The United Nations Climate boss Yvo de Boer says that the 193 countries that are taking part in the COP15 Climate Summit have to speed up their negotiations, reports Politiken.

“As soon as this conference is over, things have to happen. So my call to people is that they should use this first week to get all the basic work done,” Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer says at a news conference on the second day of the summit.

Negotiators have been working for months to reach agreement on texts, work that is now reaching a climax prior to the arrival in Copenhagen next week of heads of state and government.

One of the main issues at stake is ways to finance efforts by poor countries to mitigate climate change. Developing and industrial countries remain at loggerheads as to how much transfer funding is needed to help developing countries.

“I am sure that the conference will result in action and support for the developing countries. There is an immediate need of USD 10 billion in 2010, 2011 and 2012. And much greater funding in the future. I sense a growing understanding about this,” de Boer says.

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As the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen kicks off, one thing is clear: for millions of people around the world climate change is not simply a future threat, it is a current reality.

In my role as the United Kingdom’s International Development Secretary, I’ve met people around the world who are living with the consequences of climate change – from families in Bangladesh forced to leave their flooded homes, to women in parts of Ethiopia who are walking further each year to collect water for their families.

In Uganda the climate crisis threatens the very activities that have underpinned Uganda’s strong economic growth and poverty reduction. Coffee, a very important export for Uganda and a major source of income for subsistence farmers is becoming more difficult to grow. Droughts are becoming more common, leading to loss of animals, low production of milk, food insecurity, and increased food prices.

People living in the developing world are the least responsible for climate change, yet they are already most affected by it. As we look to the future it is clear that climate change will increasingly hit poor people hardest.

By 2020, some countries across Africa could see the yields from rain-fed agriculture fall by a half. By 2035, parts of the Himalayan glaciers, which provide water to 1.5 billion people across Asia, could have disappeared. By 2080, an extra 400 million people could be exposed to the threat of malaria.
Climate change threatens to make poverty the future for millions of people. That is why the government of the United Kingdom believes that the world has not only a common interest, but also a moral responsibility to people in the most vulnerable countries, to secure a fair deal on climate change.

To keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees centigrade will mean nothing less than a 50 per cent reduction in global emissions by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. This will require a firm commitment from rich nations to significant cuts in emissions – for developed countries do bear the greatest responsibility for the emissions we have seen over the past century. A deal will also need to involve developing countries – because the greatest growth in emissions over coming decades will be in such countries.

At the same time we must agree a strong deal on climate finance, to help developing countries both adapt to the now-inevitable effects of climate change, and get their economies on a low-carbon path to growth.

Read more from Douglas Alexander’s article in Uganda’s Daily Monitor.

Almost seven in 10 Chinese are willing to pay a higher price for energy and other products to mitigate climate change, even though only about three in 10 think it is a “serious problem”, says China Daily.

A World Bank poll that covered 15 nations, however, shows the majorities of the people, especially in the developing world, want their governments to take steps to fight global warming, even if that entails costs.

The majorities in all countries support “limiting the rate of constructing coal-fired power plants, even if it raises the cost of energy.” In China, which is highly reliant on coal, 68 percent support the measure. Across the 15 countries, on average 68 percent support the idea (31 percent strongly) and 26 percent oppose it (8 percent strongly).

Pollsters approached 1,010 people in nine provinces and municipalities of China, 68 percent of whom said they were willing to pay a fixed amount equal to 1 percent per capita GDP for energy and other products as part of taking steps to combat climate change. But only 28 percent considered global warming to be a “serious problem”, though nearly half saw it as “somewhat serious”.

Respondents in the US have slightly higher awareness than the Chinese, with 31 percent saying it was “very serious”.

In contrast, about 90 percent of the respondents in Mexico and 85 percent in Bangladesh said it was a “very serious matter”.

People said they would support public steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions and expedite adaptation measures. For example, they said they would support higher fuel efficiency standards for cars, preserving or expanding forests and extending funding to vulnerable countries so they could develop hardier crops suited to more severe climates.

Read more here.

Over the past year the countries of Africa have intensified their efforts to build a coalition on climate change. Across the continent, governments and communities have been working to ensure that their concerns and expectations are heard at the Copenhagen climate negotiations later this month.

Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change. In our lifetimes, climate shifts will likely inflict severe damage to human welfare in a continent already battling with entrenched poverty, degraded ecosystems and civil strife.

But Africa’s potential to help tackle climate change is both largely unrecognized and unrealized. For instance, thanks to the forest cover and rich topsoil found in many African countries, the region represents a major carbon storehouse. African forests take in 20 percent of the carbon that is absorbed by trees across the world. Its soil stores at least as great a share of the planet’s carbon produced by agriculture.

Climate change management thus offers a number of “win-win” opportunities for African countries both to reduce the adverse effects of climate change and address some of their deep-rooted development concerns such as access to energy, food security and the prevention of crises and conflicts.

While these key issues should serve as the core pillars of Africa’s engagement in the negotiations, the next question is how to transform these opportunities into concrete actions and results.

Africa will require urgent support for the formulation of climate change strategies as well as upfront financing to take effective measures for adaptation and mitigation.

