharma of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security in New Delhi says the hype over climate change veils industrial designs to push technologies over unsuspecting people. It can be compared with the hype over HIV/AIDS.

Everyone wants to project the picture of an agriculture sector which is about to collapse. That will open windows for genetically modified crops, he said.

Coyne agrees with this concern and says that his own project would look at the direct effect of heat on agriculture and at options for adaptation which will include genetically modified crops too.

Climate change adaptation projects are also being funded by USAID and UNDP whose latest human development report is on the theme of climate change.

TERI, the NGO headed by R K Pachauri the chairman of the IPCC, is involved in most of the research projects backed by UK, the most key one being the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation funded by DFID and Natural Environment Research Council of UK .

NERC head Alan Thorpe said that the project funded by DFID will cover China, Brazil and Africa too and involves a funds of 30 million pounds altogether. The project has TERI as the main partner along with the IIT Delhi and University of Liverpool and is looking at strategies to cope with climate change.

Thorpe agrees that research will open windows to business which will lead to greener processes like carbon trade. He, however, denies that his project will have anything to do with GM crops. K Srinivas climate campaigner in Greenpeace says that all research on heat resistant crop need not be genetically engineered variety.

But there is definitely opportunity for industry of all type. And if GM crops are promoted in the guise of climate change, that will be a problem for us and we will oppose it.

U.N. panel: 'Urgent' action needed on global warming

(CNN) -- Climate change is real and is happening at an ever faster pace, a United Nations scientific panel said in a hard-hitting report issued Saturday on tackling global warming.

Exposed mud banks at a reservoir in Spain, November 2007.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was delivering its fourth and final report on the science of climate change and the impact of human-produced greenhouse gases at a conference in Valencia, Spain.

The report produced by the Nobel prize-winning panel warns of the devastating impact for developing countries and the threat of species extinction posed by the climate crisis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, presenting the report, warned that some of the effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases may already be irreversible.

The U.N. head said the situation was already "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action" could head off the crisis.

He told the panel he was hopeful that the report's findings could help bring about "a real breakthrough" in climate change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, next month.

The Bali talks will set the groundwork for the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012.

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Africa: Paying Farmers to Protect the Environment?

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome)

PRESS RELEASE
15 November 2007
Posted to the web 15 November 2007

Carefully targeted payments to farmers could serve as an approach to protect the environment and to address growing concerns about climate change, biodiversity loss and water supply, FAO said today in its annual publication The State of Food and Agriculture.

Agriculture employs more people and uses more land and water than any other human activity," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf in his foreword to the report. "It has the potential to degrade the Earth's land, water, atmosphere and biological resources - or to enhance them - depending on the decisions made by the more than two billion people whose livelihoods depend directly on crops, livestock, fisheries or forests. Ensuring appropriate incentives for these people is essential."

Population growth, rapid economic development, increasing demand for biofuels and climate change are putting environmental resources under pressure throughout the world. For instance, agriculture is expected to feed a world population that will increase from six to nine billion by 2050.

One of the important reasons for environmental degradation is the perception that many of nature's services are free - no one owns them or is rewarded for them and farmers have little incentive to protect them. In addition, subsidies that encourage the production of marketed goods at the expense of other ecosystem services can aggravate their degradation.

Incentives

Current incentives tend to favour the production of food, fibre, and increasingly, biofuels, but they typically under-value other beneficial services that farmers can provide, such as carbon storage, flood control, clean water provision or biodiversity conservation.

Farmers can provide better environmental outcomes, but they need incentives to do so. Payments for environmental services represent one way of increasing incentives to adopt improved agricultural practices--and even to offset pollution generated in other sectors.

However, "payments may also have adverse impacts on poverty and food security in some cases, should they result in a reduction in demand for agricultural employment or increases in food prices," noted Dr Diouf.

Carbon sink

Farmers will need to play an important role in mitigating the effects of climate change, the FAO report said.

Agriculture plays an important role as a carbon "sink" through sequestering and storing greenhouse gases, especially as carbon in soils, plants and trees. Less deforestation, planting of trees, tillage reduction, soil cover increase and improved grassland management could, for example, lead to the storage of more than two billion tonnes of carbon in around 50 countries between 2003 and 2012.

"Well-designed payments for environmental services are one way to help farmers to change land-use practices and make farming more environmentally friendly," said Leslie Lipper, Senior Environmental Economist. "These are payments for real services farmers can provide, much like farmers are paid for the rice or coffee they produce."

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The report however cautions that payments for environmental services are not the best solution in all situations, and that significant implementation challenges remain.

Global survey finds support for CDM-type projects

(from ASB Listserv)

On September 25, the BBC World Service released a global poll on attitudes towards climate change. GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes in Maryland surveyed 22,000 people in 21 developed and developing countries. Most interestingly, the poll showed majority support across the globe for agreements where developing countries would reduce emissions in exchange for financial assistance and technology from developed countries. This indicates broad support for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or Reduced Emissions from forest Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) projects. ASB is currently engaged in REDD projects and intends to present results at the next UNFCCC COP in Bali this December.

