Leaders of UN, US Declare 2009 the Year of Climate Change

12 March 2009 – With nations set to conclude negotiations on an ambitious new greenhouse gas emissions agreement this December, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and United States President Barack Obama have stressed the need for 2009 to be the year of climate change.

Mr. Ban, who met with the “visionary” American leader earlier this week at the White House in Washington, told journalistin his monthly press conference at UN Headquarters today that they both agree that climate change poses an “existential threat.”

The two men share a commitment that “2009 must be the year of climate change,” he said, stressing the importance a comprehensive successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol – the legally binding emissions reduction regime whose first commitment period ends in 2012 – at December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“With US leadership, in partnership of the United Nations, we can and will reach a climate change deal that all nations can embrace,” the Secretary-General noted.

Reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate – have shown unequivocally that the world is warming, almost certainly due to human activity, with potentially disastrous effects including worsening drought in some regions and heavier rainfall in others.

Mr. Ban said today that he and Mr. Obama were of the same opinion that ‘green’ investments are an essential part of any stimulus package targeting the current global economic turmoil.

“If we are going to spend such tremendous sums of money, let us be smart about it,” he said.

He said that during his two-day visit to Washington, climate change also dominated his discussions with key American officials, including Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Congressman Howard Berman, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Last week, the top UN climate change official said that he sees “enthusiasm” in the current US Government to pass laws to reduce gas emissions and a willingness to work towards a new global climate change pact.

Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said he was “very much encouraged” following his recent meetings with officials in Mr. Obama’s administration and members of Congress.

“There is, I believe, a huge enthusiasm and energy in both the House and the Senate to put cap and trade climate change legislation in place in this country,” he added.

Mr. de Boer also underscored the willingness in the current US administration “to work towards an agreement in Copenhagen, to come with an ambitious domestic policy [and] to engage with international partners” to come to an accord.

Source: www.un.org

Revised UN Estimates Put World Population at Over 9 Billion by 2050

11 March 2009 – The world’s population will hit 7 billion early in 2012 and top 9 billion in 2050, with the majority of the increase taking place in developing countries, according to revised United Nations estimates released today.

“There have been no big changes for the recent estimates and we have not changed the assumptions for the future,” Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), told reporters in New York.

“We’re still projecting that by 2050 the population of the world will be around 9.1 billion,” she said, as she presented the 2008 Revision of the World Population Prospects.

The Revision also says that nine countries are expected to account for half of the world’s projected increase from 2010 to 2050: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, China and Bangladesh.

Ms. Zlotnik noted that current projections are based on the assumption that fertility is going to decline from the current global level of 2.5 children per woman to 2.1 children per woman from now until 2050.

The population of the 49 least developed countries (LDCs) is still the fastest growing in the world, at 2.3 per cent per year, according to a news release issued by the Population Division.

While the population of developing countries as a whole is projected to rise from 5.6 billion in 2009 to 7.9 billion in 2050, the population of more developed regions is expected to change minimally, passing from 1.23 billion to 1.28 billion.

The latter would have declined to 1.15 billion were it not for the projected net migration from developing to developed countries, which is expected to average 2.4 million persons annually from 2009 to 2050.

The UN adds that projected trends are contingent on fertility declines in developing countries. Without further reductions of fertility, the world population could increase by nearly twice as much as currently expected.

“It is going to be extremely important to continue funding and increasing the funding that has gone down for family planning because, if not, our projections on declining fertility are unlikely to be met,” Ms. Zlotnik stated.

She added that the projected population trends also depend on achieving a major increase in the proportion of AIDS patients who get anti-retroviral therapy to treat the disease and on the success of efforts to control the further spread of HIV.

Among the other findings, she noted that most developing countries are unlikely to meet the goal of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015, one of eight globally agreed targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Source: www.un.org

Eco-activists Blockade Finance Ministers Meeting

by LEIGH PHILLIPS

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Hundreds of activists from Greenpeace, the campaigning environmental NGO, blocked all the exits to the EU Council of Ministers building in Brussels on Tuesday (10 March), trapping inside finance ministers from the 27 member states for several hours.

The 340 mostly young protesters from across Europe mounted the direct action, more radical than the many demonstrations that regularly take place outside EU institution buildings in the Belgian capital's European quarter. They were trying to highlight the failure of ministers to commit to funds for carbon emissions reductions and climate change adaptation measures in the developing world.

"Finance ministers are giving billions of taxpayers' money to failed banks, but we're here to make sure they also put money on the table to tackle climate change," said Thomas Henningsen, a campaigner with Greenpeace International. "If the planet were a bank, they would bail it out."

The activists said they were sealing in the finance ministers, in Brussels to discuss both the economic crisis and to consider proposals published in January by the European Commission on what stance to take at the upcoming UN conference in Copenhagen in December. There, a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol - due to expire in two years - is to be negotiated.


Climate finance in the developing world

Climate finance for the third world has become the main focus of discussion in the lead-up to the Copenhagen meeting. If the EU and US stump up significant chunks of cash for cutting emissions and climate adaptation, developing countries may in return commit to considerable CO2 reductions even though it is the industrialised north that is responsible for most of the emissions that caused the problem.

Last week, EU environment ministers meeting in Brussels failed to commit funds for climate finance in the developing world. It is not expected that the finance ministers will either, leaving the decision to be taken by premiers and presidents when they meet from 19-20 March at their spring summit in Brussels.

The Greenpeace activists marched past security outside the building at its two entrances at 11:00 a.m., and then sat down, blocking the doors until federal Belgian police, local Brussels police and some units from zones beyond the capital handcuffed and dragged the protesters away into a phalanx of paddy wagons two hours later.

Three activists were injured as a result of the police actions and are currently in hospital.

Agnes de Rooij, a campaigner with Greenpeace International, said that the group had no plans to mount a similar action during the leaders' summit.


Ocean acidification, Netherlands flooded

The action took place as climate scientists meeting this week in Copenhagen ahead of the UN conference later in the year have said that data on global warming shows that earlier predictions were wildly over-optimistic.

On Sunday, the scientists warned that previous estimates of sea-level rises due to global warming of around 20 to 60 centimetres by 2100 were too low, and that a rise of about a metre is now more realistic.

Such a rise would result in low-lying areas - notably most of the Netherlands, but also Bangladesh, Florida, and the Maldives having disastrous flooding.

Worse still, if average global temperatures increase by four degrees, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would likely entirely melt. A melting of the Greenland sheet would lift sea levels by seven metres. A melting of the Antarctic sheet would lift sea levels by 60 metres.

On Tuesday, scientists from Bristol University revealed at the meeting that the world's oceans are undergoing a dangerous acidification process not seen in 65 million years.

The gathered experts are this week to publish an update to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report. Many studies issued since 2007 show that carbon emissions are increasing faster than previous projections, meaning that recommended CO2 reduction targets of 25-40 percent by 2020 on 1990 levels are insufficient.

The EU has committed itself to CO2 reductions of 20 percent by 2020, and 30 percent by the same date if other wealthy nations agree to similar targets.

Source: www.euobserver.com