Archives - December 2008

3 December 2008: UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Kemal Derviş commended the outcome document from the Financing for Development Conference held in Doha, Qatar, from 29 November to 2 December 2008, for endorsing the call of the UN Secretary-General to reaffirm international commitments to address poverty reduction and achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Derviş highlighted that Doha recognized the centrality of meeting developed countries’ commitment to increase official development assistance to developing countries by 0.7% of GNP by 2015, as essential to resolve the financial, global poverty and climate change crises – or ‘triple crises.’

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3 December 2008: The Inter-Agency Standing Committee, comprising nearly 20 UN agencies and aid organizations, appealed for increased global action to boost preparedness for effective response to disasters brought on by climate change.

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3 December 2008: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has released an advance copy of “Public Finance Mechanisms to Mobilise Investment in Climate Change Mitigation.” UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, under its Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative, commissioned the report as a contribution to the UNFCCC Secretariat Technical Paper “Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change: An Update.”

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December 2008: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is organizing the “High-Level Conference on Water for Agriculture and Energy in Africa: The Challenges of Climate Change,” to be held from 15-17 December 2008, in Sirte, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

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December 2008: The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), published a policy brief entitled “Water Implications of Biofuel Crops: Understanding Tradeoffs and Identifying Options.” The Brief outlines impacts of biofuel production on water supply and food production, and seeks to provide options for policy makers in addressing resulting tradeoffs.

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3 December 2008: The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently published material regarding the relevance of its Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA) gap analysis, which guides parties in identifying gaps in protected areas systems and in participation of indigenous and local communities, in relation to reducing emissions for deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).

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3 December 2008: The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has launched the second volume of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and Biodiversity e-Newsletter.

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2 December 2008: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative that convened in Hong Kong, China, from 2-3 December 2008, in a video message. He underlined the interrelations between the financial turmoil, accelerating climate change, persistent poverty and hunger, and called on the Asia-Pacific region to play a “leading role” in averting a “human catastrophe.”

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2 December 2008: The Interdepartmental Working Group on Climate Change of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released the second edition of the FoodClimate e-newsletter.

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2 December 2008: The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the humanitarian implications of climate change.

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