The BBC article is available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7010522.stm and the full report is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/25_09_07climatepoll.pdf.

Summary of main points:

· An average of eight in ten (79%) say that “human activity, including industry and transportation, is a significant cause of climate change.”

· The poll shows majority support (73% on average) in all but two countries polled for an agreement in which developing countries would limit their emissions in return for financial assistance and technology from developed countries.

o All of the developed countries polled endorse this idea by large margins including the United States (70%), Canada (84%), Great Britain (81%), France (78%), Germany (75%), and Australia (84%).

· There is a widespread consensus that developing countries should take action on climate along with developed countries. Just three countries opt instead for the position that less-wealthy countries should not be expected to limit emissions: Egypt, Nigeria and Italy.

o Those favouring limits on the emissions of less wealthy countries include some of the key ones, most notably a 68 percent majority in China and a plurality of Indians (33% to 24%), though many Indians (43%) do not have an opinion. This is also the dominant view in Brazil (63%), Indonesia (54%), Kenya (64%), Mexico (75%), the Philippines (49%), and Turkey (41%).

· Asked how much they have heard about climate change or global warming, in only a few countries do large numbers say that they have heard little or nothing, including Indonesia (65%), Kenya (53%), Nigeria (48%), and Russia (64%).

Global Warming: The Great Equaliser

Tuesday, 25 September 2007, 1:05 pm
Column: Adam Parsons

Global Warming: The Great Equaliser

By Adam Parsons , Editor ~ Share The World’s Resources (STWR)

As the latest summit to discuss a post-Kyoto treaty continues in New York this week, the single most revealing statement has already been spoken: “We need to climate-proof economic growth”. These few words, told to reporters by the UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, during the recent Vienna round of talks, define the blinded establishment approach to tackling climate change.[1] Only if continued trade liberalisation and corporate profits are kept sacrosanct, remains the assumption, is it possible to consider even a broad agreement on future cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

With dire weather events and studies being reported on an almost daily basis, fewer sceptics are able to dismiss the reality of dangerous climate change. In the same week as around 1,000 diplomats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists from 158 countries attended the U.N.’s Vienna Climate Change Talks, a top security think-tank stated that climate change could have global security implications “on a par with nuclear war unless urgent action is taken”,[2] whilst leading scientists warned of a looming “global food crisis” that will require more food to be produced over the next 50 years than has been produced during the past 10,000 years combined.[3]

The rapidity of these dystopian predictions has grown to Faustian proportions; the year 2007 already has the dubious accolade of witnessing the most extreme weather events on record,[4] as characterised by the millions of Africans just hit by some of the worst floods in a generation in which villagers were “wiped off the map”.[5] This summer, the collapse of the Arctic ice cap (losing a third of its ice since measurements began 30 years ago and “stunning” experts)[6] was topped off by the latest UN study from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who now believe that the tipping point for widespread catastrophe – involving a two degrees rise in global temperatures - is “very unlikely” to be avoided.[7]

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Climate Change's Great Divide

Lawmakers Favor Carbon Caps,
Trading; Economists Prefer a Tax

By DEBORAH SOLOMON
September 12, 2007; Page A4

The biggest political battle in Washington over climate change may not pit Democrats against Republicans. Instead, it could be economists versus politicians.

Many academics, even conservatives, favor a tax on carbon emissions. Many lawmakers, including some liberals, fear a political backlash against new fees. They lean toward a cap-and-trade system, which would set a limit on carbon-dioxide emissions and require companies to obtain permits to release carbon dioxide into the air.

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Washington needs to join climate effort

Joe Nation,Alex Rau

Monday, September 10, 2007

The summer heat in Washington, D.C., often drives congressional observers (and policy wonks) to cooler climates. (After all, who wouldn't rather be boating in Maine or camping in the Rockies?) That heat sometimes obscures the development of important policy. Two amendments introduced during this summer's federal energy debate represent some of the most significant steps yet for the development of legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States. Yet there's been little discussion of them outside of Washington.

Alternative proposals by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., call on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish a mandatory national registry of carbon emissions, although neither one has been enacted. Their objective, nevertheless, represents a critical step that the federal government should take to speed comprehensive climate legislation and promote early investments to reduce emissions.

For companies, regulators and ordinary citizens alike, there is as much clarity in carbon emissions policy as in a bowl of tomato soup. That must change.

Clarity in how carbon emissions will be measured and documented is essential. Complete, detailed and reliable data of emissions form the backbone of all types of greenhouse-gas regulations, whether carbon taxes, cap-and-trade or hybrid systems. They help corporate managers and investors determine risk exposure to carbon regulations, as well as identify and price strategies to reduce emissions. They also allow regulators to design effective policies and measure their progress.

