Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The Group of 77 (G-77), meeting at the United Nations headquarters, has criticized the rich nations of the world for failing to meet their promises of financial support for the developing world. The core of the problem, said Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egyptian foreign minister, is "the failure of many developed countries to fulfil their financial commitments" with regard to the Millennium Development Goals. Undersecretary-general Sha Zukang noted the continuing failure of rich nations to commit funds to help the transfer of "clean" technologies to the developing world.

Abubakr al-Qirbi, outgoing G-77 president, describing climate change as an urgent challenge for the group that "threatens not only our societies' developmental prospects but also their very existence," stressed the importance of the continuity of the Kyoto Protocol as an essential element for the future of the climate change regime. "New quantified emission reduction commitments by Annex I parties under the Kyoto Protocol, therefore, must be met to avoid any gap between the first and subsequent commitment periods under the Protocol," he said.

Researchers met in Senegal last week to discuss the potential of the cowpea, the black-eyed pea, one of the world's oldest crops. "It's hard to imagine a more perfect crop, particularly for Africa, where food production lags behind population growth, demand for livestock products is soaring, and climate change is bringing new stresses to already challenging growing conditions," said Christian Fatokun of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, co-organizer of the conference.

"Climate-ready" crops such as the cowpea could be substituted for staples, for example, maize and rice, that may fail as climate changes. Cowpeas provide good yields, even in hot and dry conditions, and yet more resilient varieties are being developed. The challenge is dealing with the threats that limit production and long-term storage. "The good news in Senegal is that researchers will be revealing new and innovative approaches to dealing with the pests and weeds that attack cowpeas at every stage of their lifecycle and with the voracious weevils that devour dried cowpeas," Fatokun said.

A global assessment of groundwater use has concluded that the rate at which humanity is depleting underground stores of water has more than doubled over recent decades. The extraction of groundwater, which enters the atmosphere through evaporation then the oceans through precipitation, could account for around a quarter of observed sea-level rise, the study finds.

"Although the role of groundwater depletion in rising sea levels had already been acknowledged, it was not addressed in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report due to a lack of reliable data to illustrate the severity of the situation, commented researcher Marc Bierkens from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "Our study confirms that groundwater depletion is, in fact, a significant factor." The study showed that groundwater depletion is most acute in areas of India, Pakistan, the United States and China, which are also the regions without sustainable levels of food production and water consumption.