Climate Change

GENEVA, Switzerland – There has been no reverse in the trend of global warming and there is still consistent evidence for man-made climate change, the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Monday.

WASHINGTON – An explosion in the number of laws passed around the world aimed at confronting climate change in the last 20 years was hailed on Thursday as a step toward building support for a United Nations climate treaty to be negotiated in 2015.

WASHINGTON — The Arctic isn’t nearly as bright and white as it used to be because of more ice melting in the ocean, and that’s turning out to be a global problem, a new study says.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Delaying action on global warming will only increase the costs and reduce the options for dealing with the worst effects of climate change, according to a draft report by U.N. experts.

PARIS – Nearly a third of the world’s economic output, some $44 trillion (32 trillion euros), will by 2025 be in countries at the highest risk of climate change effects, said research published Wednesday.

GENEVA — Global warming accelerated since the 1970s and broke more countries’ temperature records than ever before in the first decade of the new millennium, UN climate experts said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – A new report raised urgency for further mainstreaming climate change into the government’s planning and budgeting process so that archipelagic Philippines — the world’s third most vulnerable to weather extremes, sea level rise and temperature increase — can better build its resilience amidst projections that climate-altering global warming will worsen in forthcoming…

A World Bank-commissioned study revealed that eight out of 10 Filipinos “personally experienced” the impacts of climate change in the last three years.

Full report here http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17862361/ Turn down the heat : climate extremes, regional impacts, and the case for resilience – full report (English)

The world should stop arguing about whether humans are causing climate change and start taking action to stop dangerous temperature rises, the president of the World Bank said on Wednesday.

There’s more sobering news on the state of the country’s environment, according to an environment official during Monday’s celebration of Earth Day: The Philippines has the second-lowest forest cover in Southeast Asia and its biodiversity is among the most threatened in the world; despite the country having one of the most extensive coral reef areas…

PARIS – Earth was cooling until the end of the 19th century and a hundred years later, the planet’s surface was on average warmer than at any time in the previous 1,400 years, according to climate records presented on Sunday.

WASHINGTON – The author of an influential 2006 study on climate change warned Tuesday that the world could be headed toward warming even more catastrophic than expected but he voiced hope for political action.

Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2013. With strong economic growth of above 5% forecast for the Philippines and other Asian countries in the next few years, the relevance of climate change to populations and business in the major commercial centres should not be underplayed, according to Maplecroft analysis. Maplecroft Of the major urban centers in 197…

Kuala Lumpur (The Star/ANN) – Rio+20 (UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio de Janeiro, June 13-22, 2012), billed as a once in a generation chance to save the planet, was a huge disappointment even an embarrassment given that almost 200 countries were present, with many leaders including from Brazil, France, Australia and India attending. A…

GENEVA – The volume of greenhouse gases causing global warming rose to a new high last year, the UN World Meteorological Organisation said Tuesday, warning it is becoming increasingly unlikely the world can limit rising temperatures to UN-backed targets.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines will be pushing for an agreement to have a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol when the climate change conference convenes in Doha starting November 26.

ASIAN RISK REDUCTION CONFERENCE YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia—The Philippines is one of four disaster-prone countries in the Asia-Pacific region that have reduced their vulnerability to disasters despite their poverty, according to two United Nations (UN) agencies.

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines — The Philippines is among the countries with the fastest growing populations that are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to the latest release of Maplecroft’s Climate Change and Environment Risk Atlas.

Conclusion Last week’s “Biodiversity Sunday” delved into the topic of overconsumption—exploring how our planetary footprint is causing debt on our ecological bank account, bringing us closer to the global destruction line and the limit of consumption growth.

MANILA – Germany has provided the Philippines a $42.2 million grant for various projects aimed at addressing climate change. “The money that we are lucky to use, are tax payers’ money which is formed in a grant, which means that this is not an investment, there is no plowback, but it’s money made available for…

President Aquino has signed a law creating a P1-billion (about $24 million) The People’s Survival Fund (PSF) to combat the effects of climate change, Climate Change Commission deputy head Mary Anne Lucille Sering said yesterday. The law is meant to fund climate-adaptation projects in a country battered by about 20 typhoons a year that cause…

Since this column began on June 30, 2010, seven articles on disasters appeared on July 16 and September 29 that year; March 25, October 7 and 10, and December 21, 2011; and January 2 this year.

Recent natural disasters have left an indelible scar in our collective memory. Last week’s monsoon rains left us again trembling and whimpering. Late Monday night, as the rains poured in copious furious buckets, some of us decided to wait it out at the office till the weather calmed down. The rains hardly stopped — there…

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – Amid uncertainties posed by climate change worldwide, the creation of a People’s Survival Fund (PSF) that will get a P1-billion budget yearly looms, after the congressional bicameral committee ironed out the law for it before Congress recessed.

A VISITING expert on coral reefs on Tuesday warned that coral bleaching, a phenomenon associated with stress on corals, is expected to intensify in terms of scale and frequency along with global warming. Terry Hughes, Founding Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies of the James Cook University underscored…

Jakarta : The Asia-Pacific region must continue to grow economically to lift millions of people out of poverty, but it must also respond to climate change to survive, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a report released Thursday.

MANILA, Philippines – Time is running out on the fast-growing Asian region to step up and help prevent catastrophic climate change, foreign experts said yesterday.

WE can’t spend the next 40 years repairing damage. There must be a way to avoid the repeated loss of lives, and sidestep annual economic dislocations. Over the last year, WWF and BPI Foundation studied four Philippine cities—Baguio, Cebu, Iloilo and Davao. Our objective was to take adaptation thinking to the next level and better…

PHILIPPINE climate-change Imperative The sooner we realize that disasters are never natural but always a product of hazard and history, that a people’s vulnerability is not a given of place but derivative from the past, the better we are likely to understand what fate might await us in a world of changing climate.