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Greenpeace opens African Office - focusing on climate change, deforestation and overfishing

Greenpeace Africa opened its first office in Johannesburg today, announcing a long-term commitment to building a strong presence in Africa dedicated to tackling the most urgent environmental problems facing the continent - climate change, deforestation and overfishing. A second office will be opened on 24 November in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and a third in Dakar, Senegal, next year. These areas are central to tackling climate change, deforestation and overfishing. "While the...

GLOBAL: Climate change may drown cities

People in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, prefer to commute in three-wheeled autorickshaws, taxis and buses that run on compressed natural gas (CNG), in their bid to slow down global warming. CNG produces a lower level of greenhouse gases and is an environmentally cleaner alternative to petrol. Dhaka's residents are among the most vulnerable to global warming and don't want to become "climate terrorists". The city is among more than 3,000 identified by the UN-Habitat's State of the World's...

WEST AFRICA: Taking on climate change as a region

Climate experts and ministers in West Africa have committed to coordinating national efforts to fight climate change, at the conclusion of an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting in Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou, on 22 October. Benin’s UN Development Programme representative, Edith Gasana, told participants “no country will be able to handle the struggle alone.” Experts on the UN-convened independent climate panel, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),...

GLOBAL: Climate change's threat to water needs more study

Models to predict the impact of climate change on potable water and the management of wastewater are needed to deal with the expected increase in water-related illnesses as result of global warming, says a new policy brief by the United Nations University (UNU). "We need greater investment in the development of models to aid decision-making, reduce uncertainty and augment costly monitoring programmes," said Corinne Wallace, a leading water health researcher at UNU's International Network on...

World Food Day stresses climate change and bioenergy effects on poor

The poor will suffer most Climate change and bioenergy are the focus of this year’s World Food Day activities, expected to involve over 150 countries. FAO celebrates World Food Day each year on 16 October, the day on which the Organization was founded in 1945. “Global warming is already underway and adaptation strategies are now a matter of urgency, especially for the most vulnerable poor countries. Hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, fishers and forest-dependent people will be worst...

LESOTHO: A village tries new ideas to beat climate change

Chief Paulosi Lebakeng is a troubled man. Food production has dipped in his village of Ha Tsiu, perched about 2,500m above sea level on the Thaba Putsoa mountains, about 100km east of Lesotho's capital, Maseru. Rainfall has become less frequent every year, as has snowfall; both important sources of water for food crops. There are more HIV/AIDS orphans in the village, and the pandemic has also left fewer people to work in the fields. Then, last year, the price of maize, the staple cereal, began...

Greenpeace urges governments to speed up climate negotiations

As the latest round of UN climate talks came to a close today, Greenpeace urged governments to pick up the pace of the negotiations which, in just over a year, must deliver a global deal to save the climate. The meeting, in Accra, Ghana, showed some progress but still lacked the urgency required to meet the 2009 target. Greenpeace welcomed Korea's announcement to set its own emission reduction target, and the constructive role played by Mexico in building bridges between developing and...

MALI: Saving elephants, saving communities

Implementers of an international project to help endangered elephants in Mali want to prove that by doing so, they can also help local communities adapt to climate change in the Sahel. The Malian government lists elephants in Gourma in the country's far desert north as highly endangered. A drought in the 1970’s killed most of the country's elephants leading the population to dwindle from several thousand down to 350. Often seen near Lake Banzena, about 400 kilometres south of Gao, these...

New progress agents emerge at UN climate talks in Accra

As UN climate talks are coming to a close, WWF applauds an emerging group of visionary countries for showing ways to move the debate towards the right level of focus and detail. While the mandate to agree a new global climate treaty by 2009 remains a gigantic challenge, Accra shows that overcoming the muddle of conflicting views and crafting an effective deal to tackle climate change is possible and depends on the political will to show leadership. “Currently the glory in the global fight...

WEST AFRICA: Coastline to be submerged by 2099

Swathes of West Africa’s coastline extending from the orange dunes in Mauritania to the dense tropical forests in Cameroon will be underwater by the end of the century as a direct consequence of climate change, environmental experts warn. "The coastline [as it is now] will be completely changed by the end of this century because the sea level is rising along the coast at around two centimetres every year," said Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director of Heinrich Boll Stiftung, a German environmental...