A collaborative study conducted by researchers at University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute in Germany has led to the identification of no less than 3,600 molecular switches in the human body, which may prove to be a crucial factor in human ageing and the onset and treatment of cancer, Alzheimer’’s disease and Parkinson’’s [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Copenhagen’
Swedish PM sounds climate alarm
July 15th, 2009 |
No Comments
Sweden is to brief Euro MPs on its priorities as the new holder of the EU presidency, with jobs and climate change expected to figure prominently.
Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt is expected to say he will push for an EU deal on funding for green measures, with a global deal as the big prize.
A UN special conference on climate change, set for Copenhagen in December, is already shaping Sweden’s priorities.
The new European Parliament, with 736 MEPs, began work on Tuesday.
In the climate change negotiations the EU is wrestling with the problem of burden-sharing – how to spread fairly the cost of switching to a low-carbon economy.
The economic crisis has put huge pressure on state budgets and industry, complicating the introduction of green measures.
Sweden will hold the EU presidency for six months, under the current rotation system. But if the Lisbon Treaty is finally ratified by all member states the next presidency will run for two-and-a-half years.
SWEDISH PRIORITIES- Reaching an EU deal on funding green measures to curb global warming
- Getting Lisbon Treaty implemented smoothly
- Creating conditions for economic recovery in Europe, including action on jobs
Sweden took over the presidency from the Czech Republic on 1 July.
It says it wants the Lisbon Treaty to come into force during its presidency. The next big hurdle is the second Irish referendum, scheduled for 2 October.
On Tuesday the European Parliament elected former Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as its new president.
A 69-year-old conservative, he is the first politician from the former communist bloc to chair the parliament.
The elections last month produced an assembly of 736 MEPs with the centre-right forming the biggest bloc.
Mr Buzek will hold the post for two-and-a-half years – half of the parliament’s five-year mandate. Under a deal struck before Tuesday’s vote, a Socialist MEP will serve as president for the other half.
MEPs will postpone for at least two months a vote on reappointing European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, a veteran Portuguese conservative. Sweden had hoped the vote would happen this week.
Mr Barroso has the support of all 27 member states, but his centre-right allies in the assembly do not have a majority.
- EPP – European People’s Party (Christian Democrats)
- PASDE – Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in Europe (centre-left)
- ALDE – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (liberal)
- GUE/NGL – European United Left-Nordic Green Left (left-wing)
- Greens/EFA – Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens and regionalists/nationalists)
- ECR – European Conservatives and Reformists Group (right-wing)
- EFD – Europe of Freedom and Democracy (Eurosceptic)
- NI – Non-attached (MEPs not part of any group)
These groups may change if new alliances are formed. The number of MEPs will increase to 754 if the Lisbon Treaty comes into force.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Discounts plan for wind farm locals
July 15th, 2009 |
No Comments
The Local Government Assocation’s plans are part of a streamlining process for renewable energy schemes, but turbines still remain a contentious issue for locals
Residents should be offered discounts on their energy bills and free energy efficiency measures when wind farms are built in their community, the Local Government Association said today.
Using a “community tariff” to share the financial benefits of renewable energy generation with local communities is one of nine ideas in a new LGA report on how councils could help Britain meet its carbon target of an 80% emissions cut by 2050. The report coincides with a major government white paper today outlining the energy and climate change policies that will enable the UK to hit its greenhouse gas targets.
The LGA admits that green energy developments can provide no financial benefits for local communities, “often leading to local opposition for developments such as wind farms”. Surveys suggest over 80% of the public support wind farms but also many onshore applications have run into planning disputes. The world’s biggest turbine maker, Vestas, blamed the British planning process for the closure of the country’s only major turbine manufacturing plant earlier this summer.
Councils are already implementing schemes to reward residents for local renewable energy development, with Kettering Borough Council planning to offer energy efficiency measures for residents from a £10,000 annual fund paid for by the Burton Wold wind farm.
Chris Tomlinson, director of programme strategy at the British Wind Energy Association, said he supported the idea: “Offering benefits to local communities for hosting wind farms is the right way forward. While benefits for wind farms can be local, they are generally national and global, so it’s right to financially reward local communities.”
Richard Buxton, an environmental solicitor who has worked on behalf on many anti-wind campaigners, said, “The problem with wind is you often have two or three turbines which annoy a disproportionately large number of local people, usually to the benefit of one farmer.
