Nepalinews

BONN, GERMANY:  The countries in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region and other supporting organisations have agreed to work in collaboration to mitigate the risk caused by the melting snow taking place in the region due to climate change impact posing to the inhabitants and the biodiversity. The representatives from different organisations and the countries of the region reached this consent in the high level side event the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) hosted in coordination with the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), during the ongoing 23rd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 23) at the UN Climate Change Conference here.The high level side event was held on Wednesday on the theme – ‘Cooperation for Building Resilient Mountain Communities’. The speakers in the side event underscored the need of joining hands in the campaign to protect the Himalayas from the effects of c

BONN, GERMANY:  Minister for Population and Environment Mithila Chaudhary has said climate change has been continuously posing additional threats to people and ecosystems in the country though Nepal emits negligible amount of global greenhouse gases. Addressing the High Level Segment of UNFCCC’s COP 23 taking place in Bonn of Germany on Thursday, Minister Chaudhary noted that Nepal has expressed its strong commitment and put initiatives to addressing the accelerated threats of climate change despite limited resources and also called for the developed countries to expand their supports to the climate affected developing countries.Expressing commitment to give final shape to the rule book of the Paris Agreement within a year, she expressed solidarity with all the parties for effective implementation of the provisions of the Convention and the Paris Agreement. “I urge you all to collaborate with countries like ours with rugged mountainous terrain on the one hand and limited tec

SYDNEY:  A proposal to expand the world’s largest marine conservation park in Antarctica by linking it with smaller ones failed at a meeting as Russian and Chinese delegates did not endorse it, a conservationist attending the session said on Saturday. The plan was proposed at a meeting in Hobart, Australia, on Friday of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which last year created the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area.Twenty-four countries and the European Union agreed to protect 1.55 million square km (600,000 square miles) of ocean from commercial fishing for 35 years in the Ross Sea. The giant marine park becomes active on December 1. Ross Sea, a deep bay in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica, is one of the world’s most ecologically important areas, home to penguins, whales, seabirds and colossal squid. At the Hobart meeting, some commission members urged extending protection to a network of areas through East Antarctica’s Southern Ocean.

PROVIDENCE, RI:  The Environmental Protection Agency kept three scientists from speaking at a Monday event in a move condemned by researchers and Democratic members of Congress as an attempt by the agency to silence a discussion of climate change. The scientists were scheduled to discuss a report on the health of Narragansett Bay, New England’s largest estuary. Among the findings in the 500-page report is that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish.The EPA didn’t explain why the scientists were told not to speak, but said in a statement that the agency supports the program that published the document, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, with a $600,000 annual grant. The EPA is the sole funder of the program. “EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting; it is not an EPA conference,” agency spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said in a statement Monday. Several people involved in the report and members of the state’s

NEW DELHI:  Environmental pollution — from filthy air to contaminated water — is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015 — about 9 million — could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses — or about 6.2 percent of the global economy.“There’s been a lot of study of pollution, but it’s never received the resources or level of attention as, say, AIDS or climate change,” said epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, dean of global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and the lead author on the report. The report marks the first attempt to pull toget