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Environment

UN Climate Summit: Staged parade or reality show?

The much-ballyhooed one-day Climate Summit next week is being hyped as one of the major political-environmental events at the United Nations this year. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged over 120 of the world’s political and business leaders, who are expected to participate in the talk-fest, to announce significant and substantial initiatives, including funding commitments, “to help move the world towards a path that will limit global warming.” climate_changeWhat is needed to stop climate change are ambitious, equitable, bi...

Climate change to hit Sundarbans tigers hard

Bengal Tigers, one of the critically endangered species, face extinction as their habitats in the Sundarbans are going to be severely affected due to the growing extreme climate events and sea-level rise, warned biological scientists. “Of course, Bengal Tigers living in the Sundarbans will be hit hard due to the climate change,” Dr John Seidensticker, the head of Conservation Ecology Centre at Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, USA, told UNB. tigerHe said, “First of all, you know what is happening in a very dynamic area like the Sundarbans. Water ...

Floating above Bangladesh’s floods

Climate change is a serious problem pretty much everywhere, but for low-lying, heavily populated Bangladesh, rising sea levels are a mortal threat. The massive floods this week that have left nearly half a million people homeless make that fact excruciatingly clear. [caption id="attachment_9044" align="alignleft" width="300"]flood Children are let out of class for the day from a solar-powered floating school, operated by Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, on May 20 in Pabna District, Bangladesh. (Photo: Allison Joyce/Getty Images)[/caption] It may be too late t...

Climate change a ‘major challenge’ to South Asia’s economy

India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh will face “major challenges” as the impacts of climate change start to bite, according to a new report. The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) 163-page analysis outlines how warmer temperatures and rising seas could hit South Asia’s varied economies, home to nearly 1.5 billion people. It concludes that the “impacts of climate change are likely to result in huge economic, social and environmental damage to South Asian countries”. climateADB uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) emissions sce...

World Bank lending policies ‘environmentally disastrous’    

Radical plans by the World Bank to relax the conditions on which it lends up to $50bn (£29bn) a year to developing countries have been condemned as potentially disastrous for the environment and likely to weaken protection of indigenous peoples and the poor. A leaked draft of the bank’s proposed new “safeguard policies”, seen by the Guardian, suggests that existing environmental and social protection will be gutted to allow logging and mining in even the most ecologically sensitive areas, and that indigenous peoples will not have to be consulted before major projects like palm oil plantations or large dams palm go ahead on land which they traditionally occupy.

Pacific summit to urge action on climate change  

Pacific island leaders will renew calls for meaningful action on climate change at a regional summit opening in Palau on Tuesday, amid fears rising seas will swamp their low-lying nations. Many of the 15 nations represented at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) lie barely a metre (three feet) above sea level, and regard themselves as the frontline of climate change, an issue they say threatens their very existence. While emissions controls and carbon footprints can seem like abstract concepts in the climate debate, Palau President Tommy Remengesau said Pacific island nations were already facing the reality of global warming.
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