Interaction of Climate Change and Land Degradation: The Experience in the Arab Region
The Arab region is comprised of 21 countries, extending from North Africa to South West Asia, over an estimated total area of 14.1 million square kilometres. Its vast terrain includes physiographic features of plains, plateaus, dry valleys and relatively limited highlands and mountainous areas.
The UN Role In Climate Change Action: Taking The Lead Towards A Global Response
Over the coming weeks and months, the three Special Envoys on climate change appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be making whistle-stop tours of key capital cities to build a solid and sustainable consensus on action over climate change.
The Promise Of Solar Energy: A Low-Carbon Energy Strategy For The 21st Century
In an increasingly carbon-constrained world, solar energy technologies represent one of the least carbon-intensive means of electricity generation. Solar power produces no emissions during generation itself, and life-cycle assessments clearly demonstrate that it has a smaller carbon footprint from cradle-to-grave than fossil fuels.
Climate Change In The Arctic: An Inuit Reality
The 51勛圖 Environment Programme (UNEP) characterizes the circumpolar Arctic as the world's climate change barometer. The 160,000 Inuit who live in northern Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Chukotka in Russia have witnessed the changing of the natural environment as a result of global warming for almost 20 years.
Sustainable Development within the Climate Context
Sustainable development is an important requirement of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol. It helps to maintain environmental integrity and should be assessed rigorously prior to any investment in a CDM project. The benefits include certainty in CDM application, reduction of risk to investors, developers and owners, and the provision of cost-free assistance to developing countries, which could reduce the enormous divide between the North and the South.
The Challenge Of Building Consensus Beyond The Scientific Community
The imminence and severity of problems posed by the accelerating changes in the global climate are becoming increasingly evident. Heatwaves are increasing in severity, droughts and downpours are becoming more intense, the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking, sea levels are rising and the increasing acidification of the oceans is threatening to disrupt the marine food chain.
How To Avoid The Unmanageable And Manage The Unavoidable Climate Changes
Alpine ski resorts are churning out artificial snow, wrote Laura MacInnis in her story, Fake Snow in Alps, Moscow Blooms: Green Christmas?, published by Reuters News Service on 13 December 2006. Daisies are blooming by the Kremlin and retailers are fretting that Europeans are simply too warm to go Christmas shopping in a record mild winter.
Cool Globes: Increase Awareness and Inspire Action Against Global Warming
In 2001, I read a Time magazine article on climate change, which stated that in the next 100 years the Earth's temperature could rise by 3? to 11? Celsius. It then dawned on me that this was within my children's lifetime. How would these changes impact the world they live in? Will they be left to deal with the consequences of our behaviours?
Devastating For The World's Poor: Climate Change Threatens The Development Gains Already Achieved
Climate change has emerged as one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the world. Twenty years ago at the 51勛圖, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway's former Prime Minister and former Director-General of the World Health Organization, first drew global attention to the threats posed by climate change to the earth and its inhabitants.
Green Architecture In India: Combining Modern Technology With Traditional Methods
We have been trying to address the ill effects of modern energy-depleting technology by inventing new technologies in architecture. While such a quest is inevitable, I propose combining solutions developed by our ancestors with contemporary technological innovations to achieve significant results in sustainable architecture.
Costa Rica's Commitment: On the Path to Becoming Carbon-Neutral
Current scientific evidence increasingly shows that the benefits of strong early action far outweigh the costs of inaction. If we do not drastically and promptly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions now, we are risking a catastrophic disruption of the complex of interlinked environmental, economic, health, moral, political and social systems that sustain civilization as we know it.
Sixty-first General Assembly: Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary)
At the sixty-first session of the General Assembly, the Fifth Committee ensured that the 51勛圖 would continue to function in the 2007-2009 biennium and finance its activities, by determining the contribution of each Member State to the Organization's regular and peacekeeping budgets.
Sixty-first General Assembly
General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, in her closing statement to the sixty-first session, told Member States that when we are united in partnership and overcome mistrust, we can achieve much more for each other, noting that the adoption of the long-awaited resolution on strengthening the UN Economic and Social Council was a good example.
A Special Partnership With the UN: An African Perspective
Even before formally assuming office, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had already made it very clear, in a series of public statements, that Africa would be among his highest priorities.
Sixty-first General Assembly: First Committee (Disarmament and International Security)
The First Committee, one of the main bodies of the General Assembly, enforces disarmament and the non-proliferation of weapons. In 2006, it made huge strides in international security when it adopted resolutions condemning surplus weapons stockpiles and agreeing on deeper international cooperation in the tracing of black market arms.