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

Sustainable Forest Management Could Net 10 Million New Jobs

10 March 2009 – Ten million new “green jobs” can be created by national investments in sustainable forest management, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said today.

“As more jobs are lost due to the current economic downturn, sustainable forest management could become a means of creating millions of green jobs, thus helping to reduce poverty and improve the environment,” said Jan Heino, Assistant Director-General of FAO’s Forestry Department.

Since forests and trees are vital storehouses of carbon, such an investment would also make a major contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, he said.

Jobs in forest management include agro-forestry and farm forestry, improved fire management, development and management of trails and recreation sites, expansion of urban green spaces, restoring degraded forests and planting new ones.

A number of countries, including the United States and the Republic of Korea, have included forestry in their economic stimulus plans, and it is an important component of India’s rural employment guarantee programme, FAO said.

Employment in sustainable forest management will be a major topic of World Forest Week, to be held in conjunction with FAO’s Committee on Forestry, 16 to 20 March in Rome.

Source: www.un.org