Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Opening the latest round of climate treaty negotiations, the Accra Climate Change Talks, John Agyekum Kufuor, president of Ghana, called for an "international deal... in which developing countries commit to plan for climate resilient development. In return the international community should commit to provide adequate, predictable, long-term funding and support in terms of technology transfer and capacity building." The Accra meeting is the latest stage in the development of strengthened long-term action on climate change. Agreement needs to be reached by the time of the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009. "The clock is ticking," Kufuor warned. "We need to be pragmatic and move beyond rhetoric to make progress as we move towards Copenhagen."

In his opening address, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, noted that Africa is "the climate change regimes's forgotten continent," with a limited number of Clean Development Mechanism projects and relatively low funding from the Global Environment Facility. "If this meeting can be a step towards the design of a regime that helps Africa to achieve clean economic growth and deal with the impacts of climate change through effective mechanisms that deliver on finance, technology and capacity-building, you will have done very important work here," he continued. The Accra discussions will cover the finance and technology needed to limit emissions and adapt to climate change, sectoral approaches to emissions reduction and sector-specific actions and reducing emissions from deforestation.

"Climate change is not science fiction. As your countries know all too well, it is real and present," said Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary general, in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum Summit held in Alofi, Niue. The United Nations and Samoa intend to set up an Inter-Agency Climate Change Centre to assist in coordinating support for Pacific Island countries in responding to climate impacts in the region. "The challenges for the region are no longer a matter for research or scientific theory and modelling. The evidence is quite clear that climate change is already wreaking havoc here," Toke Talagi, Niue prime minister, told the summit delegates. "We shouldn't wait until a worse human catastrophe occurs before acting."

The Niue Declaration on Climate Change, issued as the summit ended, notes that "despite being amongst the lowest contributors to factors causing climate change, the Pacific Islands region is one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change including its exacerbation of climate variability, sea level rise and extreme weather events." The Declaration commits Forum members to continue to develop Pacific-tailored approaches to combating climate change. It encourages the Pacific’s development partners to increase technical and financial support for action on adaptation, mitigation and, if necessary, relocation, calling for increased support for efforts to move towards alternative and renewable energy sources.

"Behind the world food crisis is a global freshwater crisis, expected to rapidly worsen as climate change impacts intensify," said James Leape, WWF head, as the 2008 World Water Week opened in Stockholm. "Irrigation-fed agriculture provides 45 per cent of the world's food supplies, and without it, we could not feed our planet's population of six billion people." He warned that many irrigation areas are drawing more water from rivers and groundwater reserves than can be sustained, especially in view of climate change.

A new survey of 53 cities from the International Water Management Institute concludes that 80 per cent are using untreated or partially-treated wastewater for food production. "Irrigating with wastewater isn't a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries," reported Liqa Raschid-Sally, lead author of the report. "It's a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well."