Climate change

In this podcast, Rowan Douglas of Willis Group insurers, assesses his industry’s response to extreme weather events.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/q-a-climate-change-and-assessing-financial-risk.html

Q&A: Climate change and assessing financial risk

In this podcast, Anders Ladekarl of the Danish Red Cross says new methods are needed to explain climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/q-a-moving-beyond-climate-doomsday-narratives.html

Q&A: Moving beyond climate doomsday narratives

In this podcast, experts explain why higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may worsen malnutrition.

http://www.scidev.net/global/nutrition/multimedia/climate-change-may-increase-hidden-hunger.html

Climate change may increase ‘hidden hunger’

Lucia Grenna heads a World Bank unit that specialises in climate change-related communication. In 2011, she set up a communication initiative called Connect4Climate, which has grown into a major global partnership of organisations and individuals committed to climate change action. Her task, she says, is “to listen to and to engage unusual audiences” and to make people realise that the term “climate change’’ in itself does not have a message.

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/q-a-lucia-grenna-and-her-connect4climate-initiative.html

Q&A: Lucia Grenna and her Connect4Climate initiative

In lead to December’s 20th UN Conference of Parties on climate change, scientists and policymakers are reflecting on the future of climate science. Many are questioning whether the existing mechanisms that feed scientific evidence into international politics are working well enough.

In this interview Ilan Kelman argues that, despite its important work, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with its consensus-based approach, is no longer suited to the new challenges posed by climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/climate-science-beyond-the-ipcc.html


What’s next for climate science beyond the IPCC?

In this month’s show, we visit the island state of Kiribati, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, whose future is at risk from rising sea levels brought about by climate change.

Scientists agree there are limited adaptation options for the tiniest archipelagos of the small island developing states (SIDS), a group of diverse tropical islands facing similar economic and environmental issues. Within 30 to 50 years, it is likely that Kiribati, along with other small states such as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, will disappear beneath the ocean.

In SciDev.Net’s UK studio, we hosted Victoria Burns, whose film, Tinau (My Mother), portrays a disappearing nation through the words and memories of her Kiribatese family.

We report on the climate science behind the human crisis with Elizabeth Carabine, a researcher at UK think-tank the Overseas Development Institute. She explains the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings about small islands and rising sea levels.

Ilan Kelman, a researcher at University College London, United Kingdom, talks about a project that brings together indigenous people from the SIDS and from the Arctic regions to try to learn lessons about tackling climate change globally.

And, finally, Juan Casasbuenas, SciDev.Net’s training coordinator, launches our investigative journalism award, open to journalists from non-OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries willing to carry out an in-depth investigation into science and development issues.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/podcast-vanishing-small-island-states.html

Photo courtesy of Christine Germano


SciDev.Net podcast: The vanishing small island states

According to the WHO, bad air quality was responsible for 7 million deaths in 2012. In this interview Paulo Saldiva, dean of the department of pathology at the University of São Paulo, explains that there are no measures to protect people against air pollution, and so public health policies are vital to avoid serious consequences, particularly in large cities. He says the science needed to address the risks of air pollution is in place, but that poor countries lack the resources to implement it with solutions that work locally.

http://www.scidev.net/global/pollution/multimedia/local-science-tackle-air-pollution.html

Q&A: A call for local science to tackle air pollution

Political, economic and geographical factors have more impact on conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa, says report. 

More at: http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/news/climate-change-violence-conflict-social-political.html

Tim Forsyth discusses climate change and violence

In this month’s programme, we discover how technology is turning mapping into a powerful tool for supporting development and tackling humanitarian crises.

First, at the launch of the Missing Maps Project in London, United Kingdom, we join volunteers as they help to map two vulnerable areas in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, using satellite imagery to create basic maps to which local volunteers will add place names. 

Then we speak to Anna Mason from MapAction, a charity that provides mapping services after disasters, to learn more about the satellite technology underlying open mapping work.

