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Background The negotiating process on climate change revolves around the sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP), which meets every year to review the implementation of the Convention. This year this process culminates in Copenhagen. At Bali, Parties agreed to jointly step up international efforts to combat climate change and get to an agreed outcome in Copenhagen in 2009. Thus, an ambitious climate change deal will be clinched to follow on the first phase of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Why is a deal so important? We know the world is warming, on average by 0.74ºC during the past century, with most of that since 1970. The IPCC has reported regularly on climate change science for 20 years. Its last report was “unequivocal” that climate change is with us, and is set to get drastically worse unless we take urgent action. Nature, through both oceans and forests, currently absorbs ab...

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions . These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention  encouraged  industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol  commits  them to do so. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.” The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December...

Advanced bio-fuels could create millions of jobs while greening the economy Transforming agricultural residues into advanced bio fuels could create millions of jobs worldwide, economic growth, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and energy security by 2030, according to a report by Novozymes, the world leader in bio innovation and industrial enzymes. The Bloomberg New Energy Finance report “Moving towards a next-generation ethanol economy'' was commissioned by Novozymes. It estimates the socio-economic prospects of deploying advanced bio fuels in eight of the highest agricultural-producing regions in the world, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, EU-27, India, Mexico and US. “A huge global resource of agricultural residues can be harvested sustainably every year without altering current land use patterns and without interfering with the food chain,'' according to Steen Riisgaard, CEO of Novozymes. According to the report, an estimated 17.5 per cen...

Will it be the next geopolitical battleground or remain the common heritage of humankind? A retired Rear Admiral of the Chinese PLA Navy, Yin Zhuo, caused a major stir in March 2010, when in a speech to the Chinese Peoples' Political Consultative Conference, he declared: “The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it.” China, he said, must also have a share of the region's resources. Resources, reserves The five nations which ring the Arctic Ocean, namely the U.S. Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia, disagree, though they themselves have competing territorial claims. The stakes are enormous: The Arctic Circle encloses 21 million square kilometres of land and 13 million sq.km of mostly ice-bound seas. By way of comparison, India's total land area is 3.3 million sq.km. It is estimated that the region may hold over 40 per cent of the current global reserves of oil and gas. There may also be significant reserves of co...

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions . These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.” The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into...

Background The negotiating process on climate change revolves around the sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP), which meets every year to review the implementation of the Convention. This year this process culminates in Copenhagen. At Bali, Parties agreed to jointly step up international efforts to combat climate change and get to an agreed outcome in Copenhagen in 2009. Thus, an ambitious climate change deal will be clinched to follow on the first phase of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Why is a deal so important? We know the world is warming, on average by 0.74ºC during the past century, with most of that since 1970. The IPCC has reported regularly on climate change science for 20 years. Its last report was “unequivocal” that climate change is with us, and is set to get drastically worse unless we take urgent action. Nature, through both oceans and forests, currently absorbs about...