change

As government ministers warned that climate change remains the most important global challenge to humanity, a United Nations climate convention ended its annual meeting today with expressions of support for the Kyoto protocol, renewed pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars to developing countries, and adoption of a host of legal decisions.

Many low-altitude ski resorts face economic hardship and even ruin due to global warming, with the internationally celebrated Austrian town of Kitzbuehl threatened with extinction as a winter sports resort, according to a new study released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The 188 parties to the United Nations Climate Change Convention are meeting in Milan, Italy, from today until 12 December to assess the progress governments have made in reducing manmade climatic changes and to set the global agenda for the coming year.

Institutional investors can have "a decisive impact" on future greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental performance of major companies, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a gathering of senior financial and corporate figures in New York today.

If the ever-increasing emission of greenhouse remains unchecked, the planet as we know it today could look very different by the end of this century, with many small islands gone and ecological life-support systems under stress as never before, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned today.

A United Nations development agency is joining a Swiss global insurer and a United States medical school in an innovative research partnership to evaluate health and economic damages from climate change and associated events, which currently run at $40 billion annually and are projected to reach $150 billion by 2010.

The President of the United Nations General Assembly has urged global meteorological experts to pool their specialized skills and technical know-how to help offset the alarming effects of climate change which, if left unchecked, will undoubtedly have catastrophic environmental, economic and social repercussions.