Harvested News

This, according to Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), who wrote the foreword of the report, The Future of the Bornean Orangutan: Impacts of Change in Land Cover and Climate, released today. And the report’s lead author Dr. Serge Wich declared: “The current policies for land conversion on Borneo are simply unsustainable” not just for orangutans but for the…

Quality of life in urban areas is already compromised by air, water and noise pollution. However, climate change threatens the services essential to urban living. Moreover, on current urban population growth trends, the impacts of climate change can only get worse. More than half of the world’s population – around 54 % – already live in urban areas and by 2050, the global urban…

The study says that education is the "single strongest predictor" of public awareness of climate change. Improving basic education and public understanding of climate change are vital to garner support for climate action, the researchers add.Awareness and concern The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, uses the results of a Gallup World Poll in 2007-08, which collected responses in 119 countries. This is…

The mangroves, which store prodigious quantities of carbon, are currently disappearing fast − often destroyed to make room for aquaculture to satisfy the wants of lucrative foreign markets. But a team from the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and colleagues report in the journal Nature Climate Change that protecting the mangroves could take Indonesia a quarter of the way to achieving the whole…

Speaking at the World Engineers Summit on Climate Change 2015 last Wednesday, Dr. Arab Hoballah, chief of the sustainable consumption and production branch, division of technology, industry and economics at the United Nations Environment Programme, said that cities today are still not climate-resilient because they do not have the “boing” factor – a term first coined by Neil McInroy and Sarah Longlands in their…

For the new study published in the journal Science on Thursday, scientists have found that the abrupt climate changes over the course of the Late Pleistocene era, which goes back at least 50 years ago, could explain the disappearance of the large mammals. The researchers compared the data on the extinction of megafaunal species with records of severe climate events and found an association…

MANILA: At a conference in Paris on Jul 7-10, more than 2,000 scientists discussed debated and proposed ideas on dealing with the effects of climate change. Momentum is building ahead of the UN conference on climate change at the end of the year. It aims to reach a deal to limit global warming to a 2°C rise in temperature, but this will not be…

At the same time these storms and floods are wreaking havoc on the country’s infrastructure and economy as they devastate dikes, canals, livestock and thousands of hectares of crops annually. "We have to quicken our actions on mitigation, reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and adaptation," said Hoang Van Thang, deputy minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) at a recent…

There is a willingness from the developed countries and even from some emerging economies to provide that money. But there is still no agreement on how to channel the funds, or which countries should be prioritized. This has been the most difficult question over the years. It could be argued that there are poor and vulnerable communities in every country, including the developed countries…

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces last month was the highest logged in 136 years. Temperatures in June 2015, at 0.88°C above the 20th century average of 15.5°C, surpassed the previous record set just one year ago by 0.12°C. Unusually high temperatures were also logged in February, March and May of this year.Land records The global land temperature in June…

Natural gas now makes up 95.5 per cent of Singapore's fuel mix, up from 74.4 per cent in 2005, according to the latest statistics from the Energy Market Authority (EMA). Petroleum products' share this year has been whittled to 0.7 per cent, down from 23.1 per cent in 2005. This will put Singapore in a better position to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, experts say…

They warn an increase in average global temperatures of just 1°C could result in dramatic changes in sea level and an increase in powerful storms. They conclude that 2°C of warming – the international target for limiting global warming – will be 'highly dangerous' to humanity. The study warns that glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic could melt 10 times faster than projections put forward…

The findings support the likelihood that a current hiatus in the world's year-on-year temperature increases - which have stalled since 1998 - is temporary. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh analysed real-world historic climate records from 1782 to 2000, comparing them with computerised climate models for the same timescale. They were able to separate the influence on climate trends of man-made warming - such…

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) will solicit opinions from relevant ministries and sectors to complete the contents of the national master plan on the environment and natural resources monitoring network to submit to the Government in August 2015, said Deputy Minister of MONRE Chu Pham Ngoc Hien. The master plan was approved by the Prime Minister in 2007 to make effective use…

Organized by the Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) from July 22 to July 24, WES emphasize the role of engineers from across the world in shaping innovative and technological solutions on sustainable urban development for global climate resilience. “With so many challenges in front of us, the message is clear: We need more engineers and we require them to be innovative and competent,” said…

By hurting the poor most, climate change now threatens to unravel those efforts, and even put them in reverse. A report last month for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), To Foster Inclusive Growth, Tackle Inequality and Climate Change, found that the poor were hit first and hardest when natural disasters strike. By living on the edge, physically and financially, they have the least capacity…

More than 60 mayors pledged to do their part during a two-day summit in the Vatican aimed at spurring efforts to fight global warming following the pope’s environment encyclical denouncing the exploitation of the poor and the Earth’s resources. “If we’re going to confront these issues, if we’re going to overcome the fear of change, the fear of losing the convenience of consumerism that…

Behind the scenes, the digital organizers of international environmental group 350.org have been raising this army and directing it to put pressure on several key fronts. While the majority of Congressional Republicans are still waffling over the reality of climate change, 350.org's legions have been busy filling the streets with hundreds of thousands of protesters, shutting down major pipeline projects and killing billions of dollars'…

One of the lead authors of the report is Sir David King, formerly the UK government’s chief scientist, who last month co-authored a report on the scale of investment that should be made to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy by 2025. In a foreword to the latest report, Baroness Anelay, a minister at the British foreign office, writes that assessing the…

That’s according to a study published this week in Nature Communications, which shows that fire weather seasons have, on average, grown 18.7 percent longer across the Earth’s surface since 1979. What’s more, the global burnable area affected by fire seasons has doubled, meaning areas that didn’t used to be fire prone are starting to look rather combustible. The reason? Hotter, drier conditions across vast…