Background

06.12.2004 The 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) takes place in Buenos Aires from the 6 to 17 December 2004. It is the 10th anniversary year of the entry into force of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which has been ratified by 189 countries. The Kyoto Protocol, agreed under the UNFCCC, has been ratified by 128 countries and will enter into force on February 16, 2005.

12.11.2004 A unique coalition of the UK's leading development and environment agencies, which People & Planet is part of, has launched a new report: 'Up in Smoke'.
The report sets out how climate change threatens to reverse human progress, and make Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction unattainable.

30.09.2004 Biodiversity is inextricably linked to climate, but these interactions are not straightforward. This policy brief examines the interface from both sides. The authors firstly explore the impacts of global warming on biodiversity, from increasing the rate of extinctions to more subtle changes in reproductive cycles and growing seasons.

03.09.2004 Climate change has serious and long-lasting implications for us all. Listed below are some specific impacts of climate change that are affecting Britain right now, and links to more information about them.

25.08.2004 Our throw-away society is damaging the environment, wasting precious resources and creating an expensive rubbish mountain, but now a new illustrated guide from Friends of the Earth reveals how we can cut back on the amount we put in the bin.

12.08.2004 A flyer describing what the LDCs are, funding opportunities for LDCs and adaptation, and adaptation actions in LDCs.

28.07.2004 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been involved in an interagency effort to explore and summarize the current state of knowledge on adaptation to climate change and the need for its integration into poverty eradication and sustainable development efforts. The 10 agencies involved (UNDP, UNEP, World Bank, ADB, AfDB, GTZ, DFID, OECD, and EC) worked collaboratively on producing a paper entitled, “Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation".

14.07.2004 The Global Commons Institute and the Global Dynamics Institute propose 'A New Global Vision' for climate change this week. By promoting Contraction and Convergence (C&C) - a science-based global climate-policy framework - they hope that greenhouse gas emissions can be managed more effectively and fairly.

12.07.2004 BUENOS AIRES, (Tierramérica) - The forecast of a United Nations agency about the impacts of climate change on Latin American and Caribbean agriculture by 2080 seems to be taken straight from the story of the Apocalypse.

07.07.2004 Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made a speech at Lambeth Palace concerning climate change and the role of religion and secularism in understanding how we must change to confront it.

"The news for humanity is both joyful and sobering: there is a possible human future - but it will be costly for us. The question is whether we have the energy and imagination to say no to the non-future, the paralysing dream of endless manipulation, that currently has us captive."