Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The climate plan being drafted by the G8 has been watered down, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE). The plan would be one of the major products of the G8 summit to be held in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July. Catherine Pearce, FoE International climate campaigner, said that "every reference to the urgency of action or the need for real cuts in emissions has been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text recognizes the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change."

Pearce reckons that "the G8 meeting provides an unprecedented opportunity for the richest nations to address the biggest threat facing our planet, but this opportunity will be missed due to the disgraceful, outdated and downright dangerous behaviour of the United States." All reference to funding for climate research has been removed from the latest draft of the communique on climate change.

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• ENS
• BBC

• Courier-Mail

The Desertification Synthesis concludes that desertification threatens to increase by millions the number of poor forced to migrate. Based on information generated for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the analysis ranks desertification as amongst the world's greatest environmental challenges. The report's authors consider that "given the size of population in drylands, the number of people affected... is likely larger than any other contemporary environmental problem."

Over-grazing, over-farming, misuse of irrigation and the unsustainable demands of a growing population are cited as some of the causes of dryland degradation, which will be exacerbated by global warming. Up to 20 per cent of the world's drylands has already experienced loss of plant life or economic use. "The cross boundary nature of the problem makes desertification a global concern - one that receives too little attention," said Zafar Adeel of the United Nations University International Network on Water, Environment and Health.

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• Terra Daily
• CNN
• MA
• Download report (3.1Mb), MA
• International Year of Deserts and Desertification, UN

Modelling the response of African plant species to climate change has led scientists from the University of York to warn of disruption on the scale of the past Ice Age. According to Jon Lovett, "the results were extraordinary - plants migrate out of the Congo rainforests and there is a massive intensification of drought in the Sahel. Other areas particularly hard hit are eastern Africa and the south-west coast."

The research was based on computer modelling and a new database of Africa-wide plant distribution maps, compiled with the Nees Institute of Biodiversity of Plants in Bonn, Germany, and the South African National Biodiversity Institute. Although "the social effects of climate change are tightly linked to politics and so difficult to predict", Lovett concludes that "the way things are going it looks like Africa is going to be in for a rough ride over the next few decades."

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• Science Daily

• Yorkshire Post