Monday, October 26, 2009

The Denmark Conference on Climate Change

Countdown to Copenhagen: 41 days 17 hours 46 minutes 51 seconds in the website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change wherein the 15th Climate Change Conference will be held on December 7-18, 2009.

In the Philippines, the government signed into law, Republic Act 9729 called Climate Change Act of 2009 that will create an autonomous policy making body under the Office of the President --- the Climate Change Commission. It shall coordinate programs of the government and represent the country in international climate change conferences according to the article also posted in this site in full.

According to article from GMANews.TV, the signing of said law comes before the Denmark conference in December "when global leaders are expected to approve a new climate change treaty that will chart the world's carbon emissions future after the first commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012."

Before this, from the UNFCCC website, it reads:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened a high-level Summit on Climate Change, ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. The summit brought together political leaders, including 100 Heads of State and Government. This was the biggest ever gathering of political leaders to discuss climate change.

Addressing the assembled leaders, Mr. Ban said:

"Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise."

Related links from UNFCCC are found below.

Summary by the Secretary-General
Summit website
Webcast of the day's events
Pre-recorded video statements of Heads of State and Government

Addressing the assembled leaders, Mr. Ban said:
"Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise."

No comments:

The Distraction brought by fighting Climate Change

After the 2005 Hyogo Conference, scientists urged the United Nations to consider that the various conflicting issues surrounding Climate Change is "distracting governments" from providing solutions to threats of disasters worldwide.

"The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."

A letter written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon ventilated sentiments of scientists and technology experts on the issue of focusing deeper into finding means to adapt to the threat of climate change.

A network of connected hazards

The Global Geohazard System

Crisis Mapping

In 2008 we determined to create a full-function Crisis Mapping project. This was borne out of the persistent eruption of hostilities in Southern Philippines between both communist - Islamist groups on one side and. government on the other side. Fresh from the experience at confronting an incorrigible troublemaker such as the Juma'a Abu Sayyap, or more popularly known as Abu Sayyaf, we resolved to push stakeholders to join in formulating the Philippine conflicts crisis map.

This is modeled after the U.S.-Euro academe's successful crime and peace keeping mapping efforts that had led to wide acceptance and invited broad-based support from as many sectors and as many countries as possible.

After all, the value of life is such that people and institutions, states and combines will pay as high a price as possible for the safety of both individuals and enclaves of people.

Changed Parameters

One year later, the entire universe for the crisis mapping project had changed. It cannot be called a drastic change since the new directions fell within range of long-held advocacies and persistent efforts. We had began such efforts by provoking officials at the Department of National Defense to modernize.

Among the sources for concepts and ideas of our papers given to the department was an executive formerly engaged as part of a service provider group at a Saudi Arabia military base. The Saudi military and government, thanks to their foreign high-tech service providers in the late 80s were already advanced in the use of GIS, the digitization of all documents, exploiting satellite information among many things.

With various other inputs from visiting colleagues, the advocacy for a fully functional satellite research, GPS and GIS-ready system was pushed at defense department, the National Security Council and at the Department of Transportation and Communications through the suggestion of the administrative officer of the defense secretary. More > >

Environment Hazards. Crisis Mapping. Forecasting.

Pages

Monday, October 26, 2009

The Denmark Conference on Climate Change

No comments:

Post a Comment