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Can the Paris agreement protect poor farmers from climate change?
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on December 14th, 2015
Reuters: Purity Gachanga is one small-scale farmer who is beating climate change. On her several acres of land in Embu North district in central Kenya, she keeps cows and goats that produce milk, grows trees for fodder, and collects water to irrigate her food crops in a pond filled with tilapia fish.
Since she started out in the 1970s, she has overcome increasingly erratic rainfall by using new technologies and trying out different crops and trees. She even turns her animal manure into biogas, harnessing...
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Conflict Makes Nations Vulnerable to Climate Impacts
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on November 22nd, 2015
Reuters: Syria, Libya and Yemen are among the countries whose ability to withstand climate change shocks and stresses has deteriorated most in the past five years, suggesting conflict makes people more vulnerable to climate impacts, researchers said.
The University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN) uses 46 indicators to measure climate change risks to 180 countries and how ready they are to accept investment that could help them cope with more extreme weather and rising seas.
The main...
Africa’s climate insurance scheme expands, eyes aid agency clients
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on July 9th, 2015
Reuters: Africa's fledgling insurance scheme covering governments against drought expects to add five countries this year, expanding its client base to nine nations, and plans to offer insurance for tropical cyclones and floods from next May.
In its first year of operation, African Risk Capacity (ARC), an African Union agency, insured Niger, Senegal, Mauritania and Kenya for $129 million in total losses, and paid out $26.3 million after three West African states suffered low rainfall.
Senegal, Niger...
New global disaster plan sets targets to curb risk, losses
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on March 18th, 2015
Reuters: Governments set targets to substantially reduce deaths and economic losses from disasters at a U.N. conference in Japan on Wednesday, but critics were disappointed by the lack of a firm goal to ramp up financial support for poor countries.
The non-binding agreement adopted after a marathon negotiating session, includes seven targets to measure progress on protecting people and assets that experts described as a leap forward.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year plan,...
Mega-disasters and urbanization spur spike in displacement: Report
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on March 12th, 2015
Reuters: The number of people forced from their homes each year by disasters has quadrupled over the past four decades, and the risk of being displaced has doubled, said a Norwegian humanitarian group.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, called on governments meeting in Sendai, Japan, later this week to tackle displacement as part of a new global plan to reduce disaster risk worldwide.
The plan's predecessor, the Hyogo Framework for Action, did...
Vulnerable nations urged to craft climate migration policy
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on December 12th, 2014
Reuters: Countries vulnerable to extreme weather and rising seas should follow the example of small Pacific island states like Kiribati, and work out how to relocate threatened communities if there is no alternative, experts said at U.N. climate talks in Lima. "We now know that climate change is a driver of migration, and is expected to increase the displacement of populations," said Mary Robinson, U.N. special envoy for climate change. "This is an issue that doesn't get enough discussion," the former Irish...
Governments focus in on local solutions to climate change
Posted by Reuters: Megan Rowling on April 27th, 2013
Reuters: Governments across Africa and Asia are showing greater interest in supporting local activities to cope with more extreme weather and rising seas, experts say.
Planning and finance officials from seven countries launched a new network that will help them factor climate change into their development plans at an international conference on community-based adaptation to climate change in Dhaka this week.
The group consists of government members from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique,...