23 September 2010 – The top United Nations climate change official today stressed the urgent need for governments to move forward in their negotiations ahead of a major conference in Cancun, Mexico, where they will be expected to conclude agreements related to issues such as technology transfer, mitigation and adaptation, and funding.

“We are barely two months away from the UN climate change conference in Cancun, the place where Governments need to take the next firm step on humanity’s journey to meet the full-scale challenge of climate change,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Ahead of the next conference of parties to the Convention, to be held in November in Cancun, governments will hold a negotiating session in Tianjin, China, next week.

It is in Tianjin, said Ms. Figueres, that they will need to “cut down the number of options they have on the table, identify what is achievable in Cancun and muster the political compromises that will deliver those outcomes.”

She told a news conference at UN Headquarters that governments are converging on the need to mandate a full set of ways and means to launch a new wave of global climate action.

“On the whole, governments have been cognizant this year that there is an urgent need to move forward and they have been collaborating in moving beyond their national positions to begin to identify common ground so that they can reach several agreements in Cancun.”

The UN climate change chief said that negotiations are on track towards reaching agreements on the sharing of technology, jump-starting activities in developing countries dealing with reducing deforestation and degradation, setting out a framework for adaptation, and establishing a fund that would help developing countries with their mitigation and adaptation efforts.

“Let me be clear: there is no magic bullet, no one climate agreement that will solve everything right now,” she said.

“To expect that is naïve. It does not do justice to the crucial steps already achieved since the beginning of the Convention and it dangerously ignores the need to keep innovating.”

She noted four major trends shaping the future – energy supply and security; natural resource depletion; population growth; and climate change.

“An unchecked climate change is the flame that would make the other three burn most seriously,” said Ms. Figueres. “Governments can either stand together to turn these four threats into a new development paradigm that harnesses the full power of society, science and business, or they will fail divided.”

Source: UN News Centre

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23 September 2010 – Climate change, natural disaster and the triple crises of food, finance and fuel jeopardize sustainable development gains made by small island developing States (SIDS), according to a new United Nations report.

Such developments exacerbate the vulnerability of the SIDS due to their small size, remoteness, susceptibility to shocks and narrow resource bases, the publication says.

In some instances, it points out, improved economic and governance capacity in SIDS has been offset by reduced resilience to external shocks.

“Although SIDS are confronted with increasing challenges, the growing international consensus surrounding the need to support SIDS offers an unprecedented opportunity to advance their sustainable development efforts,” the report says.

Its release comes ahead of a high-level General Assembly gathering to review progress towards sustainable development made in these nations. The two-day meeting kicks off tomorrow.

In the past nearly four decades, SIDS including Samoa, Grenada, Vanuatu and Maldives top the list of 180 countries recording the highest economic losses in relative terms due to natural disasters.

In Samoa, a 1983 tropical storm and forest fire, along with three tropical storms in the late 1980s, may have set its capital stock back more than 35 years.

Despite advances made towards realizing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight globally-agreed targets with a 2015 deadline, in areas such as health and gender equality, the eradication of poverty is still a major hurdle for small island nations.

Source: UN News Centre

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(Reuters) - World powers are not aiming for a legally binding pact to fight global warming at a U.N. meeting in Mexico this year and are trying to stop backsliding from a 2009 agreement, the United States said on Tuesday.

U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern, speaking after a meeting of the Major Economies Forum in New York, reiterated the U.S. pledge to cut its emissions some 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels but declined to outline how that would be done in the absence of U.S. climate legislation.

The U.S. position, weakened by the failure of the Senate and the Obama administration to pass a law requiring emissions cuts, is one of a handful of stumbling blocks ahead of the November 29-December 10 U.N. meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which follows up on last year's chaotic session in Copenhagen.

Stern said some countries from the roughly 190-nation U.N. grouping had moved away from commitments made under the non-binding "Copenhagen Accord" last year to curb greenhouse gas emissions and acknowledged what has become largely accepted among climate watchers: no treaty would come out of Cancun.

"Nobody is anticipating or expecting in any way a legal treaty to be done in Cancun this year," he told reporters.

He said the MEF, which groups 16 of the world's biggest economies, and the 27-nation European Union, representing some 80 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases, had discussed that "backward movement" and agreed on the need to make progress on six core issues including finance and mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change.

"There was broad consensus on the need to have decisions ... on those issues and in a balanced way, meaning that you don't move on two or three of them and make no progress on the others," he said. "This is obviously easier said than done."

The United States launched the MEF to augment U.N. climate change talks, but Washington's leadership has been called into question by the failure to enact a law to support President Barack Obama's pledge to reduce U.S. emissions.