In Congo, we discover how mobile phones help researchers fight poaching. An icon-based phone application enables people — who may be unable to read and write — living in the forest to record and map areas at risk. 

Finally, we discover how a data repository is helping journalists and policymakers understand the complex water system of the Tibetan plateau, also known as ‘the Third Pole’, which provides water that more than a billion people rely on for drinking or to irrigate crops.

http://www.scidev.net/global/technology/multimedia/podcast-open-mapping-development.html


SciDev.Net Podcast: Open mapping for development

[LIMA] The coming year will be crucial for the world’s response to climate change. At the end of 2015, countries will meet in Paris, France, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with the aim of signing a legally binding agreement on adaptation measures and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

This year in Lima, Peru, at the UN’s COP 20 climate summit, researchers are looking ahead and putting forward ideas and proposals to facilitate the process and set priorities based on scientific evidence.

The Agreement on Climate Transformation 2015 (ACT 2015) consortium has focused on thinking through the core elements of the Paris agreement and suggesting practical ways to make it work in the long term.

In this podcast, Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate programme at research organisation the World Resources Institute, which is a partner of the consortium, explains the key findings and proposals of ACT 2015.

She detailed some of the practical actions that could be put in place after 2015 and answered a question that many shy away from: how to deal with countries that opt out of climate negotiations.


http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/road-map-post-2015-climate-response.html


Q&A: Road map for post-2015 climate response

In this podcast, Mohamed Adow of the NGO Christian Aid talks about UNEP’s report on adjusting to climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/environment/multimedia/Mohamed-adow-climate-adaptation.html

Q&A: Mind the climate adaptation gap

[LIMA] Gender is an important item on the agenda at the UN’s COP 20 climate meeting under way in Peru. Issues on the negotiating table include the goal of boosting women’s participation to improve the gender balance both in the talks and parties connected with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process.

In this podcast, Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of UN Women, the UN body for gender equality and women’s empowerment, explains the links between gender and action against climate change. She also describes the progress made in acknowledging that climate change will affect women differently to men, as well as the need for gender equality in decision-making bodies.

Puri also outlines her expectations from Lima and her views on how to implement the gender agenda, including the need to plug the gender gap in data collection and analysis.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/support-women-climate-action-gender.html

Q&A: Support women to be ‘agents of climate action’

In this month’s programme, we examine what’s on the radar for science and development in 2015.

First, we take stock of the global response to the escalating danger of climate change, with a report from the UN’s latest climate summit in Lima, Peru. We reflect on the outcome of the conference, on what ongoing efforts will be taking place over coming months and on the major milestone for climate negotiations: the next UN climate summit in Paris, France, at the end of the year.

To mark the start of the UN year of light and light-based technologies, we open our series on light technology for development by travelling to Tanzania to discover how solar power and mobile phones can fulfil basic energy needs and support grass-roots entrepreneurship.

Finally, as the world takes stock of what has been achieved within the Millennium Development Goals initiative, we discuss solutions to accelerate progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals that will succeed them. We talk to Peter Singer, a proponent of science and innovation in global health, who explains how to encourage the scaling up of innovation success, and how to measure it.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/scidevnet-podcast-light-energy-radar-2015.html

SciDev.Net Podcast: What’s on the radar for 2015

This audio feature finds out how a system was developed to assess flood risk where observational data is missing.

Researchers get flood forecasting off the ground

Coffee plants are particularly sensitive to changes in temperature. As climate change warms the regions where coffee is traditionally grown, farmers have to move their plantations to higher ground. New research warns that in many countries coffee production may even disappear altogether.
 
A UK based startup, WeatherSafe, has developed software that combines satellite images with big data on agricultural production, in an effort to support farmers in their adaptation efforts. The software creates a virtual model of each plantation to analyse its behaviour and changing biochemistry, providing farmers with real time information on the health and needs of the plants, straight to their mobiles. All of this for just six British pounds per year. Lou Del Bello reports.

http://www.scidev.net/global/biodiversity/multimedia/big-data-coffee-farmers-climate-change.html

Big data to help coffee farmers adapt to climate change

“I’m opening frontiers of research in an area where people don’t believe it’s possible to conduct research” says PhD student Anthony Egeru, who is studying the effects of climate change on forage resources in Karamoja, in northeast Uganda. 

