Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The Clinton Climate Initiative, which was launched early August, has formed a partnership with the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, chaired by the Mayor of London, to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency in twenty-two of the world's largest cities. "It no longer makes sense for us to debate whether or not the Earth is warming at an alarming rate, and it doesn't make sense for us to sit back and wait for others to act," said former United States President Bill Clinton. "The fate of the planet that our children and grandchildren will inherit is in our hands." He stressed that the partnership will take "measurable steps" towards slowing down global warming.

The partnership will take a business-oriented approach. According to London Mayor Ken Livingston, "there is no bigger task for humanity than to avert catastrophic climate change. The world's largest cities can have a major impact on this. Already they are at the center of developing the technologies and innovative new practices that provide hope that we can radically reduce carbon emissions." One of the first steps the partnership will take is to form a purchasing consortium that pool the cities' buying power to lower the price of energy saving products and stimulate technological development.

More information

• ENS
• Interior Design

• SciDevNet
• Washington Post

The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is encouraging indigenous peoples, particularly from Africa, to participate actively in the next Conference of the Parties to the climate treaty in Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2006. Marking the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, August 9th, Richard Kinley, acting head of the Secretariat, congratulated indigenous peoples on their "continued progress with strengthening international cooperation on issues of concern."

The leaders of the world's indigenous peoples have called on the United Nations General Assembly to recognize native people's right to self-determination and protect them against discrimination and oppression by approving the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairperson of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, reports that "systematic racism and discrimination is still the lot of many indigenous people not only in the developing countries, but also in the richest and most powerful countries." United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledges that "much remains to be done to protect [indigenous peoples] from massive human rights violations, to alleviate the poverty they face and to safeguard against many discriminations that, for example, forces many indigenous girls to drop out of school."

More information

• Press release, UNFCCC
• IPS

• Latest draft of the Declaration, CWIS

An Inuit community in Canada is installing air conditioners after July temperatures topped 30°C. Ten air conditioners are being installed for office workers in the village of Kuujjuaq in Quebec, Canada. "These are the times when the far north has to have air conditioners now to function," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, International Chair for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. "Our Arctic homes are made to be airtight for the cold and do not 'breathe' well in the heat with this warming trend."

Writing in Ambio, Terry Chapin, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and his co-authors argue that Arctic nations have the wealth and scientific understanding to alter the course of global climate change: Arctic nations "account for about 40 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions and, therefore, have a substantial capacity to reduce the rates of Arctic change." They argue that there is already enough information to devise suitable strategies. "We do not need to delay action until some future time when we will ‘know enough’ to act," says Chapin. The authors advance a set of policy recommendations, including approaches to emissions reductions and the zoning of increasingly ice-free areas. "A lot of the recommendations for policy change deal with enhancing the capacity of northern regions to be flexible and adaptable to cope with changes, some of which we can predict, and others of which will be surprises," reports Chapin.

More information

• edie
• Reuters

• Press release, Institute of Arctic Biology