Stern said he would reiterate in Mexico that the United States was sticking to its goal and said there were many tools at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere to make it happen.

"The most important thing is that ... we are standing by the submissions that we made," in Copenhagen, Stern said.

Pressed for specifics, Stern said most negotiators in the process, such as the Europeans or Japanese, did not lay out exactly how they would meet their targets, and he expressed optimism that U.S. legislation would eventually be passed.

"We're at the beginning of a 10-year period between 2010 and 2020," he said. "I don't have any doubt that there's going to be legislation of some kind that will be meaningful. I can't say exactly when and I can't say exactly what the shape of it's going to be."

The 17 members of the forum include Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United States, and the EU. (By Jeff Mason; Editing by Paul Simao)

Source: Reuters

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21 September 2010 – A United Nations-backed intervention involving cook stoves holds the promise of saving lives, uplifting health, improving regional environments, reducing deforestation, empowering local entrepreneurs, speeding development, and helping to stem global climate change.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has joined international efforts to dramatically boost the efficiency of some 3 billion cook stoves across Africa, Asia and Latin America, with the aim to protect women’s health and provide significant environmental benefits.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cook Stoves was launched today on the margins of the General Assembly summit to review progress on the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Part of the Clinton Global Initiative spearheaded by the UN Foundation, the Global Alliance aims to cut the estimated 1.6 million to 1.8 million premature deaths linked with indoor emissions from inefficient cook stoves.

This initiative will also make a contribution to reducing deforestation by curbing the large quantities of wood and other biomass used to make charcoal, and by households switching to alternative fuels, including cookers powered by solar energy.

“In addition to meeting the health targets of the Millennium Development Goals, especially among women and children who are often the most exposed to indoor air pollution, the Alliance may have wider and indeed global benefits,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

“Inefficient cooking stoves are estimated to be responsible for approximately 25 per cent of emissions of black carbon, particles often known as soot, of which 40 per cent is linked to wood burning,” he said.

According to research under the UNEP-supported Atmospheric Brown Cloud project, black carbon could now be responsible for between 10 to 40 per cent of current climate change.

Emissions of black carbon may also be accelerating melting rates of glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, with the dark particles absorbing sunlight and raising ice temperatures. In addition, black carbon – a key component of brown clouds in some parts of the world – is contributing to dimming and reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the ground in polluted parts of the globe.

For example, some major cities in Asia may be up to 25 per cent dimmer or darker than they were half a century ago. Reductions in visible light may also be harming agriculture, again with implications for poverty and for combating hunger under the MDGs.

Such initiatives as the African Rural Energy Enterprise Development (AREED) have compiled lessons learned with respect to cook stoves. AREED’s most successful project to date has been in Ghana, where start-up funding and support has been provided to a local company called Toyola Energy. The company manufactures a stove which uses charcoal 40 per cent more efficiently than conventional cook stoves.

“From its beginnings as a simple tree-sheltered operation in a community outside Ghana’s capital Accra, Toyola Energy has grown dramatically, increasing sales from 3,000 to over 35,000 units per annum within four years,” said Mr. Steiner. “By 2010, the company had supplied over 50,000 households in six regions of Ghana with improved energy-efficient stoves, and expanded their market to neighbouring countries.”

Toyola Energy has also generated 200 jobs, directly and indirectly, while its stoves have reduced CO2 emissions by some 15,000 tons annually. A key factor in its success was its partnership with UNEP, which is able to raise donor awareness and co-funding, and to provide needed policy reforms to assist small- to medium-sized enterprises.

Without such financial support, clean energy systems, including more efficient cook stoves, can be too expensive for the rural poor, despite fuel savings and the multiple health and environmental benefits. A cook stove can cost up to $5 or much more – way too costly for someone living on less than $2 a day.

UNEP was confronted with this reality when it was looking to bring solar power to rural India, where many banks considered loans to the rural poor too risky. With support from the UN Foundation and the Shell Foundation, UNEP’s Solar Loan Programme made those loans affordable.

Between 2003 and 2008, there were 100,000 stoves in areas with no electricity grid which were able to acquire solar power. The initiative proved so successful it is now self-financing. Today, 20 banks with networks of 2,000 branches are offering competitive solar loans.

UNEP is also supporting a black carbon and cook stoves demonstration project called “Project Surya” in rural areas of India. Having completed its pilot phase in a rural village with 500 households and some 2,500 people, Surya’s demonstration phase has just begun. It will last two years and involve two to three rural areas spread from north to south India, each with a population of 15,000 people. Pilot phases are also being developed for other developing countries, such as Bhutan, Nepal and Kenya.

Source: UN News Centre

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