Saarc ministers hold climate change meet in Dhaka July 3

In view of the growing concern for climate change, environment ministers from eight Saarc countries will meet in Dhaka on July 3 to take a common stance on the climate change issue before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December next year. This will be the first such regional meeting as environment has been an important agenda for South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc).

A deal for facilitating exchange of information between the Saarc countries will top the agenda, said officials of both the environment and foreign Ministries. They said Saarc is to devise a regional action plan for adapting to climate change and mobilising funds for the purpose. Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed will inaugurate the Saarc ministerial meeting. The decision to hold Saarc climate change meeting was made at the 29th session of the Saarc Council of Ministers in New Delhi in December 2007. The July 3 Saarc ministerial meeting will be preceded by an expert-level meeting on July 1 and 2.

The expert-level meeting will make an in-depth assessment on the adverse impact of climate change in the region and suggest measures to address the situation through cooperation.
They hoped that the Dhaka meeting would pave the way for Saarc to take a common stance on the climate change issue.

The UN has been pressing for a new, historic deal on Climate Change in Copenhagen next year. The treaty due to be hammered out in the Danish capital next year is meant to provide an action plan after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions expire at the end of 2012.

On the issue of regional funding for facilitating adaptation to climate change, a high official of the foreign ministry said the ways and means to mobilise a fund called the Saarc Development Fund might be discussed at the meeting.

The Dhaka meet is also expected to seek funds from donor agencies whose representatives have been invited to the meeting, the official said. Besides officials and experts from eight member nations -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka --, representatives from donor bodies like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Global Environment Facility, DFID, Saarc Observers China, Japan, South Korea, USA and EU are expected to join the meeting.

Bangladesh, being located in a region regularly affected by floods and cyclones, is very vulnerable to extreme weather. The country has already begun to feel the effects of the climate change as flood periods have become longer and the cyclones that hit the country cause greater devastation. Besides, rise in sea level will inundate the coastal areas of the country. A rise of 30-45cm in sea level will affect the coastal ecosystems, water and agriculture and also food production. This will result in displacement of about 35 million people from the coastal districts by the year 2050.

The caretaker government has made a proposal to create a fund titled “Fund for Climate Change” and allocate Tk 3000 million (about 43 million US$) in the budget for 2008-09.

Link Daily star

HP Outlines How Its Products Can Save 1 Billion Tons of CO2

Hewlett-Packard has published a whitepaper detailing how its green products can help businesses cut carbon emissions by 1 billion tons.HP's whitepaper builds on the report The Potential Global CO2 Reductions from ICT Use: Identifying and Assessing the Opportunities to Reduce the First Billion Tons of CO2, co-produced by WWF International. The report identifies ten existing IT solutions that reduce carbon emissions in areas including buildings, transportation networks, and industrial production.
The whitepaper also coincides with HP's new Eco Solutions program, which helps customers identify products and services that can help them lower their environmental footprint from IT operations.

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ISO standards highlighted at Bali conference as essential to voluntary and regulatory efforts to fight climate change

