Global

Losses from Natural Disasters Reach New Peak in 2011

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Petra Low
Losses from Natural Disasters Reach New Peak in 2011
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The breakdown of loss-relevant events among the main hazards-geophysical, meteorological, hydrological, and climatological events-is more or less in line with the average over the past 30 years. In 2011, some 91 percent were weather-related-37 percent each were storms and floods and 17 percent were climatological events like heat waves, cold waves, wildfires, and droughts-while 9 percent were geophysical events, including earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

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Banking against Doomsday

Banking against Doomsday
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Gene banks represent an overdue push to preserve crop biodiversity. It also needs conserving on farms

WITH a heavy clunk, the steel outer doors of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault closed on February 28th, shutting out a howling Arctic gale and entombing a tonne of new arrivals: 25,000 seed samples from America, Colombia, Costa Rica, Tajikistan, Armenia and Syria. For Cary Fowler, the vault’s American architect, the Syrian chickpeas and fava beans were especially welcome.

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Access to energy - necessary but not sufficient to cut poverty

Water-short world will need 'more crop per drop' - experts

Author: 

Megan Rowling
Water-short world will need 'more crop per drop' - experts
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MARSEILLE, France (AlertNet) - Water must be used more efficiently and its waste reduced if the world is to meet rising food demand from a fast-expanding population amid the pressures of climate change, experts have said ahead of World Water Day.

Marked each year on March 22, the United Nations hopes the 2012 event will focus attention on water's critical role in feeding the world.

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Report: Water shortages increasingly will offer new weapons for states, terror groups

Author: 

Karen DeYoung
Report: Water shortages increasingly will offer new weapons for states, terror g
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Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, a U.S. intelligence assessment released Thursday said.

Although “water-related state conflict” is unlikely in the next 10 years, the assessment said, continued shortages after that might begin to affect U.S. national security interests.

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Fundamental Steps Needed Now in Global Redesign of Earth System Governance, Experts Say

Fundamental Steps Needed Now in Global Redesign of Earth System Governance, Expe
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Some 32 social scientists and researchers from around the world, including a Senior Sustainability Scholar at Arizona State University, have concluded that fundamental reforms of global environmental governance are needed to avoid dangerous changes in the Earth system. The scientists argued in the March 16 edition of the journal Science that the time is now for a "constitutional moment" in world politics.

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Climate 'tech fixes' urged for Arctic methane

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Richard Black
Climate 'tech fixes' urged for Arctic methane
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An eminent UK engineer is suggesting building cloud-whitening towers in the Faroe Islands as a "technical fix" for warming across the Arctic.Scientists told UK MPs this week that the possibility of a major methane release triggered by melting Arctic ice constitutes a "planetary emergency."  The Arctic could be sea-ice free each September within a few years.

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World entering a 'third era' in efforts to deal with climate change - expert

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Samuel Nota
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After 20 years dominated by inaction on climate change, the world is entering a “third era” when the impacts of climate change are unavoidable, says a London climate expert.

Even if countries instantly reduced carbon emissions to zero, the impacts of emissions already in the atmosphere are “inevitable and unavoidable for the next 20 or so years,” said Saleemul Huq, a climate expert at the London-based International Institute of Environment and Development and former executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.

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Air pollution 'will become bigger global killer than dirty water'

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Fiona Harvey
Fiona Harvey
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OECD report says pollution will become biggest cause of premature death, killing an estimated 3.6 million people a year by 2050

Urban air pollution is set to become the biggest environmental cause of premature death in the coming decades, overtaking even such mass killers as poor sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water, according to a new report.

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The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability presents its report to the Secretary-General on 30 January 2012 in Addis Ababa.

The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability presents its report to the Secreta
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The 22-member Panel, established by the Secretary-General in August 2010 to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity, was co-chaired by Finnish President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma. The Panel's final report, "Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing", contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.

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