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Pacific Rim Nations Adopt Nonbinding Emissions Targets

By TIM JOHNSTON

Published: September 10, 2007

SYDNEY, Australia, Sept. 9 — The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting here limped to a close on Sunday, with a heavily compromised agreement on tackling climate change and few answers on how to advance the global trade agenda.

At the top of the agenda at this year’s meeting of the Pacific Rim group — whose 21 countries include the United States, China, Russia, Australia and Indonesia — were global warming and the stalemate that has paralyzed the trade talks that began in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. On both fronts, there was only limited success.

“The world needs to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of global greenhouse-gas emissions,” the leaders said in a joint statement on the climate.

But the agreement sets no timetable for stemming the increase in carbon dioxide emissions after 2012. That is when the binding terms of the Kyoto Protocol — the treaty adopted by most industrialized countries, but rejected by the United States and Australia — expires.

The APEC leaders hope that by 2030, for every 1 percent of growth in national output, the increase in carbon dioxide emissions will be held to 0.75 percent.

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Sydney Declaration on Climate Change and Energy

September 9, 2007 - 1:52PM

Sydney APEC Leaders' Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security
and Clean Development

Sydney, Australia, 9 September 2007

We, the APEC Economic Leaders, agree that economic growth, energy security and climate change are fundamental and interlinked challenges for the APEC region.

The dynamism of APEC, underpinned by open trade and investment, has reduced poverty, improved living standards and delivered economic and social development.

Our success has relied in part on secure supplies of energy, the use of which has also contributed to air quality problems and greenhouse gas emissions.

A great challenge for APEC, given the aspirations of 41 per cent of the world's population in our region, is to chart new pathways for clean and sustainable development.

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Climate scientists' views on climate change: a survey

Hans von Storch and Dennis Bray

In 1996 and 2003 we surveyed the opinions on climate change held by climate scientists. The results of these surveys have been subject to many misuses and erroneous claims. Some have selected individual statements out of context (scroll down to number 5) to bolster their claims, while others have argued that the 2003 part of the survey would be strongly biased by skeptics misusing the online-sampling for multiple submissions.

With respect to the latter – the survey was conducted first in 1996 with a mail-out format, which nobody claimed could be biased and the results were published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The second survey from 2003 was conducted on the internet, a procedure that in principle could have been misused by multiple submissions by those skeptical or alarmist on climate change who shared the password. However, the 2003 results are internally consistent with the 1996 results. In 2003 scientists expressed increased satisfaction and agreement with the IPCC and increased confidence in the tools of the science. In comparison to 1996, no anomalies were found in the response to questions.

On the skeptical side, the survey has often been used to create the impression that most scientists were not in support of anthropogenic causes of ongoing climate change: Specifically, it was noted that “For example more climate scientists ‘strongly disagree’ than ‘strongly agree’ that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” This interpretation is certainly biased.

We had requested responses on a scale from 1-7 to the question “Climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” – with 1 representing “strong agreement” and 7 “strong disagreement”. Thus, scales 1-3 signal agreement, 4 an ambivalent position, and 5-7 disagreement. The frequency distribution for the two surveys in 1996 and 2003 are:

Thus, the statement, that more respondents strongly disagree than strongly agree is technically correct (10% vs. 9%), but highly misleading. If we pool the 1-3 positive responses to “agreement”, and 5-7 to disagreement, then the ratio in 1996 was 41:45 in favor of disagreement; in 2003, however, this ratio has become 56:30 in favor of agreement; all scales 1-3 have seen strong increases in frequency, while 5-6, with the notable exception of scale 7, have seen marked reductions.

Furthermore the question refers to “climate change” in general. We intended to ask for responses to the statement "Ongoing climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes", but some respondents may have considered Holocene climate change in general. Thus, “disagreement” with the statement does not necessarily signal doubt about the perspective of a dominantly man-made climate change in the coming decades, but it mostly reveals an assessment of presently emerging climate change. The problem is that some commentators interpret our numbers as responses to "Future climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes". "

One should also consider the possibility that scientists, who are naturally “plagued” or honored by doubts, may have a hard time choosing maximum confidence (i.e., category 1); therefore many may prefer a weaker “2”. (This tendency is obvious when we ask for assessment of the skill of models, and the respondents are hesitant to go for maximum confidence).

After careful quality checks, which lead to the identification of a few errors related to incorrect coding of answers, the responses of the 2003 survey have now recently been published.

We are presently preparing a new survey; this time, we will implement a more efficient barrier for manipulating response rates, even if we do not believe that this was really an issue in our 2003 survey. As the purpose of the survey is intended to be of service to the scientific community, we would openly welcome questions posed by the community to be added to the upcoming survey. However, please keep in mind that the survey poses general rather than specific questions and that the length of the survey is a major consideration.

Hans von Storch and Dennis Bray
Institute for Coastal Research
GKSS Research Center
Max Planck Str. 1
21502 Geesthacht