Voice of climate-by Naseem Sheikh

From the World Bank commissioned report in 2009: “Public attitudes toward climate change: findings from a multi-country poll”,comes this interesting look at country wide attitudes to climate change. So it's interesting to look at how these views affected country attitudes at Durban recently. It is pertinent to mention here that Asia has been worst hit by severe climate change.  Pakistan is one of the countries that have been severely hit in the recent years by disastrous effects of climate change including flash floods and devastating earthquakes. “Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and cooling—due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations stil...

The United Nations today launched the Decade on Biodiversity with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging humanity to live in harmony with nature and to preserve and properly manage its riches for the prosperity of current and future generations. It is now widely recognised that climate change and biodiversity are interconnected. Biodiversity is affected by climate change, with negative consequences for human well-being, but biodiversity, through the ecosystem services it supports, also makes an important contribution to both climate-change mitigation and adaptation. After extended negotiations over the weekend, the 194 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed on a package of decisions, known as the Durban Platform, which include the launch of a protocol or legal instrument that would apply to all members, a second commitment period for the existing Kyoto Protocol and the launch of the Green Climate Fund. The 194 countries negotiating here also agreed tha...

This year will be world’s tenth warmest on record since 1850, and the highest ever in a year which experienced a La Niña event, a meteorological phenomenon which is supposed to have a cooling influence on Earth’s atmosphere, a United Nations agency reported today (29 th Nov2011). The report was released today in The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban, South Africa, (from November 28 –December 9, 2011), where thousands of representatives from governments, international organizations and civil society are meeting to advance ways to cut global carbon emissions and pollution. Geography compounded with high levels of poverty and population density has rendered Asia and the Pacific countries especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change with increase in temperature. Climate change is existent and the region faces scary climate-related improvement challenges. Asia and the Pacific, with over 50% of ...