Laying a pathway for 2012 beyond Kyoto was central to this year's meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Over a two-week period from 3-14 December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, more than 12 000 participants from government, intergovernmental organizations, and international NGOs associated with business, academic, environmental and civil society interests converged in Bali to address a most pressing issue of our time – climate change.
The need to act for the sake of future generations has never been clearer, or more urgent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, has highlighted the unequivocal impact that mankind's activities are having on the world's climate in its Summary for Policymakers, a summary from its Fourth Assessment Report (see http://www.ipcc.ch/).
The findings indicate that the global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from pre-industrial values of about 280 ppm, to 379 ppm in 2005. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650 000 years (180 to 300 ppm).
The report predicts that continued greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.
With a mandate to address these challenges, the Bali meetings convened the 13th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, its subsidiary bodies as well as the Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol. In addition, the meetings included an extensive array of side events and exhibits that probed topical issues of importance to global climate change.
A central theme was the renewed importance of industry and governments to work towards common solutions and to ensure that voluntary initiatives align with the imperatives of government and society at large. ISO's foundational contribution to such voluntary approaches was highlighted late in the first week by the ISO Deputy Secretary-General, Kevin McKinley, in a special side event session hosted by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
The ISO process was promoted as an effective mechanism for developing international consensus amongst countries and stakeholders from civil society, business and other interests – ISO's reach being achieved through its network of national standards institutes from 157 countries, as well as links with more than 600 international and regional organizations collaborating in its programme of more than 3000 committees and working groups.
ISO standards offer practical tools for addressing climate change at four levels:
Monitoring climate change through technical, basic equipment and measurement standards (e.g., ISO/TC 211 on geomatics, ISO/TC 146/SC5 on meteorology).
Quantifying GHG emissions and communicating on environmental impacts, including the leading ISO standards ISO 14064 (Parts 1, 2 and 3) and ISO 14065 on GHG accounting, verification, validation and accreditation of bodies carrying out these activities.
Promoting good practice in environmental management and design, for example achieving broad deployment of organizational commitment to the environment through widespread implementation of ISO 14001, which provides the requirements for environmental management systems-
Opening markets for energy efficient technologies and renewable sources, including established programmes for hydrogen, nuclear and wind technologies, as well as new standardization work on solid and liquid biofuels, and proposals for standards on improving energy management in organizations.
In particular, ISO, WBCSD and WRI highlighted the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) under which the organizations have agreed to jointly cooperate on and promote the ISO 14064 standards and the WRI/WBCSD-developed GHG Protocol
In the second week, ISO contributed to discussions concerning a proposed new initiative to fund and encourage small business action on the sustainability agenda. Currently entitled the Sustainability of the Planet foundation, its founders will be seeking to establish the initiative at a global level and to strengthen more formal cooperation with key actors such as ISO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Global Compact, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and WBCSD.
In the final days of the Bali meetings, ISO presented at a special side event organized by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) concerning voluntary carbon markets and the impact of the new Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS). The VCS is a recently launched, global carbon offset standard that effectively incorporates exacting principles from the ISO 14064 series and ISO 14065.
Co-developed by the IETA, the Climate Group and WBCSD, the VCS will provide a new and much-needed level of assurance for the certification of voluntary offsets, especially targeted to organizations keen to tackle climate change by going "carbon-neutral". Developers of the VCS estimate that annual transactions in the voluntary carbon market could reach USD 4billion in the next five years and that the VCS will be instrumental to this future growth.
ISO International Standards - Practical tools for addressing climate change
Hot topics - Climate change
ISO Deputy Secretary-General Kevin McKinley stated: "The success of all emissions trading programmes will be assisted by extensive use and reference to the globally accepted ISO 14064 series and ISO 14065. In fact, truly additional and material reductions in global GHG emissions can only be achieved through the continued convergence of ISO standards and both the voluntary and regulatory GHG emission verification, validation, accreditation and trading regimes.
"This Bali meeting has been especially useful to promote, particularly with key industry and non-governmental partners, the foundational role that ISO standards are playing in contributing to mitigating climate change and to achieving a truly sustainable world."

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U.S. Carbon Emissions Increase Again

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just released preliminary data showing that carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources in the United States grew by 1.6 percent in 2007—the single largest year-over-year increase since Bush took office. This one-year increase of 96 million metric tons is like adding 14 million cars to the road. And if we look at the increase in carbon dioxide pollution from energy sources during the entire Bush administration, that sum rises to 230 million metric tons—a nearly 10 percent increase.
The jump this year comes after a small decline last year that was driven by a mild winter and summer in 2006 that enabled Americans to use less energy for heating and cooling. With weather returning to normal last year, higher electricity use is one of the largest drivers of emissions increases in both the commercial and residential sectors.
Overall emissions from the electric power sector increased by 3 percent in 2007. Coal-fired electric plants were the number one stationary source of emissions last year, accounting for a 35.3 million metric ton carbon dioxide increase between 2006 and 2007. Some utilities have turned to natural gas to try to reduce their emissions. And the increase in natural gas emissions in 2007 slightly exceeded coal—a 35.6 million metric ton increase of carbon dioxide.
Petroleum-related carbon dioxide emissions experienced a tiny decrease in 2007, mostly due to a decrease in emissions from oil-fueled electricity. Nonetheless, petroleum still generates the most emissions of all fossil fuels, surpassing coal in 2007 by 429 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. And emissions from petroleum use have grown the most since Bush took office—4.6 percent since 2001.
The EIA data sends several important signals about national carbon dioxide emissions generated by fossil fuel use. There is a clear need to change our energy usage. Proposals to build dozens of new coal-fired electric plants would exacerbate emissions problems—problems that relying on natural gas aren’t solving. Electricity generation is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions. This makes enacting a strong, effective cap-and-trade bill particularly urgent.
Other fossil fuel emissions are also an important part of the puzzle. While emissions from petroleum experienced a slight decrease last year, oil combustion produced the single highest increase in carbon dioxide emissions since 2001. Total fossil fuel energy emissions from the transportation sector have increased a total of 8.4 percent since Bush took office. Higher fuel economy standards in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 will begin to reduce emissions from the transportation sector after their implementation in 2012. But more action is necessary to reduce emissions from this and other fossil fuels.

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Scientist urges carbon tax to help climate

The U.S. scientist who 20 years ago first told Congress that the Earth's climate was warming said on Monday that urgent action was needed to cut greenhouse gases and proposed a tax on carbon emissions.
James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said at a congressional briefing that a carbon tax would be the most efficient way to cut global warming emissions and encourage non-fossil energy sources.
"We have to level with the public that there has to be a price on carbon emissions," Hansen said. "That is the only way we are going to begin to move toward a carbon free economy."
Hansen said urgent action was needed to cut carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the globe and are already causing arctic ice to melt. He said world leaders had only one or two years to act before the Earth reaches a "tipping point" with major consequences to the global climate and species survival.
"We have reached an emergency situation," Hansen said.
He said the government should not keep the proceeds from any carbon tax, but refund the money to taxpayers to help them pay for more fuel efficient technology.
President George W. Bush has opposed any broad program to curb carbon emissions saying it would hurt the economy and has consistently resisted any tax increases. But global warming is an issue in this year's presidential campaign and is expected to be a major topic of discussion at next month's meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations in Japan.
Twenty years ago today, Hansen testified before a Senate committee and told lawmakers that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."
Hansen's testimony helped spur the first congressional efforts to curb greenhouse gases. The most recent effort, legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions died in the Senate earlier this month in face of a veto threat from the White House

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U.N. agenda for new global climate deal by 2009

A 190-nation U.N. climate meeting in Bali edged towards a deal on Saturday, after two weeks of talks to launch two-year negotiations on a broad pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol from Jan 1, 2013.
Following are contents of the final draft text, still to be approved by the full conference of ministers and delegates on Saturday, describing the agenda for those negotiations.
LAUNCH OF NEW TALKS
A new U.N. group would supervise work on a new climate deal, to begin "without delay", not later than April 2008, and "complete its work in 2009".
HOW AMBITIOUS?
The level of ambition to guide rich countries' efforts to fight climate change was one of the most contentious issues at the Bali talks.
The United States opposed a European Union-backed range for greenhouse gas emissions cuts by 2020. Earlier drafts had mentioned a goal for rich countries to cut emissions by 25-40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
The EU backed down and the final draft relegated the emissions range to a footnote, which cited 2 pages in a report on fighting climate change published this year by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Those pages do not specify which one of six emissions-reduction targets countries should aim for. Those goals range from peaking global greenhouse gas emissions in 8 to 80 years time, resulting in long-term global temperature increases after 2100 of between 2 and 6.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
RICH AND POOR
Another contentious item was how far developing countries should match rich nations' efforts to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
The final draft called on all developed countries to consider "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives", and "nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions".
Meanwhile, developing countries should consider "measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation actions", with support for efforts to curb deforestation.
The text said "deep cuts in global emissions will be required" to avoid dangerous climate change.

ADAPTATION, TECHNOLOGY, FINANCING
Many countries worldwide are already suffering from climate change, many delegates said. The final text called for "urgent implementation of adaptation actions" including the "immediate needs" of small island states.
The text asked countries to accelerate efforts to transfer technologies which would help developing countries cut their contribution to and adapt to climate change.
The final draft called for more financial resources and investment for developing countries on adaptation, mitigation and technology cooperation, especially for the most vulnerable.

Link Reuters

Clean Climate

The United Nations urged the world to kick its addiction to carbon dioxide on World Environment Day on Thursday, and said everyone must take steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change.

Just under half of personal emissions come from things under individuals control, the United Nations said.

It recommends the following for anyone keen to shrink their carbon footprint.

· Wake up with a traditional wind-up alarm clock, not an electronic one: save almost 48 grams (g) of carbon dioxide (Co2) each day.

· Brush witha a non-electric toothbrush; avoid nearly 48 g of Co2 emissions

· Replace a 45-minute workout on a treadmill with a jog in a nearby park; save nearly 1kg of carbon.

· Heat bread rolls in a toaster, not an oven, for 15 minutes; save nearly 170g f Co2.

· Take the train rather than the car to the office: a distance of as little as 8 km can save 1.7kg of CO2.

· Shut down your computer and flat screen during the lunch break and when you leave work: this cuts Co2 emissions generated by these appliances by one-third.

· Install a water-saving shower head. This will save 10 liters of water per minute and halve CO2 emissions of a three-minute hot shower.

· Switch from regular 60-Watt light bulbs to energy saving compact fluorescent lamps.

· Dry clothes on a washing line instead of a tumble dryer: knock 2.3kg of CO2 off your total.

· Pack a light suitcase: world savings of 2million tonnes of CO2 a year are possible if every airline passenger cuts their baggage to below 20kg and buys duty free goods on arrival.

Sources: Reuters, United Nations Environment Programme.