In previous Climatico blogs, it has been highlighted that the Government of India has placed sustainable economic development high on its priority list. Last week, the Government of India published its highly anticipated Interim Budget. Not surprisingly, development initiatives gained precedence in budget allocation.  In 2008, the Government had lots to say about bolstering India’s [...]

  Leaders from a broad range of political, environmental, development and business communities are calling for U.S. action on deforestation in anticipation of the UNFCCC COP-15 in Copenhagen this December.     Earlier this month, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), along with a coalition of policy and scientific experts known as the [...]

While Obama’s visit to Canada rightly made headlines across North America; as the first state visit and one that was open in its discussion of Climate Change measures (even if they Climate Change talks had to take a backseat to the economy. 2009 however, also saw the slow awakening of another key initiative to Combat [...]

Usually, the EU’s policy on global warming tends to focus on mitigation: the 20/20/20 Climate and Energy Package is the obvious recent example. But this week the European Commission approved two reports on natural and man-made disasters that give some thought to the flip side of climate policy: adaptation. One of the documents focuses on [...]

REDD is controversial: some consider it essential to halt deforestation in forest rich developing countries, others, a danger to biodiversity, indigenous communities and carbon markets. A view from Mexico shows that REDD is not a panacea to solve deforestation and yet, at least in the case of Mexico, it may be able to contribute to [...]

The 45th meeting of the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism was carried between Feb.12th and 13th.     New EB Chair and Vice-Chair The EB elected Mr. Lex de Jonge and Mr. Clifford Mahlung as Chair and Vice-Chair, respectively, of the Executive Board until the first meeting of the Board in 2010. Mr. [...]

The British automotive industry is to receive more than £2bn in soft loans under a new deal which was announced by Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson last week. The European Investment Bank (EIB) will only provide loans to businesses who agree to fund projects that ‘further the UK objectives on low carbon and green technology’ (Source [...]

The past week saw reports of at least four of the country’s leading green activists accepting that nuclear power may have a significant role to play if we are to avoid runaway climate change. Concerns over safety issues, build-up of radioactive wastes and the proliferation of nuclear weapons were realistically balanced against the environmental impacts [...]

Ene Farm On 28 January, six companies, including Astomos Energy Corp., Osaka Gas Co., Seibu Gas Co., Tokyo Gas Co., Nippon Oil Corp., and Toho Gas Co., made a joint-statement that they were going to sell their home-use fuel cell system, ‘Ene Farm’, from this April. Ene Farm is a coined word that consists of [...]

As President Yudhoyono was first greeting and then demanding leadership from visiting US secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on climate change, the old saying ‘those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ comes to mind. In particular two recent events do not bode well for the future, namely the re-emergence of the forest fire problem [...]