Karamoja is a semi-arid plain largely populated by pastoralists. It is an area that has seen many years of armed conflict and unrest between armed pastoralists and the Ugandan army (UPDF), to the extent that Egeru has needed armed protection from the UPDF whilst conducting his research in Karamoja.  

Egeru argues that governments need to be more proactive in setting the research agenda, so that university academics do not remain in their “ivory towers” but instead begin answering some of the many developmental challenges faced by countries in Africa.  

Egeru, who is Ugandan, is studying for his PhD at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya. His studies were funded initially by seed grants from RUFORUM (the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture).
This is part of the Africa’s PhD Renaissance series funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/phds-focus-uganda-neglected-pastoralists.html 


PhDs in Focus: Helping Uganda's neglected pastoralists

They are the world’s most vulnerable people. Often living in informal settlements and speaking only local languages, they are difficult to count and conventional surveys don’t capture their opinions, needs or even their presence.

A recent report by the Overseas Development Institute, in the United Kingdom, looks at the issue and tries to explain why the poorest are often left out of the official statistics that inform policymaking. Reporter Kevin Pollock speaks to one of the report’s authors to learn more.

If millions are missing from the global count, too many are also left offline, without access to the internet services that people in richer countries take for granted. We spoke with communication system expert Jon Crowcroft about the idea of moving away from the current trend of building a few big data centres that send and receive many people’s information, and instead decentralise the internet by establishing a larger number of more localised servers. Crowcroft argues that internet access should be considered a human right.

We speak to climate adaptation researcher Elizabeth Carabine to learn how communities and governments can use ecosystem services to estimate the value of their natural assets and protect them from industrial exploitation.

Finally, we travel to Ebola-stricken Sierra Leone to discover how Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) armed local teams with motorbikes and GPS-enabled smartphones to map the disease.

http://www.scidev.net/global/vulnerability/multimedia/June-podcast-missing-millions-vulnerable.html


SciDev.Net Podcast: Who are the missing millions?

Carbon dioxide is the main driver of global warming, but it doesn’t act alone. Pollutants such as methane and soot also play a part, although they have very different impacts from CO2.

While CO2 lingers in the atmosphere, the so-called short-lived pollutants mostly disappear within weeks — or a few years at most.

Targeting policies at phasing out short-lived pollutants such as methane or soot can improve human health in places where people still burn kerosene for cooking and lighting. But this risks diverting resources away from efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, which will irreparably damage the planet in the long term.

Which category should policymakers focus on mitigating first? In this audio piece, two experts with different points of view examine the dilemma.
http://www.scidev.net/global/pollution/multimedia/co2-warming-planet-climate-pollution-methane.html

CO2 doesn’t act alone in warming the planet

In the first section of a two-part interview, Saleemul Huq, senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in the United Kingdom, talks to Anita Makri about how policies on climate change, development and disaster reduction are separate at the global level but become increasingly connected as they progress down to the local level. He also discusses the role of scientific evidence and how it can help vulnerable communities improve their participation in decisions that affect them.

Saleemul Huq on how climate change policy works at the global and local

This week, the UN member countries have gathered in Bonn, Germany, to negotiate a preliminary draft that will form the backbone of an agreement to be finalised in December. The agreement will outline a global strategy for climate change response over the next few decades, in an effort to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius.

After a difficult start in Germany, when developing countries contested the first version of the draft, the text was amended to include issues such as the loss and damage mechanism and a stronger focus on adaptation, which will benefit countries that are most vulnerable to climate change.

SciDev.Net talks to David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at research organisation the World Resources Institute, about how the negotiations are shaping up, what policies will most affect the developing world in the face of climate change and the challenges ahead.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/bonn-climate-talks-COP21-UN.html


Insider's view wraps up the Bonn climate talks

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 