Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol is taking place from November 28th to 9th December 2005 in Montreal, Canada, alongside the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP-11) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP-11 will see the launch of a five-year work programme on adaptation. "A certain degree of climate change is no longer avoidable", said Halldor Thorgeirsson, coordinator of the Climate Change Secretariat’s Methods, Inventories and Science Programme. "All countries need to adapt to the inevitable impacts. Developing countries will be hardest hit by those impacts and need the necessary assistance."

Other issues for discussion at the meetings include technology (particularly carbon capture and storage), and strengthening the Clean Development Mechanism. The post-Kyoto regime will also be on the agenda. "It will be very complex," said Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Any agreement has to be more flexible than Kyoto but at the same time has to deliver real cuts in emissions and the Bush administration is adamantly opposed to any process aimed at widening Kyoto." Jennifer Morgan of WWF International proposes that "developed countries should continue after 2012 with Kyoto-type commitments with ever deeper cuts, but developing countries should start with less strict goals." "The United States wants to block this process from starting," according to David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Look for the United States to use a variety of strategies to try to veto consensus," he said, such as lining up Middle Eastern OPEC countries and India in favour of voluntary approaches.

More information

• CNN
• Reuters
• Press release, UNEP

• Earth Negotiations Bulletin, daily reports
• On the Web: The climate negotiations

Levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice cores published in the journal Science. "We find that carbon dioxide is about 30 per cent higher than at any time, and methane 130 per cent higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for carbon dioxide, two hundred times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years," reported project leader Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

In the same journal, an analysis of ocean sediment cores has revealed that global warming has already doubled the historic rate of sea-level rise. Over the past 5,000 years, evidence from the sediment cores shows that sea levels have risen on average at about 1mm each year, but since the mid 19th century the rate has been 2mm a year. "The main thing that has happened since the 19th century and the beginning of the modern observation has been the widespread increase in fossil fuel use and more greenhouse gases," said lead author of the study Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University in the United States.

More information

• BBC
• ABC Science Online

• Guardian
• Science Daily

Jan Egeland, emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, has called for more effective disaster prevention and preparedness systems. "If we had had good early warning systems, much fewer would have died in the Indian Ocean tsunami. If we had had earthquake-safe schools, hospitals and housing in Northern Pakistan, tens of thousands would not have lost their lives. If we had had better levees in New Orleans, those who lived in the lower lying parts of the city would not have had to see their lives devastated," he told a news conference during a meeting of the International Task Force for Disaster Prevention in Geneva, Switzerland.

Egeland noted that 95 per cent of all deaths associated with natural disasters occur in the developing world, though disasters were evenly distributed around the world. "This is one of the biggest challenges of our time and age, the need to make vulnerable people living in developing nations more resilient to natural hazards," he said. The United Nations wants a central fund for emergency relief, rather than having to request funds after disaster strikes.

More information

• Scoop
• BBC

• Be prepared, Jan Egeland