Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Limiting the release of black carbon, sooty particles generated by incomplete burning of fossil fuels and biomass, and ground-level ozone, resulting from effect of sunlight on vehicle exhausts and other pollutants, could slow climate change and deliver health benefits, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. "The assessment of current science confirms that reducing these substances can slow global warming over the short term, reduce regional climate change impacts, and provide health and agricultural benefits by reducing air pollution," reported co-author Johan Kuylenstierna from the York Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute in the United Kingdom.

Glaciated regions are vulnerable to warming as the pollutants can have a strong impact on the local energy balance. The northern polar region is particularly at risk because of its proximity to the major industrialized nations. "Some scientists estimate the impact of just black carbon that lands on ice and snow may be as much as [that of] carbon dioxide in the Arctic," commented Pam Pearson of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, who was a member of the report's advisory group. The report recommends the recovery of methane from coal, oil and gas extraction and transport, methane capture in waste management, use of clean-burning stoves for residential cooking, diesel particulate filters for vehicles and the banning of field burning of agricultural waste. It concludes that widespread implementation of a small number of emissions reduction measures is achievable with existing technology but would require significant strategic investment and institutional arrangements.

Investing around two per cent of global gross domestic product into key sectors could kick-start the transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient green economy and also reduce poverty, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The key sectors are agriculture, buildings, energy supply, fisheries, forestry, industry including energy efficiency, tourism, transport, waste management and water.

"With 2.5 billion people living on less than two dollars a day and with more than two billion people being added to the global population by 2050, it is clear that we must continue to develop and grow our economies," said UNEP head Achim Steiner. "But this development cannot come at the expense of the very life support systems on land, in the oceans or in our atmosphere that sustain our economies, and thus, the lives of each and everyone of us," he continued.

The European Union (EU) would push for a legally-binding agreement at the next round of United Nations climate talks in South Africa later this year, despite opposition, Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, reported while attending the United Nations High Level Panel on Global Sustainability in Cape Town. "We need to find a way forward to achieving a binding deal," she said.

Hedegaard called for more ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gases and other "deliverables" to maintain the political momentum that followed last year's Cancún climate summit. She opposed the notion that countries could set their own emissions targets in a bottom-up approach as this would mean that the world would be "heading for much higher temperatures."