Dhaka Sunday, Apr 28, 2024
Environment
Honduras, Myanmar and Haiti top a new list of nations hardest hit by two decades of storms, floods, landslides and droughts that killed more than half a million people, climate analysts reported Thursday, warning of more frequent disasters if Earth’s overheating cannot be tamed. Scientists point to the mounting threat from storms, floods, droughts and rising seas if mankind cannot brake emissions from heat-trapping greenhouse gases, especially from fossil fuels.... »
A day after world leaders vowed to unite in a war on climate change, negotiators at the UN talks get down Tuesday to the nitty-gritty, where many bitterly divisive issues await. The heads of more than 150 nations gathered in the northern outskirts of Paris on Monday in a bid to inject political momentum into what many described as the last chance to avert climate calamity. “Never have the stakes... »
Eleven donors have pledged close to $250 USD million in new money for adaptation support to the most vulnerable countries on the planet giving a welcome boost to the start of the climate talks here in Paris. Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States of America announced their contributions today to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), a climate fund hosted by... »
Four European countries – Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland – today announced a new $500 million initiative that will find new ways to create incentives aimed at large scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries to combat climate change. The World Bank Group worked with the countries to develop the initiative. The Transformative Carbon Asset Facility will help developing countries implement their plans to cut emissions by working... »
On the eve of the Paris Climate Summit, over 570,000 people around the world took to the streets over the weekend for the record-breaking Global Climate March to urge leaders to scale up action on climate change to achieve 100% renewable energy, eliminate poverty and protect people from worsening climate impacts. This number of 570,000 is still provisional and could rise further with big marches in Mexico City, Ottawa and... »
Ahead of the UN climate conference in Paris, IUCN – International Union for Conservation of Nature – is calling for an agreement that recognises the role of nature in reducing carbon emissions and helping nations adapt to climate change. While biodiversity and ecosystems are threatened by climate change, their conservation, restoration and sustainable management generate significant and practical nature-based solutions to climate change. “As we desperately strive to find a... »
In a desperate move to protect the fast depleting tiger population in the Bangladesh part of the Sundarbans, the Forest Department has proposed the government to impose a ban on accessing all kinds of resources of the mangrove forest for one year, reports UNB. Though the move will put the livelihood of about 35 lakh forest-dependent people in dire straits, the officials of the Forest Department have chalked out a... »
Remarkable high-definition images of the sun taken by Nasa’s space-based telescope, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have been released. The telescope took a high-resolution image of the sun every 12 seconds in ten wavelengths of invisible UV light, with each wavelength highlighting a different temperature and assigned a colour. The images were put together and show several active regions of the sun, which are usually the source of solar storms.... »
Noise pollution has turned alarming in the capital as unnecessary honking by motorists continues unabated, posing serious health hazards to city dwellers. Apart from adding woes to the patients in hospitals, the deafening noise caused by honking badly affects the students on their way to educational institutions. More and more city dwellers are developing blood pressure and hypertension, said associate professor Dr Abul Hasan Muhammad Bashar, a cardiovascular disease expert... »
Global temperatures are set to rise more than one degree above pre-industrial levels according to the UK’s Met Office. Figures from January to September this year are already 1.02C above the average between 1850 and 1900. If temperatures remain as predicted, 2015 will be the first year to breach this key threshold. The world would then be half way towards 2C, the gateway to dangerous warming. The new data is... »