Read more here.

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Sea levels are likely to rise by about 1.4m (4ft 6in) globally by 2100 as polar ice melts, according to a major review of climate change in Antarctica, writes the BBC News website.

Conducted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), it says that warming seas are accelerating melting in the west of the continent.

Ozone loss has cooled the region, it says, shielding it from global warming.

Rising temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula are making life suitable for invasive species on land and sea.

The report – Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment – was written using contributions from 100 leading scientists in various disciplines, and reviewed by a further 200.

Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that the global average sea level would probably rise by 28-43 cm (11-16in) by the end of the century.

Launching the SCAR report in London, lead editor John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) suggested that observations on the ground had changed that picture, especially in parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

“Warmer water is getting under the edges of the West Antarctic ice sheet and accelerating the flow of ice into the ocean,” he said.

This is the first time that an international body such as SCAR has endorsed the likelihood that sea levels will rise enough to threaten some of the world’s biggest cities by the end of the century.

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Climate activists are gearing up for the UN Climate Change Conference in two weeks, but face harsh jail conditions if arrested, reports The Copenhagen Post.

Legislation was recently tightened to allow police to hold protestors for up to 40 days if they hinder police work and the already overstretched prison service is gearing up for new arrivals.

Vestre Fængsel prison in Copenhagen is preparing to house those who are being held in custody by doubling up on cell-space and holding others in the prison gym and workshop areas.

The prison houses many pre-trial detainees and if climate protestors are added to the current population, prison warden Peter Vesterheden warned that conditions would not be ideal.

‘There’s no doubt that they’ll be bored and really surly,’ Vesterheden told DR News.

The warden said they plan to convert the gym to house 40 inmates temporarily, sleeping on mattresses on the floor at night. Single person cells of 8sqm will double up to house two inmates – one on the bunk and one on the floor.

A further 30 temporary detainees may be housed at the Ellebæk detention centre next to the Sandholm Asylum Centre in North Zealand.

Activists have also been warned by police not to spread advice that could lead to criminal behaviour.

A number of manuals on how to avoid the police and deal with them in case of arrest have been circulating on activists’ websites.

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.

“It cannot be denied that this one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”

Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008, and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.

The differences among individual regions of the world are considerable. In the Arctic, for example, temperatures rose by almost three degrees Celsius, which led to a dramatic melting of sea ice. At the same time, temperatures declined in large areas of North America, the western Pacific and the Arabian Peninsula. Europe, including Germany, remains slightly in positive warming territory.

But a few scientists simply refuse to believe the British calculations.

Read more here.

Top executives from African media houses gather in Lagos on Thursday for two days of consultations on how to sustain the development of good journalism on the continent. Owners, publishers and editors will join panel discussions on topics ranging from the media and governance to the challenges and opportunities of digital media and the monetization of content.

The discussions will take place at the second meeting of the African Media Leadership Forum (AMLF), a group which held its inaugural meeting in Dakar, last year.

The first meeting of the forum resolved to invite African governments, the African Union Commission and regional African organizations “to take proactive steps in creating conditions conducive for promoting media as partners for achieving sustainable development on the African continent.”

The Dakar conference also acknowledged that media professionals needed to strengthen their competencies and improve their skills and knowledge.

Conference organizers are hopeful that the AMLF, as the only gathering of the continent’s media executives from print, broadcast, online and new media sectors, can be a strong force for improving the quality of journalism.

Read more here.

A scenic view of Calabria's contaminated coast

It is an embarrassment which effects one of Italy’s most beautiful regions and condemns its citizens to the aftereffects of hazardous environmental contamination. But now, L’Espresso reports that Calabrians are speaking up about the illegal dumping of toxic waste off their region’s coasts by the local mafia organization, the ‘Ndrangheta.

On September 12, 2009, Calabrian authorities discovered a sunken ship containing barrels of toxic waste off the coast of Cosenza. Confirming the ship’s load is former ‘Ndrangheta boss Francesco Fonti who has admitted his responsibility in the illegal dumping since 2005.  However, since then nothing has been done to remove the ship and its load from the bottom of Calabria’s coastal waters and local residents are beginning to voice their outrage. Especially since experts have identified above-normal levels of radioactivity and toxicity across the Calabrian countryside and the region is  seeing a rapid increase in the spread of cancer amongst its citizens.

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EU environment ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Wednesday (21 October) adopted firmer EU positions on tackling climate change ahead of the UN conference in Copenhagen this December.

“This should be seen as a sign to the world that the EU is ready for the Copenhagen negotiations,” said Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren, whose country currently holds the EU presidency.

Wednesday’s advances on reaching a co-ordinated EU position ahead of the December negotiations contrast sharply with the failure of EU finance ministers to reach an agreement on climate financing a day earlier.

Amongst the commitments welcomed by environmental NGOs on Wednesday, EU environment ministers agreed to support long-term CO2 emission reductions of 80-95 percent on 1990 levels by the year 2050.

A number of countries had been keen to restrict the reduction to 80 percent, as reflected in the G8 communique agreed at L’Aquila, Italy, earlier this year.

Read more here.