“People put a very high value in financial terms on their local environment, which includes their landscape and noise. It’s not very good being told you get £5 off your energy bill if you’re being forced to leave your house because of turbines.”
The LGA also argued that streamlining the government’s myriad green home schemes – such as the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT), the Community Energy Savings Programme (CESP) and Warm Front – into a single £7bn fund could enable councils to lag every loft in the country. Councils could offer savings of up to £2bn through economies of scale by doing street-by-street schemes, it said.
Councillor Paul Bettison, chairman of the Local Government Association Environment Board, said: “Too much money is being wasted on a raft of green schemes and people who need help insulating their homes are not getting it. It is only councils that have both the knowledge of a local area and a strong connection with households.”
Other ideas in the report, entitled From Kyoto to Kettering, Copenhagen to Croydon, include offering relief on stamp duty for new-build homes that meet the highest energy efficiency standards, requiring utilities to work with councils during the national roll-out of smart meters, and greater energy-saving help for remote rural communities.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Reporters Uncensored: Behind the Scenes of the Global Web Series
July 15th, 2009 |
No Comments
There are unfortunately too many international issues that the MSM does not cover
Miniature ‘mobile phones’ used to track pieces of rubbish
July 14th, 2009 |
No Comments
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
The ebb and flow of thousands of pieces of household rubbish are to be tracked using sophisticated mobile tags.
It is hoped that making people confront the final journey of their waste will make them reduce what they throw away.
Initially, 3,000 pieces of rubbish, donated by volunteers, will be tagged in New York, Seattle and London.
"Trash is almost an invisible system today," Assaf Biderman, one of the project leaders at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told BBC News.
"You throw something into the garbage and a lot of us forget about it. It gets buried, it gets burned, it gets shipped overseas."
The Trash Track aims to make that process – termed the "removal chain" – more transparent.
Friends of the Earth’s Senior Waste Campaigner Michael Warhurst said the project could be a "useful tool" for highlighting the impact of rubbish.
"[Waste] doesn’t simply disappear when we throw it away, and all too often it ends up causing damage when it could be recycled instead.
"People must have much better information on – and control over – where their rubbish and recycling ends up."
Global waste
In order to monitor how the pieces of rubbish move around the cities and beyond, the MIT team has developed a small mobile sensor that can be attached to individual pieces of waste.
"It’s like a miniature cell phone with limited functionality," said Carlo Ratti, another member of the project.
Each tag – encased in a protective resin – continuously broadcasts its location to a central server. The results can then be collected and plotted on a map in real time.
"It’s like putting tracers in your blood and seeing where it moves around your body," said Mr Biderman.
Because cell phone technology is cheap and – importantly – ubiquitous, the system should be able to track rubbish around the globe.
This could be important when tracking computers and electronic waste, which is often disposed of incorrectly, according to Mr Ratti.
"Some of them are shipped to Africa to pollute," he said.
The team aims to tag different types of waste from computers and cell phones to bags of garden waste.
The group is currently looking for volunteers to donate their trash.
The results of the US studies will be shown at two exhibitions in Seattle and New York during September.
‘Zero waste’
The team stresses that it has tried to limit the impact of its study and of the technology, and limit the amount of extra waste it contributes to the "removal chain".
"We are adhering to the highest standards in terms of environmental impact," said Mr Biderman.
"The impact this could have on waste management and removal… could be significant, so these kinds of experiments could be much more useful than harmful for the environment."
The MIT team has previously revealed the movements of people around cities, such as Rome and Copenhagen, by analysing mobile phone signals.
They used a similar method to show how crowds moved around Washington during the inauguration of US President Barack Obama.
The tags used to track the rubbish are a departure from these more passive studies of city movements.
Ultimately, the team hopes that the technology can be miniaturised and made cheap enough that the tags could one day be attached to everything.
"Think about a future where thanks to smart tags we will not have waste anymore," said Mr Ratti. "Everything will be traceable."</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Jerry Cope: The Failure of Democracy in West Virginia: Redefining “Alternative” Energy
July 14th, 2009 |
No Comments
Alternative energy is a standard reference to energy sources that are not carbon based. But in West Virginia, many of the designated “alternative” energy sources contribute not only significantly more GHG emissions than the dirtiest conventional coal fired plants, they emit toxic pollutants as well.
Osaka: the world’s greatest food city
July 13th, 2009 |
No Comments
There are at least a dozen very good reasons why author and blogger Michael Booth rates Osaka number one. Which city would you rate your gourmet great?
Simple question: what’s the most greatest, most exciting, most dynamic food city in the world today, the culinary It City of our age?
Paris is past it (going to a restaurant shouldn’t be like going to church). London isn’t quite there yet (where’s the street food?). Hanoi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai and most major Indian cities will all have their advocates, but is the refinement there? New York is always going to be in with a shout but its great strength is its immigrant cuisines: it lacks an indigenous food culture. Sydney is stuck in the 90s, Lyon in the 1890s, and, as far as I’m concerned, to be a real contender the food roots have to go deep, so that rules out places like Vegas and Cape Town. The market’s nice, but I’ve never had a good meal in Barcelona and though Copenhagen may be flavour of the month, a couple of good restaurants do not a global food capital make.
At the risk of alerting John Crace, I have a new book out, ‘Sushi and Beyond – What the Japanese Know About Food‘. So you’d probably expect me to go with a Japanese city, but it’s not Tokyo or Kyoto that I pine for on a daily basis, but Japan’s often overlooked third city, Osaka.
I originally went to Osaka on the recommendation of Anton Ego – the restaurant critic in Ratatouille (or rather François Simon of Le Figaro, on whom, rumour has it, Ego was based). I interviewed him a few years back for one of those ‘Can Paris Still Cut the Mustard?’ type pieces (answer – ‘no’) and was surprised to hear this most chauvinistic of food writers dismiss my adopted home city out of hand, and plump for Osaka instead.
I booked my flight soon after and found a city fit to burst with incredible places to eat, from the dazzling depichika basement food halls (the greatest food shows on earth), to the exuberant restaurant quarter of Dotonbori, to the top end places like Kahala, a tiny, exclusive counter restaurant beloved of Tetsuya Wakada.
This is a city entirely at ease with its culinary identity but open to foreign influences (in this case, largely Korean), with several unique dishes, and a population possessed of an admirable gluttony for life. They even have a word for their insatiable gluttony, ‘kuidaore’, meaning ‘eat until you burst / go bust’.
The city has an irresistible triumvirate of highly addictive, indigenous fast foods: okonomiyaki (thick, filled pancakes, made with yam flour batter, seafood, pork and kimchi); tako yaki (octopus doughnuts); and kushikatsu (deep fried, breaded skewers – invented at the restaurant Daruma, and much loved by Ferran Adrià , so the chef there told me), each of them slathered in a sweet, savoury, mahogany-coloured sauce. And let’s not forget that kaiten sushi and instant ramen noodles were both invented in the city in the same epochal year (1958 – the latter are rather better than Pot Noodles, I should add).
This is also where you’ll find the world’s greatest (largest, most expensive, best equipped, toughest etc) cooking school, the Tsuji Culinary Institute; and a fish and produce market to rival Tsukiji.
Beat that, Ludlow.
So, I’ve nailed my culinary colours to the mast. Which city would you rate your gourmet great?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Monsoon watch
July 13th, 2009 |
No Comments
By Mark Dummett
BBC News, Bangladesh
This is an anxious time for the people of Char Atra, an island of silt, sand, paddy fields and huts in the middle of the Ganges.
The monsoon is drenching South Asia, and millions of gallons of water are heading towards the Char from as far away as the Himalayas.
By the end of August, the region will be completely inundated. Instead of walking to school or the market, the 10,000 inhabitants may instead have to swim or move about on banana-tree rafts.
Last minute work is now being done to get things ready; the river is too powerful and the island too low to prevent the floods, but homes and paths can be heightened.
A lot of this work has been sponsored by charity Oxfam and carried out by its local partner, the Shariatpur Development Society.
Shfiting sands
Hasina Begum’s tin-sheet and thatch home has been dismantled and a dozen women are piling up sand so that its base can be raised.
She says she is relieved because during last year’s floods, there was so much water in her hut that she had to tie her children to their bed at night to stop them from rolling off and drowning.
Now she will only have to do that if there is a freak flood, a one-in-50-year event. If this does happen then she can build a platform under the roof and sleep there.
Raising her home to a safe level is simple and cheap work, but Hasina, like most islanders, is too poor to be able to pay for it herself.
In the aid-workers’ jargon, they are the "hardcore poor" because they do not own anything and because of their intense vulnerability to the weather conditions and the river level.
Their homes are literally built on sand, and the fact is that one year soon, Char Atra, and everything on it, will be washed away in the floods.
Testing times
I met one old man there – a veteran of the river – who had been forced to move 22 times in his life as each of his homes was destroyed in turn.
Then there is the government school. It is by the far the largest and strongest building on the island. It doubles as a shelter for hundreds of families during floods and cyclones.
Its headmaster, Mohammed Abdur Rashid, says it has been rebuilt eight times since he was a pupil.
He says that his best students all dream of leaving the island, and getting a job in a big city like Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.
Others hope to migrate, as many families in the area have relatives working in Italy.
Only a small fraction attend school. Despite government attempts to introduce family planning, there are lots of children on the island. It is impossible to imagine where they are all supposed to live.
They will face many of the same problems their grandparents encountered: floods, riverbank erosion and hunger.
For sure, they will receive more help from the government and aid agencies, but they also face a new set of challenges.
Because it is such a low-lying and heavily populated country, Bangladesh is one of the countries most exposed to climate change and faces a series of threats:
• By the middle of the century, sea level rises are predicted to wipe out much of its coastal belt, making millions homeless
• The water in the Ganges is already becoming more saline, as sea water reaches further inland
• As a result of its position at the top of the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh is already one of the countries most prone to tropical storms, and rising sea temperatures could lead to more frequent and more devastating cyclones
• There could be worse floods as the monsoon rains become more erratic, and meltwater from the disappearing Himalayan glaciers hits Bangladesh
• The demise of glaciers could also lead to droughts in the north of the country
The government here is pushing for extra funds from rich carbon-emitting nations so that it can help the people of Char Atra, and elsewhere, adapt to these changes before it is too late.
It, and groups like Oxfam, will be pushing their case later this year when leaders meet in Copenhagen to thrash out a new global deal on climate change.
BBC News will return to Char Atra in a few weeks to see how its residents are coping with the arrival of the monsoon season</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Swine flu strikes Downing Street adviser
July 13th, 2009 |
No Comments
The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown’s senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L’Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8′s leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown’s entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
Jacobs is seen as the one of the best informed climate change specialists in Britain and his absence from the talks was regarded as a significant loss. He made no mention of contracting the disease or the ban imposed on him when he sent out a circular to those interested in climate change setting out the outcome of the negotiations, and the problems that lie ahead in securing a deal at Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Jacobs, former general secretary of the Fabian Society, clearly did not regard his absence as fatal to the outcome of the summit since he pointed out in his email to green groups that five big achievements had been secured at the L’Aquila talks,
For the first time the G8 and developing nations agreed that the science demanded global average temperatures rise by only 2C on preindustrial levels.
“Until a few weeks ago, in fact in the case of the developing countries until a few days ago we did not believe we were going to get this agreement,” he said.
Secondly, the G8 agreed to cut its own emissions by 80% by 2050.
He also said it was now possible to see an agreement to cut global emissions by half at Copenhagen, the aim of the talks. The G8 meetings had seen developing countries for the first time accept the concept that their emissions were peaking, Jacobs said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Swine flu strikes Downing Street adviser
July 13th, 2009 |
No Comments
The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown’s senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L’Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8′s leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown’s entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
Jacobs is seen as the one of the best informed climate change specialists in Britain and his absence from the talks was regarded as a significant loss. He made no mention of contracting the disease or the ban imposed on him when he sent out a circular to those interested in climate change setting out the outcome of the negotiations, and the problems that lie ahead in securing a deal at Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Jacobs, former general secretary of the Fabian Society, clearly did not regard his absence as fatal to the outcome of the summit since he pointed out in his email to green groups that five big achievements had been secured at the L’Aquila talks,
For the first time the G8 and developing nations agreed that the science demanded global average temperatures rise by only 2C on preindustrial levels.
“Until a few weeks ago, in fact in the case of the developing countries until a few days ago we did not believe we were going to get this agreement,” he said.
Secondly, the G8 agreed to cut its own emissions by 80% by 2050.
He also said it was now possible to see an agreement to cut global emissions by half at Copenhagen, the aim of the talks. The G8 meetings had seen developing countries for the first time accept the concept that their emissions were peaking, Jacobs said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Swine flu strikes Downing Street adviser
July 12th, 2009 |
No Comments
The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown’s senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L’Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8′s leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown’s entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
Jacobs is seen as the one of the best informed climate change specialists in Britain and his absence from the talks was regarded as a significant loss. He made no mention of contracting the disease or the ban imposed on him when he sent out a circular to those interested in climate change setting out the outcome of the negotiations, and the problems that lie ahead in securing a deal at Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Jacobs, former general secretary of the Fabian Society, clearly did not regard his absence as fatal to the outcome of the summit since he pointed out in his email to green groups that five big achievements had been secured at the L’Aquila talks,
For the first time the G8 and developing nations agreed that the science demanded global average temperatures rise by only 2C on preindustrial levels.
“Until a few weeks ago, in fact in the case of the developing countries until a few days ago we did not believe we were going to get this agreement,” he said.
Secondly, the G8 agreed to cut its own emissions by 80% by 2050.
He also said it was now possible to see an agreement to cut global emissions by half at Copenhagen, the aim of the talks. The G8 meetings had seen developing countries for the first time accept the concept that their emissions were peaking, Jacobs said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Pledge time
July 10th, 2009 |
No Comments
The G8 summit in Italy has closed with world leaders pledging $20bn to help boost food supplies in the developing world.
There were also agreements among both developed and developing nations that global temperatures must not be allowed to rise to dangerous levels.
BBC correspondents at the G8 give their analysis on the main developments. Follow the links below to jump directly to their analysis.
Bridget Kendall on the G8 James Robbins on the environment Andrew Walker on developmentBRIDGET KENDALL ON THE G8 CONCEPT
Low expectations can be an advantage. The G8 has had much bad press in recent years, and the emergence of the other "Gs", as President Obama called them – groupings of G20, G5 and G14 – had threatened to undermine its exclusivity.
What was the point of a G8 club, many were beginning to ask, which was too narrowly-based to tackle today’s global problems and when it did reach a deal, never seemed able to live up to its own promises
At first glance, this year’s gathering did seem more consensual than it has been for some time. But on broader diplomatic questions, the sands soon began shifting.
The American and Russian presidents both arrived, basking in the warm glow of what appeared to be a ground-breaking summit in Moscow, crowned by a deal to get back to a new round of nuclear arms cuts.
But in his final G8 press conference President Medvedev sounded a chilly note: Russian missiles could still be re-targeted to point at Europe, he warned, if President Obama did not cancel plans for that controversial missile shield in Europe.
So much for G8 consensus building…
In the end, it seemed as though the main purpose of this summit was simply to take stock before the next global round of meetings. President Obama publicly warned Iran it had until the next G20 summit – due in September – to respond to an appeal to suspend its nuclear programme.
Many leaders invoked the Copenhagen meeting in December as the real deadline when it came to a proper global deal on tackling climate change.
So has the G8 had its day President Obama seemed to hint as much, ruefully complaining there had been far too many summits already in the six months he had been in office.
But it is much harder to dismantle clubs than it is to invent new ones. The Canadians are already preparing for next year’s event. And the French the year after. So watch this space… and see you again next year.
Return to top
JAMES ROBBINS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Few people expected a decisive breakthrough on climate change at this summit. President Obama pointed out at the end of proceedings that the G8 was never really the right forum for that.
Nevertheless, the meeting of the major economies forum he chaired did bring a greater meeting of minds and of joint political will than we have ever seen previously.
The historic polluters – the industrialised countries who make up the Group of 8 – were able to join with the emerging economic giants in a shared acceptance that global warming must be limited to a maximum temperature rise of 2C.
That could not have been taken for granted before all those leaders came to Italy.
It helps bind India and China, in particular, into a process of restricting emissions of greenhouse gases – a process to which they have previously been highly resistant or even downright hostile.
The US, under the new management of Barack Obama, has moved a long way too. His commitment to aim for emissions cuts of a whopping 80% by 2050, alongside the other G8 countries, does have its flaws.
But it is a very big target, even if it is so far in the distance that it is quite hard to judge if really tough decisions will be made now to make deep cuts by 2020. That’s what the UN scientists insist is necessary.
The failure to agree an interim target for 2020 provoked the UN Secretary General into unusually harsh criticism. Ban Ki-moon told me at this summit that the G8 leaders of the rich world were failing to shoulder their "historical responsibilities".
No wonder everyone agrees that it is going to be a very hard road indeed towards Copenhagen and the December UN summit meant to produce a new and binding global treaty.
Return to top
ANDREW WALKER ON DEVELOPMENT
The final day of the summit was dominated by food, and a new approach to tackling hunger. It involves less emphasis on food aid and more on promoting the development of agriculture.
And there is money on the table to fund the strategy – $20bn. Campaigners here generally welcomed the basic idea, but have reservations about whether the money being offered is enough and whether it is genuinely new.
The big concern they always have whenever the G8 offers aid for something is whether the money will be diverted from other development programmes.
Most say that in the immediate aftermath of the news, they don’t know. But they will be poring over the figures to see if they can work it out.
On the overall aid budget there was a great deal of criticism of some G8 countries ahead of the summit for falling behind on commitments they made at Gleneagles in 2005. Max Lawson of Oxfam says that European G8 countries made the biggest promises. But apart from the UK, he says, they are not on track to implement the aid increases they said they would by 2010.
One of the communiques issued at this summit reiterates the importance of the Gleneagles commitments. But campaigners say some G8 countries are almost certain to fall short.
Return to top
</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Poor nations urge G8 emissions cuts
July 10th, 2009 |
No Comments
Diplomat says developing nations ‘will commit once they have certainty that developed countries are commiting themselves’
Developing nations are prepared to make concessions on climate change targets if the G8 fulfils its side of the bargain in the run-up to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, a key negotiator told the Guardian today.
The developing countries want the G8 nations to sign up to a 40% cut by 2020, but that figure is off the radar of the EU and, given the unwieldy legislation laboriously passing through the senate, not a possibility for the US.
In important forward steps this week, the G8 agreed to cut its emissions by 80% by 2050 and said worldwide emissions should fall 50% by the same date.
However, the value of this pledge has been reduced by the lack of an agreed start date from which the emission cuts should be measured, making it a distant promise.
Luis Alfonso de Alba, the lead co-ordinator on climate change for the developing countries at the G8, told the Guardian that their call for a 25-40%cut in developed nations’ emissions by 2020 was based on what UN climate change scientists had recommended.
The Mexican diplomat gave some ground, saying: “It does not have to be a specific target of 40%.
“That is what we hope to achieve, but this is a process of negotiation.”
He said a G8 commitment to a 2020 target was “fundamental”, adding: “It is logical that developing countries will commit once they have certainty that developed countries are commiting themselves.
“We need to see the mid-term targets go much higher, and we want to see all the developed countries, including the US, move at the same pace.
“We still need to see numbers. We respect the internal debate in the US, but it is important for the US to understand that this is a global issue and a multilateral negotiation.”
He said developing nations could not “just sit and wait to see what the internal debate in the US resolves”. He insisted the meeting chaired by Barack Obama under the aegis of the Major Economies Forum this week had made progress in accepting common responsibility for the crisis and for the need for carbon emissions to peak.
“Climate change is no longer seen as a north-south issue,” he said. “It is no longer a donor recipient relationship.
“The most important message is that assuming individual responsibilities to fight climate change can start immediately, and by doing it immediately it will be easier to reach an ambitious agreement at Copenhagen.”
De Alba said Mexico had already come up with its own carbon reduction programme, and he expected other developing nations to do the same over the coming months.
It was acknowledged at the summit that science dictates world temperatures must not rise more than 2C degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The negotiators hope this acknowledgement will drive the coming negotiations in the run-up to Copenhagen.
The talks include three UN sponsored meetings in Bonn, Bangkok and Barcelona as well as another meeting of the G20 in September.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
The premier event
July 10th, 2009 |
No Comments
How can we keep the Olympic Games as a premier event? This is one of numerous questions that will be debated at the Olympic Congress in Copenhagen between 2 and 3 October 2009, where approximately 900 delegates will get together to shape the future of the Olympic Movement. The recent successes of the Olympic Games in Athens, Turin and Beijing will allow the IOC to reflect on lessons learned and to find even better ways to position the Olympic Games.
The athletes are at the heart of the Games, and at the end of the day it is their outstanding performances that are remembered. Mexico City 1968 with Bob Beamon’s historic jump; Grenoble 1968 with Jean-Claude Killy’s triple medal win; Munich 1972 when Mark Spitz became a legend; Montreal 1976 with Nadia Comaneci’s perfect tens. Not forgetting Eric Heiden, Carl Lewis, Hermann Maier, Björn Daehlie and most recently Shaun White, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. It’s these performances and memorable Olympic ceremonies that drive the IOC, Organising Committees, National Olympic Committees and International Sports Federations to work hard to provide the most adapted environment in which to compete and perform. The Copenhagen debate will strive to provide solutions to make the Olympic Games stronger and even more enjoyable. Enjoy watching all the highlights of previous Games in this video.
