Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Friends of the Earth Canada is sueing the Canadian government over its alleged failure to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. "The case is about defending the fundamental principle that the government must be accountable and comply with the law," said Ecojustice lawyer Hugh Wilkins. "The government cannot pick and choose which laws to obey. The law is the law."

In April 2007, the Canadian government announced its Turning the Corner strategy, setting its greenhouse gas reduction target to 20 per cent below 2006 levels by the year 2020, much less ambitious than its Kyoto target of a six per cent reduction below 1990 levels by the end of 2012. "While other industrialized countries actively work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, our government has offered pollution holidays for emitters for decades to come," charged Beatrice Olivastri of Friends of the Earth Canada. "This government has broken the law," she said, "and, as Canadian citizens, we have both a moral and legal imperative to insist on enforcement of our own laws on climate action."

António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has warned that climate change is forcing greater numbers of people to flee their homes as resources become increasingly scarce. "We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future," he said. "They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hotspots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources, and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places."

In Darfur, in the Sudan, where 2.5 million people have been displaced by conflict, "the root of the conflict is greatly due to the competition for water and grazing land between tribes," says Peter Kessler of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. "Wherever you look, the footprint of climate change and environmental degradation is bring people to a situation where resources are increasingly scarce and forcing them to move." observes Nick Nuttall of the United Nations Environment Programme. He cites the Rwenzori mountains of Uganda, where glacial retreat threatens the flow of rivers on which millions of livelihoods depend. In Mali, Chad and Ethiopia, entire lakes have near disappeared in recent decades, severely reducing water availability for local peoples.

"We show that the rate of ocean warming from 1961 to 2003 is about 50 per cent larger than previously reported," said Catia Domingues from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, commenting on a recent re-assessment of ocean temperature records. The study resulted in an estimate of the warming rate in the top 700 metres of the world ocean as well as a re-calculation of how fast sea level should be rising as a result. Thermal warming should have contributed to a 0.53 millimetre annual rise in sea level over the past four decades, greater than that reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There is concern that freshwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet may more than double by the end of this century. "The Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance is changing as a response to the altered climatic state," said Sebastian Mernild of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "This is faster than expected. This affects freshwater runoff input to the North Atlantic Ocean, and plays an important role in determining the global sea-level rise and global ocean thermohaline circulation." Mernild's assessment is based on modelling and observational data.