Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The world could exceed the 2015 safe drinking-water target set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), according to the latest status report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Greater efforts are needed, though, to come close to meeting the MDG sanitation target. Almost 39 per cent of the world’s population live without improved sanitation facilities and, on current trends, the sanitation target could be missed by almost one billion people. "The question now lies in how to accelerate progress towards achieving the MDG targets and most importantly how to leap a step further to ultimately achieve the vision of universal access," said Maria Neira, director of the WHO Department of Public Health and Environment.

"We need to not only focus on reaching the water and sanitation MDG targets but also on achieving them with equity; ensuring that the most vulnerable groups and those hard to reach share in the successes achieved elsewhere," commented Tessa Wardlaw from UNICEF. The report notes that, although the world's population is divided close to equally between urban and rural areas, seven out of ten people without basic sanitation live in rural areas, as do more than eight out of ten people without access to improved drinking-water sources. In sub-Saharan Africa, the richest 20 per cent of the population are more than twice as likely to use an improved drinking-water source and almost five times more likely to use improved sanitation facilities as the poorest 20 per cent.

Around 60 countries have agreed a multi-billion dollar scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation following a commitment made at the time of the Copenhagen climate summit. A total of US$3.5 billion has been pledged for the period 2010-2012. Donor nations and tropical forest states met recently at a one-day conference in Paris. A "slim" secretariat has been established consisting of four developed and four developing nations. The immediate issue to be resolved is how to disburse the funds - which forests should be protected, how to conserve them and how to enforce transparency, help indigenous forest dwellers and battle corruption. Although it was launched at the Copenhagen meeting, the forestry initiative does not technically fall under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Opening the Paris meeting, French president Nicolas Sarkozy described the Copenhagen summit as "an example of bad management" and called for the working methods to change. He suggested that a "representative" group of countries should do the haggling before the global forum became involved, echoing a recent observation by Gro Harlem Brundtland that the climate negotiations will become "more of a dual track system." Copenhagen "will serve as a base for discussions going on this year. It's not only going to be focused on the United Nations framework, but more on what these emerging economies and big economies are committing to," she said. United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has said that he regards dual track negotiations as "not desirable," though smaller group discussions may be necessary at times to build consensus. The official negotiating process must follow the existing UNFCCC process, which has been agreed by all countries.

The rate of global warming would only slow slightly if the sun entered a prolonged period of reduced brightness such as experienced during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century, according to researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. A century-long period of low solar activity would only reduce global warming by 0.3 degrees Celsius at most by the year 2100.

It has been suggested that low sunspot activity in recent years may presage a longer period of reduced solar output, a Grand Minimum. "The notion that we are heading for a new Little Ice Age if the sun actually entered a Grand Minimum is wrong," said lead author Georg Feulner. According to Julie Arblaster from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology the study's reduction of 0.25 per cent in solar output is "on the extreme end of what we would expect for the next century." The results show, she says, that "any changes in the Sun, even large changes, will only have a small impact in offsetting... warming."