Reluctance to raise ambitions to cut greenhouse gas emissions due to economic constraints is threatening progress towards limiting global warming, delegates at United Nations' climate talks in Germany warned on Monday.

The talks in Bonn, which end on May 25, are partly to discuss ways of raising the level of ambition on cuts but the worsening eurozone crisis and battered global economy have increased reluctance to commit to more financially onerous cuts by the end of the decade, delegates told Reuters.

Policies and programmes on climate change have failed to address the problems of the vulnerable communities at the grassroots level in the country, a new study said. The findings on "Towards climate change resilience building of vulnerable mountain people and local governments" in Ramechhap shared that there is a lack of effective integrating agency at the central level to push climate change agenda at the local level.

FAO, in collaboration with forest management, climate change experts and relevant stakeholders, is developing guidelines to assist forest managers to effectively respond to climate change challenges and opportunities. These guidelines will include actions related to both climate change adaptation and mitigation and will be relevant to all types of forests, all management objectives and all types of managers.

Water is the primary medium through which climate change influences the Earth’s ecosystems and therefore people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. Besides climatic change, current demographic trends, economic development and related land use changes have direct impact on increasing demand for freshwater resources. Taken together, the net effect of these supply and demand changes is affecting the vulnerability of water resources. The concept of ‘vulnerability’ is not straightforward as there is no universally accepted approach for assessing vulnerability.

BANGLADESH has been identified as one of the countries to be worst affected by climate change for global atmospheric pollution caused by the rich and developed countries. From this recognition has also come promises from these countries that they would lend substantial resources to Bangladesh as compensation. The challenge for Bangladesh would be to liaison with the donor countries and organisations to obtain these resources free of cost and use the same in time to optimise benefits.

The Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) has been supplying arsenic-free drinking water among people in some parts of the dried tract for the last couple of years.
Sources said the BMDA has a target to construct 620 more installations to supply the safe drinking water through pipeline by the forthcoming June.
The initiative was taken to reduce the acute crisis of drinking water in the drought-prone Barind area especially during the dry season.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)-organised international conference on Himalayan glaciers concluded in the capital today.

The five-day gathering, ‘Cryosphere of the Hindu Kush Himalayas’, brought scholars and practitioners from across the globe together to discuss recent research on snow, glaciers, glacial hydrology, and capacity building in cryospheric research in the Himalayan region.

PUNE: Weather scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology are studying high resolution climate projections over South Asian Monsoon region which is expected to contribute to future crop and water management and planning in India. The study undertaken is part of the World Meteorological Organization ( WMO) Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for which Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) of IITM is acting as a nodal agency for South Asia.

Himalayas are warming about three times faster than the global average temperature during the last 25 year period, says a new study.

The report made public on Wednesday states the average annual precipitation during the same period has increased by 6.52 millimetre per year in the region. Authored by Uttam Babu Shrestha, Shiva Gautam and Kamaljit Bawa, the study

was published in the recent issue of ‘PLoS One’ journal.

The number of extreme rainstorms - deluges that dump 3 inches or more in a day - doubled in the U.S. Midwest over the last half-century, causing billions of dollars in flood damage in a trend climate advocates link to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

Across the Midwest the biggest storms increased by 103 percent from 1961 through 2011, a study released by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council reported on Wednesday.

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