IPCC focuses on natural disasters

The Peninsula (Qatar): Experts recommend avoiding risks in order to minimise the damage caused by climate change, which has stronger impact in underdeveloped regions that are not prepared.

These are some of the conclusions of the report completed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with authors from 62 countries. The report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, was the topic of discussion at the UN climate change conference yesterday.

Rajendra K Pachauri, Chairman of IPCC, said that the “increase in sea levels is not our only challenge”, adding that 95 percent of debt for natural disasters affects developing countries.

Maarten van Aalst, from Red Cross/Crescent Climate Centre, said that there are signs of extreme meteorological phenomena, which serve as warning and would avoid many damages. He added that there is need for stronger organisations to do things “smarter and better in the future”.

He talked about certain risk factors that should be taken into consideration, like cooling in public facilities or changes in infrastructure to cope with heat waves in Europe, given that research says that there is a likely increase in heat waves and warm days and nights across Europe.

He also referred to the growing number of hurricanes in US and Caribbean, listing risks like population growth, increasing property rules and higher storm surge with sea level rise. These issues can be addressed with better forecasting, stricter building codes and regional risk pooling...

Namibia: Poor countries want fund for loss and damage

Irene Ihoaes in AllAfrica.com via New Era (Namibia): east Developed Countries (LDCs) are calling for the establishment of a fund to deal with the problem of loss and damage, as a result of climate change and global warming.

"We are looking for an international mechanism on loss and damage, although it is seen as part of the Cancun Adaptation Framework. It should be a form of compensation, there is no way you can run away from this," Pa Ousman Jarful, chairman of the LDC Group at the climate change negotiations told reporters on the sideline of the 18th session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Doha, Qatar.

The 18th Session of the UNFCCC and the 8th session of the Conference of Parties (COP) serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol started on Monday November 26 and will run until December 07. Loss and damage, a new concept in climate change discourse refers to the negative effects of climate variability and climate change that people are not able to cope with or adapt to.

According to Jarful, loss and damage is a reality for many vulnerable communities, adding that failure to address that will compromise sustainable development and ensure affected countries that have contributed least to global greenhouse emissions will continue to suffer disproportionately. Each LDC at least needs US$3 billion to build resilience, while each of the countries had allocated funds themselves to deal with the problem.

Jarful is against loans for adaptation, stating that LDCs are not responsible for the loss and damage caused by climate change and need to be compensated and not just given loans. "Every country has to put institutional mechanisms in place to monitor funds that are coming in for adaptation. We have learnt from our mistakes, we have mainstream adaptation and climate change in our developmental plans," he added....

The Doha skyline, shot by Amjra, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license