Stonefish @ Tanah Merah
from sgbeachbum and wild shores of singapore
Life History of the Archduke
from Butterflies of Singapore
The Resident Common Bronzeback's Feast
from Life's Indulgences
Up Close with a Yellow-vented Bulbul
from Black Dillenia
Opera bufo
from The annotated budak
Black-naped Oriole eating mango
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Sunday Times 14 Feb 10;
I refer to last Monday's report, 'Tax breaks to pave way for greener cars: EDB proposes big rebates to encourage plug-in hybrids'.
The Economic Development Board (EDB) does not advocate new tax breaks for hybrid cars.
On the point in the report that the EDB is arranging for hybrids in Singapore to be converted into plug-ins, I want to clarify that we have no such plan.
The EDB is working closely with other government agencies and the industry to encourage R&D and test-bedding of greener vehicles in Singapore. The Transport Technology Innovation and Development Scheme (Tides), jointly administered by the EDB and the Land Transport Authority , exempts vehicles used for R&D and test-bedding from certificate of entitlement, registration fee, additional registration fees, road tax and Customs duties.
Since its launch in 2001, Tides has supported R&D and test-bedding of various technologies, including vehicle fuel systems, vehicle power and drive-train systems. The EDB is reviewing the scheme to better support the electric vehicle test-bedding programme. Plug-in hybrids already qualify for support under Tides.
Kelvin Wong
Programme Director, Urban Solutions
Singapore Economic Development Board
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post 13 Feb 10;
Between 1998 to 2002, the Sumatran tigers were poached at a rate of 50 individuals annually. There are only 400 remaining today. Will they meet a similar end to their Javanese and Balinese counterparts?
This year, several conservation institutions like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), have launched campaigns to save tigers, including the Sumatran tiger.
"According to the Chinese calendar, this is the Year of the Tiger," WWF-Indonesia's Desmarita Murni said on Friday. "Coincidentally this year is also International Year of Biodiversity and the year when the tiger summit will take place."
Desmarita said with the events, the organization expected 2010 to be a good year to draw public attention to the endangered species.
Of the nine original tiger sub-species in the world, only six remain. The Balinese, Javanese and Caspian tigers are extinct. The remaining ones are from Sumatra, Siberia, Bengal, Malaya, South China and Indochina.
"Of these, the most endangered is the Sumatran, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature," Karmila Parakkasi, a survey and monitoring officer at the WWF office in Riau, said.
The major threats faced by Sumatran tigers are habitat degradation, poaching and loss of prey.
Conflict with humans sometimes lead to a tiger's death. Due to habitat loss and expanding human settlement, tigers often encroach into people's backyards. The people sometimes kill the tiger, she said.
"In Riau, most habitat is lost by deforestation due to plantations and industrial forest estates," she said.
The plantations are mostly oil palm while the estates are mostly acacia for paper mills.
"We want to raise public awareness about the plight the tigers face," Desmarita said. In Jakarta and urban areas, she added, the campaign would include using less paper and fund raising.
Using less paper could help reduce forest degradation, she said.
In Jakarta, WWF held a two-day event at Taman Menteng, presenting a photo exhibition and musical performances.
"The campaign is also aimed at those who would buy tiger parts, either for medicine or jewelry," she said.
WWF also received donations through Sahabat Harimau (Friends of the Tiger), she went on.
In Indonesia, Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau is considered an important area for Sumatran tiger conservation. WWF is researching tigers in central Sumatra, using camera traps to estimate population size, habitat and distribution to identify areas that require protection.
For information on how to donate: wwf.or.id
Antara 13 Feb 10;
Banda Aceh (ANTARA News) - Villagers in Aceh are now allowed to kill long-tail monkeys (Macaca Fascicularis) because the apes often enter and hide in their homes.
"If villagers think the animals` disturb the peace, they may kill the apes becauses they are not a protected species," the head of the province`s Nature Resource Conservation (BKSDA), Abubakar Chekmat, said here on Saturday.
He said tens of long tail monkeys now often emerged in a number of residential areas in Banda Aceh city such as in Lampriet and Beurawe.
"According to information they were pets of some villagers before the tsunami disaster occured in 2004. After the disaster their owners might have gone and therefore the
monkeys have turned wild," he said.
The villagers particularly children have indeed been worried about the presence of the animal."So if they are considered disturbing it is alright to kill them," he said.
Some villagers in Beurawe said they had been disturbed by the presence of three long tail monkeys in their residential area in the past two weeks.
"We feel not peaceful because of their presence. We fear they will bite children. The animals have even shown no fear of people," he said," Sulaiman, a resident of Beurawe, said.
Villagers hoped BKSDA would catch the animal. "We are hope for an immediate handling of the problem by the office concerned to assure safety and peace," Burhanuddin, another villager of Beurawe, said.
(*)
The Star 14 Feb 10;
KOTA KINABALU: A five-year project is underway to restore and rehabilitate tracts of damaged wetlands in the state.
Sabah Wetlands Conservation Society president Zaini Aucasa said the project will kick off with the planting of some 2,000 mangrove trees along the banks of Sungai Likas here on Feb 27.
“We hope this will go some way towards creating awareness about the importance of wetlands and the need to preserve them,” he said at the state-level World Wetlands Day gathering in the Wetland Centre here yesterday.
The event was launched by Assistant Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Elron Alfred Angin and saw 100 students from 12 secondary schools taking part in various activities, including helping to clean up the centre.
The society, Zaini added, was embarking on an ambitious programme to replant some 25,000 mangrove trees in five years, with initial funding from Japanese real-estate firm Mullion Co.
Zaini said creating awareness over the importance of wetlands, including how such areas could mitigate the impact of climate change, was crucial in Sabah, where large tracts of mangroves along the west coast have been severely damaged or destroyed.
“Regrettably, there are no reliable statistics on how many mangroves have been destroyed and how many are left.
“The figures keep changing every day. Even now, mangroves are being cut in the name of development,” he added.
Zaini also thanked HSBC Bank for its RM300,000 grant for the centre’s Environmental Education Programme that has so far benefited more than 10,000 secondary school students here.
Dan Whitcomb, Reuters 12 Feb 10;
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California has been deluged with rain and snow this winter, but its epic tug-of-war over water rages on, this time in the form of a plan by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein to divert more water to the state's farmers.
Feinstein has infuriated environmental activists, fishing groups and even fellow California Democrats by drafting federal legislation that would ease Endangered Species Act restrictions to allow more water to be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for growers in the state's Central Valley.
Drastic cutbacks in irrigation supplies this year alone from both state and federal water projects have idled about 23,000 farm workers and 300,000 acres of cropland, according to University of California at Davis researchers.
"The unemployment rate is 40 percent in some valley towns and people are standing in bread lines," Feinstein said in a statement released through her office.
"I believe we need a fair compromise that will respect the Endangered Species Act while recognizing the fact that people in California's breadbasket face complete economic ruin without help," she added.
California is the No. 1 farm state in the United States and its Central Valley is one of the country's most important agricultural regions. California farmers produce more than half the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States.
The senator has not released details of her proposed measure, which may be attached as an amendment to a federal jobs bill. But she said it would grant farmers in the state's agricultural heartland up to 40 percent of their federal water allocation for two years.
Irrigation districts contract with the state and federal governments to deliver a certain amount of water to them each year. But shortages have recently kept them from getting their full allotments. Most farmers got just 10 percent of their contracted allocation in 2009 and could get less this year.
The cutbacks were forced by water shortages stemming from a three-year statewide drought and delta pumping restrictions imposed to protect imperiled salmon and smelt populations.
A string of Pacific storms this winter has dumped several feet of snow on the mountain ranges that feed California's major reservoirs, but officials have stopped short of declaring an official end to the drought.
'SCREW THE COAST'
Fishing groups say draining the delta is the main reason for a crash in salmon populations that may force closure of the state's commercial salmon fishery for a third straight year, and that Feinstein's plan would worsen the situation.
"She's basically saying, 'I'm going to go ahead and give these big water guys ... the water and screw the coast,'" said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.
Grader said the collapse of the salmon fishery has put 23,000 people out of work and cost $1 billion in the commercial and recreational fishing industries of California and Oregon.
Meanwhile environmental groups warn that the bill could destabilize California's long-term water supply by damaging the delta's fragile ecosystem.
Even some fellow members of California's U.S. congressional delegation were annoyed with Feinstein, saying she had agreed with them to wait for a report by the National Academy of Sciences, which provides advice on scientific issues to U.S. policymakers, before drawing up any water policy changes.
"We had a couple meetings on this, and at the last meeting she had indicated that we would base any policy decisions we make on the science," U.S. Representative Mike Thompson told Reuters. "And this policy change certainly isn't based on science."
The state supplies more than 25 million people and over 750,000 acres of farmland with water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, fed by rainfall and snow-melt runoff from the Sierra Nevada mountains.
That water is delivered to cities and irrigation districts throughout California by a sprawling network of reservoirs, pipelines, aqueducts and pumping stations known as the State Water Project. A separate system run by the U.S. government is the main irrigation source for Central Valley farms.
(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Will Dunham)
The Star 13 Feb 10;
KUALA LUMPUR: After years of campaigning against the use of polystyrene food and drink containers, consumer associations and environmentalists feel that the government should introduce more stringent rules to regulate them while raising awareness on their health hazard.
They said the widespread use of polystyrene containers was alarming and alternative materials needed to be introduced.
Federation of Malaysian Consumer Associations (Fomca) chief operating officer S. Peiarapakaran said the use of polystyrene containers could be regulated if the government formulate more stringent rules and laws.
He said the Food Act 1983 and the Food Regulations 1985 governed various aspects of food safety and quality control, including the use of vessel made of polyvinyl chloride.
However, the provisions were not effective to curtail the use of polystyrene containers, which are used widely by traders, he added.
"It is up to the government, if they do not want our environment to be polluted by plastic and polystyrene, they have to promulgate a bill to curtail or restrict the use of polystyrene or plastic containers," he told Bernama.
However, he said the use of polystyrene should be regulated over a period of time as it would affect many who depended on the polystyrene industry, if it was enforced abruptly.
He said polystyrene containers could be replaced with tapioca or oil palm containers though they might cost more.
"Polystyrene containers could be replaced in stages to create awareness among traders and consumers.
Eventually everybody will get use to it," he added.
According to statistics from the Malaysian Plastic Manufacturers Association, the country used 1.8 million metric tonnes plastic (including PS,PP,PE,ABS and PVC) in 2008.
It said 108,000 metric tonnes polystyrene was used in 2007 but it dropped to 106,000 metric tonnes in 2008.
Muslim Consumer Association of Malaysia secretary-general Datuk Dr Maamor Osman said the government should implement a policy to curtail the use of polystyrene containers.
He said if the government was firm in restricting the production of polystyrene and replace them with other material, this would go a long way in creating awareness among the public.
"Public awareness on the use of polystyrene containers is still low. As such the government should introduce other alternatives to raise the awareness," he added.
He said the government should also provide an allocation to NGOs to launch an awareness campaign in schools, with the cooperation of the Education Ministry, and public places.
Malaysian Nature Society president Tan Sri Dr Salleh Mohd Noor said consumers should also play a role in reducing the use of polystyrene containers especially as food packages.
"The simplest way to avoid polystyrene containers is to replace them with quality plastic containers. Take along plastic containers with you when buying food.
"If consumers practise this in their daily lives, eventually the use of polystyrene containers could be reduced," he said, adding that, however, in the final analysis the government had to enforce rules to curtail the use of polystyrene containers. - Bernama
Jonathan Leake, Times Online 14 Feb 10;
The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.
It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.
These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.
Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.
“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”
The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.
The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.
“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.
Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.
His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.
Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.
Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.
In Britain, a weather station at Manchester airport was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields but is now surrounded by heat-generating buildings.
Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.
“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.
Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the chapter of the IPCC report that deals with the observed temperature changes, said he accepted there were problems with the global thermometer record but these had been accounted for in the final report.
“It’s not just temperature rises that tell us the world is warming,” he said. “We also have physical changes like the fact that sea levels have risen around five inches since 1972, the Arctic icecap has declined by 40% and snow cover in the northern hemisphere has declined.”
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has recently issued a new set of global temperature readings covering the past 30 years, with thermometer readings augmented by satellite data.
Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought.”
Reuters 13 Feb 10;
OSLO (Reuters) - The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt.
A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers.
The United Nations has said errors in the 2007 report of about 3,000 pages do not affect the core conclusions that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are warming the globe.
"The sea level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions," the IPCC note dated February 12 said.
Skeptics say errors have exposed sloppiness and over-reliance on "grey literature" outside leading scientific journals. The panel's reports are a main guide for governments seeking to work out costly policies to combat global warming.
The 2007 report included the sentence: "The Netherlands is an example of a country highly susceptible to both sea level rise and river flooding because 55 percent of its territory is below sea level."
"A preliminary analysis suggests that the sentence discussed should end with: 'because 55 percent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding'," the IPCC note said.
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the original source of the incorrect data, said on February 5 that just 26 percent of the country is below sea level and 29 percent susceptible to river flooding.
The IPCC said the error was widespread -- it quoted a report from the Dutch Ministry of Transport saying "about 60 percent" of the country is below sea level, and a European Commission study saying "about half."
The panel expressed regret last month after admitting that the 2007 report exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers, which feed rivers from China to India in dry seasons, in a sentence that said they could all vanish by 2035.
The 2035 figure did not come from a scientific journal.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
Climate scientists admit fresh error over data on rising sea levels
Latest embarrassment comes as key sceptic Benny Peiser backs down in row over fabricated quote
Robin McKie, The Observer 14 Feb 10;
Climate experts have been forced to admit another embarrassing error in their most recent report on the threat of climate change.
In a background note – released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last night – the UN group said its 2007 report wrongly stated that 55% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In fact, only 26% of the country does. The figure used by the IPCC included all areas in the country that are prone to flooding, including land along rivers above sea level. This accounts for 29% of the Dutch countryside.
"The sea-level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions," the IPCC note states. Nevertheless, the admission is likely to intensify claims by sceptics that the IPCC work is riddled with sloppiness.
The disclosure will intensify divisions between scientists and sceptics over the interpretation of statistics and the use of sources for writing climate change reports, disagreements that have led to apologies being made by both sides of the debate. Last week a key climate-change sceptic apologised for alleging that one of the world's leading meteorologists had deliberately exaggerated the dangers of global warming.
In an email debate in the Observer, Benny Peiser, head of the UK Global Warming Policy Foundation, quoted Sir John Houghton, the UK scientist who played a key role in establishing the IPCC, as saying that "unless we announce disasters, no one will listen".
But in a letter to the Observer, Houghton said: "The quote from me is without foundation. I have never said it or written it. Although it has spread on the internet like wild fire, I do not know its origin. In fact, I have frequently argued the opposite, namely that those who make such statements are not only wrong but counterproductive."
Houghton said he was incensed because he believed the quote attributed to him, and to the IPCC, an attitude of hype and exaggeration and demanded an apology from Peiser.
For his part, Peiser told the Observer that he welcomed the clarification. "For many years, the Houghton 'quote' has been published in numerous books and articles. I took Sir John's failure to challenge it hitherto as a tacit admission that the 'quote' was accurate and reflected his view on climate policy. Now that he has publicly disowned the statement, I will certainly refrain from using it."
Houghton's "quote" has become one of the most emblematic remarks supposed to have been made by a mainstream scientist about global warming, and appears on almost two million web pages concerned with climate change. The fact that it now turns out to be fabricated has delighted scientists.
"We do not over-egg the pudding when it comes to the evidence about global warming – and I hope people will now appreciate this point," said Alan Thorpe, head of the Natural Environment Research Council.
Glenn Chapman Yahoo News 14 Feb 10;
LONG BEACH, California (AFP) – Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has broken from philanthropic work fighting poverty and disease to take on another threat to the world's poor -- climate change.
"Energy and climate are extremely important to these people," Gates told Friday a TED Conference audience packed with influential figures including the founders of Google and climate champion Al Gore.
"The climate getting worse means many years that crops won't grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to starvation and certainly unrest."
Gates said he is backing development of "terrapower" reactors that could be fueled by nuclear waste from disposal facilities or generated by today's power plants.
He broke down variables in a carbon-dioxide-culprit formula, homing in on a conclusion that the answer to the problem is a source of energy that produces no carbon.
"The formula is a very straight forward one," Gates said. "More carbon dioxide equals temperature increase equals negative effects like collapsed ecosystems. We have to get to zero."
To dramatize his point, Gates pulled out a large jar of fireflies in playful flashback to when he unleashed mosquitoes on a TED audience a year earlier while discussing battling malaria.
"They won't bite," Gates joked of the fireflies. "As a matter of fact, they might not even leave this jar."
Gates touted terrapower as more reliable than wind or solar, cleaner than burning coal or natural gas, and safer than current nuclear plants.
"With the right materials approach it could work," Gates said. "Because you burn 99 percent of the waste, it is kind of like a candle."
Nuclear waste fed into a terrapower reactor would potentially burn for decades before being exhausted.
"Today we are always refueling the reactor so lot of controls and lots of things that can go wrong," Gates said. "That is not good. With this, you have a piece of fuel, think of it like a log, that burns for 60 years and it is done."
Researching and testing terrapower will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with the building of a test reactor likely to cost in the billions. Once the technology is proven, market forces will drive down costs, Gates predicted.
Work on terrapower hos been done in France and Japan, and there has been interest in India, Russia, China and the United States, according to the famed philanthropist.
Gates said that if he were allowed a single wish in the coming 50 years, it would be a global "zero carbon" culture.
"If I could pick a president or a vaccine, which I love, this is the wish I would pick," he said.
"We need energy miracles. The microprocessor and Internet are miracles. This is a case where we have to drive and get the miracle in a short time-line."
Gates dismissed climate change skeptics, saying terrapower would render arguments moot because the energy produced would be cheaper than pollution-spewing methods used today.
"The skeptics will accept it because it is cheaper," Gates said. "The might wish it did put out CO2, but they will take it."
The world is at "an extraordinary moment" in the struggle to save the climate balance, according to former US vice president Gore.
A vital step will be to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions so the cost of polluting the air gets factored into the global economy.
Legislation to do that has cleared the US House of Representatives and must fight its way through the Senate, where it needs only a few more supporters to send the law on to the willing pen of President Barack Obama, Gore said.
"A price on carbon dioxide emissions can help us make the right decision, not only on nuclear, solar, and wind but on the gamut of energy alternatives available to us," Gore said.
Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection has organized groups in 22 US states with "swing senators" in the hope getting the legislation passed "before the political season gets completely wild."
"These next few months represent the last feasible political window for quite some time to get this done," Gore said. "So much is at stake we have to double down."
Yahoo News 12 Feb 10;
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change.
The panel, to be led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, aimed "to mobilize the resources for climate change pledged at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen," Ban told reporters.
The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, "will develop practical proposals to significantly scale up long-term (public and private) financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries," he added.
The UN boss said the group would specifically seek to marshal new and innovative resources to reach a 100-billion-dollar target by 2020 to fund "adaptation, mitigation, technology development and transfer, and capacity building in developing countries, with priority for the most vulnerable."
The panel was set to include heads of state and government, top officials from ministries and central banks as well as experts on public finance, development and related issues.
Ban said the composition of the panel would be announced shortly and revealed that he planned to ask Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to join.
The secretary-general, who was linked by video conference with Brown and Meles, said he expected the panel to deliver a preliminary report at the May-June meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which provides a planetary arena for tackling climate change.
"Finance for adaptation and mitigation and transfer of technology are of central significance for developing countries in general and the poor and vulnerable countries in particular," the Ethiopian premier said from Addis Ababa.
Meles said while the funding provisions of the Copenhagen accord fell below the expectations of many in the developing world, "they have nevertheless been welcomed by most of our leaders as exemplified by the endorsement of the accord by the recently concluded summit of the African Union."
"This time around the promises made have to be kept because the alternative is irresponsible management of the climate, followed by catastrophic changes," he warned.
He voiced optimism that the work of the panel would make it possible for poor nations to join the developed world in Mexico for a final and binding treaty on climate change "with the confidence that promises made on finance will be kept."
Mexico is to host the next UN-sponsored climate summit from November 29 to December 10 in the beach resort of Cancun.
"We must put in place the transparency for measurement, reporting and verification and we must take forward the cooperation on technology and we must deepen international agreement through a detailed set of rules and governments arrangements under the United Nations to be finalised in Cancun later this year," Brown said.
Meanwhile, Oxfam International warned that Ban's high-level panel "cannot be another talking shop" and must make concrete recommendations on how the 100 billion dollars should be raised.
"The 100 billion dollars has to start flowing soon. Poor countries desperately need this money to cope with a changing climate and reduce their emissions, and rich countries need to show that they can be trusted to deliver on their promises of climate action," Oxfam adviser Robert Bailey, said in a statement. "Trust must be rebuilt if a global climate deal is to be achieved."
In December, a 194-nation UN-led summit in Copenhagen pledged to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (two Celsius), along with billions of dollars in financing. It gave countries until January 31 to sign on.
Cobbled together at the 11th hour by leaders from a handful of nations led by the United States and China, the controversial Copenhagen agreement fell well short of the binding and comprehensive climate treaty once hoped for.
A 2007 report by a UN panel of scientists said that human-caused climate change was unequivocally a fact and that it would threaten droughts, floods and other severe weather along with the survival of entire species if unchecked.
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