Coastal forests are among the hotspots of biodiversity and therefore critical for conservation in Tanzania. However, most of the previous climate change mitigation efforts in Tanzania focused on participatory forest management in rural areas and did not address the major driving force of deforestation and forest degradation from urban areas. Further, coastal forests have not been given adequate attention in climate research and on their resources linkages with urban and peri-urban environment.
The Climate Technology Centre is seeking proposals for the development of relevant indicators and an environmental and climate change information system for Guatemala using open-source tools.
With the surge in bio-based activities around the globe, a new concept called bio-refining starts to emerge. IEA Bioenergy Task 42 on Biorefineries defines biorefining as “the sustainable processing of biomass into a spectrum of marketable products and energy”. A bio-refinery combines/integrates a series of biomass conversion technologies to produce a range of products and (base-)materials, such as food, feed, chemicals, materials, oil, gas, heat and/or electricity. The concept is similar to a conventional oil-refinery where multiple petroleum products and fuels are produced.
A global convergence toward Western-style diets that are high in calories, protein, and animal-based foods poses challenges for food security and sustainability. To quantify the benefits of shifting these consumers to more sustainable diets, several possible diet shifts are modeled. A framework is proposed to tackle the crucial question of how to shift people’s diets through the retail and food services sector.
Fulfilment of the pledges signed by 42 developed countries is estimated to reduce emissions by up to 4 billion tons (Gt) of CO2e in 2020. This is about one third of the estimated 12 Gt of CO2e emissions reductions that would be needed to remain on a path consistent with keeping warming below 2°C. Unfortunately, weaknesses in international emissions accounting could substantially weaken these already insufficient pledges, negating much if not all of their intended emissions benefits.
This report examines four recent detailed studies of countries‘ mitigation pledges under the Cancun Agreements, for the purpose of comparing developed (Annex 1) country pledges to developing (non-Annex 1) country pledges. It finds that there is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges. That conclusion applies across all four studies and across all their various cases, despite the diversity of assumptions and methodologies employed and the substantial differences in their quantification of the pledges.
The increased pressures on the world’s natural resources and ecological systems in the past century, has been accompanied by rapid urban population growth. Urban centres themselves have ecological reputations since they drive unsustainable environmental change. They also lead to high levels of resource use and waste generation, causing serious ecological consequences locally, regionally and globally, especially in terms of climate change. But there is good evidence that urban areas can combine high living standards with relatively low GHG emissions and lower resource demands.
The rapid increase in global biofuel production and consumption, particularly of ethanol, has an associated derived demand for crops to produce the necessary feedstock. This working paper assess the implications of global biofuel expansion on Brazilian land usage at the regional level.
The document reveals that most of the expansion in global ethanol consumption outside the US is met by Brazilian ethanol production. The paper analyses the regional land-use changes in Brazil that would result from an increase in ethanol consumption beyond projected levels and finds that:
