As Asia’s monsoon season begins, leading climate specialists and agricultural scientists warned today that rapid climate change and its potential to intensify droughts and floods could threaten Asia’s rice production and pose a significant threat to millions of people across the region.

A European Union law that charges airlines for carbon emissions is “a deal-breaker” for global climate change talks, India’s environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, said, hardening her stance on a scheme that has drawn fierce opposition from non-EU governments.

New Delhi, Apr 12 (PTI) The government today approved a communication to a UN climate change body listing steps taken by it to tackle the threat of global warming. The Union Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, approved India’s Second National Communication to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said.

If researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are to be believed, Bangalore is one most poorly managed cities in the country with a huge carbon footprint (CF). IISc researchers Dr TV Ramachandra, Bharath H Aithal, Salvi Takur and Shwetmala, who are amid a two-year project funded by Asia-Pacific Network for Climate Change, say the area under vegetation in the city declined from 71% in 1973 to 12% in 2012.

For environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan, the European Union’s decision to tax airlines for carbon emissions was a deal breaker that could wreck global climate change talks. Natarajan’s warning comes ahead of the first round of negotiations to flesh out the Durban agreement to devise a post-2020 global climate change regime.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday issued a sober warning about the management of his country’s water supply: he reminded scholars gathered in the capital that with 17 percent of the world’s population, India only possesses 4 percent of the world’s water supply. 

Singh made the remark during the opening address at India Water Week, a four-day event bringing together water researchers and policymakers from around the world.  He stressed the need to conserve groundwater, on which more than two-thirds of the country depends for its water

 

India Warns of Water Scarcity 

A European Union law that charges airlines for carbon emissions is “a deal-breaker” for global climate change talks, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan said, hardening her stance on a scheme that has drawn fierce opposition from non-EU governments.

 

EU CO2 law could scupper global climate talks 

TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) in association with Sanctuary Asia and Deutsche Bank organised ‘The GreenKarbon Debate’ on the conjoined issues of environment and development. This Debate saw green campaigners, economists, policy makers and corporates come together to discuss- if the economy will be able to sustain the high ecological costs of India’s current development strategy.

The Sunderbans, spreading across West Bengal and Bangladesh, is fast emerging as the climate change flashpoint of the globe. Despite the warning signals of increased frequency of cyclones and tidal floods, the West Bengal government has drawn up a massive project to expand the Haldia port which will directly impact the western Sunderbans region. Environmentalists already complain against increasing oil spillage from vessels in and around the Mongia Port that are adversely affecting its biodiversity. Environmentalist Bittu Sahgal warns against the effects of oil spill on the growth and survival of the two species of trees (gewa and sundari) found in the Sunderbans. “Unless the state government, along with the Bangladesh government, takes decisive action, we are going to witness a bigger migration of climate refugees than what took place before the 1971 war,”. 

 

Sunderbans climate change is flashpoint 

Shrinking sea ice, snow and glaciers, especially in high-latitude regions where water is frozen for sometime, the cryosphere, is affecting the ecosystem in hidden ways. Scientists have already recorded how some larger animals, such as penguins and polar bears, are responding to loss of their habitat, but research is only now starting to uncover less obvious effects of the shrinking cryosphere on organisms. 

 

Disappearing ice altering ecosystem subtly