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Featured sites
The United Nations Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification website provides information, news and resources concerning action to protect the world's drylands from further deterioration and degradation.
The Corner House website makes available a series of thought-provoking reports and presentations, published by themselves and by and other organizations, on climate issues.
News of weather events and climate affairs from around the African continent.
And finally,
Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo discusses her work Melting Men, a series of installations that has been adopted as climate change art.
About the Cyberlibrary
The Tiempo Climate Cyberlibrary is a co-production of the Stockholm Environment Institute and the International Institute for Environment and Development. It is sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
Tiempo Climate Newswatch is a weekly on-line magazine with news, features and comment on global warming, climate change, sea-level rise and development issues. The news stories carried by Newswatch are updated weekly. Comment, features, interviews and other sections of the magazine are updated on a weekly to monthly basis.
The Tiempo Climate Portal is a listing of selected websites covering climate and development and related issues.
The Tiempo Climate Cyberlibrary is maintained and edited by Mick Kelly and Sarah Granich. The cartoons are created by Lawrence Moore. The site was developed by Mike Salmon and Mick Kelly.
While every effort is made to ensure that information on this site, and on other sites that are referenced here, is accurate, no liability for loss or damage resulting from use of this information can be accepted.
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Maumoon Abdul Gayoom stresses the human aspects of climate change and describes the key components of a good post-2012 climate agreement. |
| The author is President of the Republic of the Maldives. | |
For over a decade, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has delivered definitive and unequivocal scientific proof on the many facets of global climate change. The Stern Review proved that climate change could be tackled effectively without submitting our economies to bankruptcy. The United Nations Development Programme’s most recent Human Development Report identifies the human impacts of climate change, unlike many previous studies that projected the issue as a scientific and environmental one.
Climate change has now become a daily reality in the Maldives and other small island states. With meagre financial resources and limited capacity to mitigate or adapt, climate change has become the defining issue of the 21st century. Our severe lack of adaptive capacity, including financial, technical and institutional resources, means we are ill-prepared to deal with these multiple threats. All the while, the impending long-term effects of sea-level rise are drawing ever closer.
The impacts of climate change will be felt sooner, rather than later, in every nation, every community and every neighbourhood. But, of course, the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States would be faced with a much greater challenge than the rest of the world.
We believe that climate change must be viewed not only as a danger to natural systems, but also as a direct threat to human survival and well-being. We are convinced that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation process must not be viewed as a traditional series of governmental trade-offs, but as an urgent international effort to safeguard human lives, homes, rights and livelihoods.
The Bali Process must have a clear long-term target to stabilize the climate system and ensure that temperature rises are reined in to reasonable levels. Even a two degrees Celsius temperature increase compared to pre-industrial levels would have devastating consequences on small island states.
Adaptation must be at the heart of a post-2012 climate agreement. International activity on adaptation must include vulnerability assessments, enhanced resilience to climate impacts, building human and institutional capacity, and making public and private investments in making countries less vulnerable to climate change. The Adaptation Fund must be adequately resourced. It must also be easily accessible to the Small Island Developing States.
Negotiations within the framework of the UNFCCC towards a global and comprehensive agreement to stabilize the climate system must be completed by 2009. There can be no more delay, nor more distractions. After all, there is no more time.
Acknowledgement
This comment is extracted from an address at the UNFCCC negotiations in Bali in December 2007.
Bright Ideas
A prize-winning nation-wide biogas programme takes Vietnam's human and animal waste and turns it into clean, renewable energy, improving smallholders' quality of life
Schools for Intelligent Energy Use builds a bridge between intermediate vocational schools and civil societies to increase involvement in the field of energy saving and renewable energy
HANGER 4 LIFE produces a stylish range of ecofriendly, carbon-neutral adjustable garment hangers
Toronto Zoo is deploying green roof technology, solar hot water heating and solar and geothermal energy and plans to use dung from elephants and other large animals in a biogas plant
The Tokyo Electric Taxi Project is trialling battery-switch technology that could provide the optimum solution for electric vehicle fleets
The Far Eastern Group has built the EcoARK, a three-story exhibition hall, using 1.5 million plastic bottles (video)
SmartTrips visits different Portland neighborhoods every year with activities aimed at reducing drive-alone trips and increasing biking, walking and public transit use.
Zipcar provides flexible car sharing, by the hour or by the day and in many cities
Hydrogen-powered buses are carrying passengers on the streets of Reykjavik, Iceland (video)
The Esprimo P7000 Series of desktop computers from Fujitsu supports 0-Watt technology
Progressive Lighting and Energy Solutions makes companies green, one light bulb at a time
Ghent, Belgium, has declared Thursday a Veggie Day, promoting a meat-free, climate-friendly diet for one day of the week
Tiempo Climate Newswatch
Updated: August 29th 2010