Communities have coped for millennia through extremes of flood and drought by cooperatively managing shared natural resources, and by cultivating a variety of robust, indigenous crop types that can survive a range of conditions. Knowledge and use of diverse plant types - either planted or foraged - could be key to survival as climate extremes widen. Pasture degradation is very serious and widespread in Mongolia. The problem has been aggravated by three severe winters (1999-2001) characterized by heavy accumulations of snow or ice crusts on pastures.

The UN-REDD Programme is the United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries. This booklet delves into the experiences, challenges and best practices of REDD+ readiness in 12 Asia-Pacific countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Vietnam.

This guide, aimed at climate change negotiators, gives synopsis of the key elements in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Biennial Assessment (BA) of climate finance flows. It also provides an overview of recommendations of the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) to the Conference of Parties. The guide also provides some views on how the identified recommendations can support future international negotiations.

Mongolia’s reindeer herders and their taiga homeland are today facing unprecedented challenges from unregulated mining, forest logging, loss of access to natural resources, tourism, and climate change.

The Dukha herders and their ancestors have lived for centuries in this fragile transition region on the edge of the steppes, practising an ancient and unique form of reindeer husbandry and helping to conserve the region’s unique biodiversity. Yet this system of reindeer husbandry, with its close relationship between man and reindeer, is under threat.

This report reviews existing environmental, social and climate safeguard systems developed and adopted by multilateral and bilateral development agencies. The aim of the report is to assess the potential for the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to adopt or rely on these systems. This will help guide the application of DFID’s new SMART rules, which include a commitment to ensuring sustainability and resilience, and to avoid doing harm such as creating or exacerbating resource scarcity, climate change and/or environmental damage.

In 2011, UNICEF commissioned field research in Indonesia, Kiribati, Mongolia, Philippines and Vanuatu to determine if there were noticeable patterns and trends of climate change and disaster impacts on children. This regional report summarises the key findings from the studies and brings together published evidence, along with the perspectives of children, on the potential impact of climate change on children over the course of this century.

This report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is aimed as a handbook for policy makers, technical audiences and others interested in peatlands. The publication informs on management and finance options to achieve emission reductions and enhance other vital ecosystem services from peatlands. The report provides guidance on these action: securing undrained peatlands to prevent emissions, rewetting drained peatlands to reduce emissions and adapting management of peatlands that cannot be rewetted.

Lack of access to electricity is seen as a major constraint to economic growth and increased welfare in developing countries. In this report, the authors conducted a review of the evidence that investments in electricity-generating capacity have benefits for poor people, and what factors influence that relationship. The review analyzes a large and diverse range of literature dealing with the poverty impacts of increased generation capacity.

This document highlights recent advances in the use of climate information to manage risks and improve livelihoods, such as new partnerships and user-designed information platforms. It draws together and analyzes experiences from 17 case studies that capture the current state of knowledge and highlights research innovations. A problemsolving framework is used to demonstrate the challenges and opportunities facing disaster risk managers in using climate science.

Sattherwaite and Dodman’s editorial is an introduction to a special issue of environment and urbanisation which focusses on climate change responses in cities. It usefully summarises the state of debates about the meanings and complexities of the resilience and transformation concepts, pointing to the latest literature. It focuses on the following areas: