impacts of climate change Articles
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EEA Annual Work Programme 2015
EEA MISSION AND GOALS In line with its Multiannual Work Programme 2014-2018 (MAWP), the EEA, according to its mission, aims to support sustainable development and to help achieve significant and measurable improvements in Europe’s environment, through the provision of relevant, reliable, timely, and targeted information to policy-making agents and the public. The EEA operates in a complex ...
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How Carbon Trading Can Help Preserve Coastal Ecosystems
Introduction The ocean is the largest long-term carbon sink on the planet, storing and cycling 93% of the earth’s CO2 . The ocean’s vegetated habitats, in particular mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses, comprise only 0.05% of the plant biomass, but store equal amount of carbon as terrestrial biomass per year, and thus stand among the most efficient carbon sink. However, the rate ...
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A look inside Facebook’s carbon footprint
Facebook, a business that relies so heavily on people’s willingness to share information, took an important step recently by sharing some details of its own. The social networking company has, for the first time, released information about its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Facebook used the GHG Protocol’s Corporate Standard for reporting emissions, categorizing them into Scope 1 ...
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Beyond carbon financing: The role of sustainable development policies and measures in REDD
This report looks beyond quantifying emissions reductions at a more flexible approach for recognizing mitigation actions being taken by developing countries in the forest sector. This approach ensures that countries with high historical emissions are not necessarily favored for support, and it allows for a broader set of MRV criteria to capture country’s efforts to change the drivers of ...
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Flood risks and environmental vulnerability — Exploring the synergies between floodplain restoration, water policies and thematic policies
Nowadays floodplain areas are reduced in size or no longer function as active floodplains, thereby impacting on the delivery of environmental services to local and regional communities and economies. These services include regulating services such as protection against floods or water purification; provisioning services, such as nutrient collection and fertile soil formation; and cultural ...
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U.S. securities and exchange commission issues guidance - when companies must report climate change risks
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally put years of public outcry and speculation to rest with the release of an interpretive guidance document explaining how publicly traded companies are expected to assess and disclose business risks associated with climate change. The Commission voted 3-2 in favor of the guidance document that formally explains when, and to what extent, ...
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Environment at a Glance
Since 2000, progress is visible in emissions of traditional air pollutants, transport fuel efficiency, energy intensity, renewable energy, water use, sewage treatment, and biodiversity protection. This is partly explained by the slowdown in economic activity following the economic crisis, but also by increased uptake by OECD countries of instruments to address environmental pressures, including ...
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Sustainable food production: Facts and Figures
Farming must feed more people more sustainably. Zareen Bharucha looks at scientific approaches past and present. Advances in agricultural science and technology (S&T) have contributed to remarkable increases in food production since the mid-twentieth century. Global agriculture has grown 2.5–3 times over the last 50 years. [1] This has let food production keep pace with human ...
By SciDev.Net
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Q&A: Helping the poorest nations with development goals
Next week’s Climate Summit in New York is one of a few remaining stepping stones to the internationally binding agreement to tackle climate change expected to be agreed at a UN summit in Paris next year. At the same time, the global community is negotiating sustainable development goals that will become a part of global development agenda after 2015. As these pivotal agreements are ...
By SciDev.Net
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The Rationale for Accelerating Regionally Focused Climate Intervention Research
Abstract Ten years ago, Paul Crutzen asked whether the time had come to consider undertaking research into intentionally intervening in the climate system so that it might be considered a policy option comparable to reducing emissions for limiting human-induced climate change. Crutzen’s article pointed out how little progress had been made in reducing emissions and suggested that ...
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Climate change mitigation’s best-kept secret
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas — but there’s a lot we can do about it. At Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, Vt., the black-and-white dairy cows are used to the routine. In what looks like a choreographed dance, 1,400 milk cows delicately step over the scrapers that run along the concrete floors and collect their manure, which goes into a huge digester capable of holding 21 ...
By Ensia
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Green Urban Infrastructure: Assessing Potential Ecosystem Services in Urban Cities
Cities all over the world are currently experiencing climate change caused by rapidly increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). Fortunately, cities may mitigate GHG concentrations by incorporating vegetation into green urban infrastructure (GUI) to develop parks, green roofs, waterways, and other structures. For example, plants sequester carbon (C) by removing atmospheric CO2 and ...
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Visualizing the stories data can tell
Scientists and technologists are turning numbers about everything from condors to ocean-floor contours into visual representations of environmental issues. We’re living in an era of Big Data, but too often it’s nothing more than a fire hose of numbers and data sets that most would have difficulty understanding. Increasingly, though, entities such as non-governmental organizations, ...
By Ensia
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Why it is crucial for different levels of government to cooperate when it comes to improving air quality and climate change
Both air pollution and climate change are environmental issues that extend far beyond where pollution sources or contributing factors may originate. Because they cannot be contained in one area, it is essential that different levels of government — national, state, and local — cooperate to improve air quality and mitigate climate change. The work occurring at different levels of ...
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Paving the Way for Corporate Benchmarking in the Waste Sector
Most of the major players in the waste industry have begun publishing environmental performance data using a set of indicators developed in a ground-breaking initiative with the Green Alliance. Companies are clear that there are internal and external benefits to be gained from the exercise, but opinion is divided over whether the indicators can be used to compare companies' performance. ...
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Transformational adaptation – when climate change means business as usual is no longer possible
1. A lesson from the past Deep in the central Sahara, a crumbling mud-brick town sits at the edge of a dry lake bed. This is the medieval town of Germa, in southwestern Libya, one of a string of settlements along the Wadi al-Ajal, a valley defined by the towering dunes of the Ubari Sand Sea to the north, and the black cliffs of the Messak Settafet plateau to the south. Germa is romantic and ...
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Food security: Facts and figures
Food security is deeply connected to other development challenges and poor health. Michael Hoevel traces the links. Food security addresses one of humankind’s most fundamental needs — access to a nutritious and adequate diet. It is also seen as a fundamental right, as stated by the UN in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet a staggering 842 million people around the ...
By SciDev.Net
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