change

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal concluded today with the adoption of more than forty decisions that will strengthen global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

With 2 billion tonnes of carbon entering the atmosphere each year due to forest loss, accounting for 25 per cent of all man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), the United Nations climate change conference in Montreal today heard urgent pleas for financial incentives and other strategies to curb deforestation.

This year witnessed the largest financial losses ever as a result of weather-related natural disasters linked by many to human action, more than $200 billion compared to $145 billion in 2004, the previous record, according to statistics presented to the United Nations Climate Change Conference currently meeting in Montreal, Canada.

Citing evidence of climate change “all around us,” from declining Arctic ice to increasingly frequent extreme weather, with looming threats ranging from species extinction to human health hazards, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Louise Fréchette today called for “bold, creative” global action in response.

As part of the effort to combat the impact of global warming on vulnerable areas from the Arctic to the Himalayas to low lying islands, the United Nations environmental agency today heralded what may be the first case of a small island community to be formally moved out of harms way in the face of climate change.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference today voted to finalize the 'rule book' of the Kyoto Protocol, putting into concrete form the 1997 landmark treaty designed to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that have been determined to cause global warming.

This year marks an ecological watershed in which a powerful alignment of legal, financial and investment interests is beginning to direct trillions of dollars into evolving markets linked to climate change, clean technologies and the sustainable use of natural resources, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

Calls for action to protect the earth's vulnerable climate led off the first ever meeting of the 157 countries that have signed onto the United Nations-backed Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce the so-called "greenhouse gasses" that have been determined to cause global warming.

Developed countries, taken as a group, have achieved sizable reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but further efforts are needed to sustain these reductions in gases blamed for global warming and cut them further, a United Nations climate body warned today.

Joke Waller-Hunter, the Executive Secretary of the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and a passionate champion of sustainable development, passed away today at the age of 58 in Bonn, Germany.