The Earthquake that presented a magnitude of 8.8 in Richter scale, occured at 03:34 at epicenter time. Up to now are not reported any human loss or serious material damages. The capital Santiago reported failure in his energy system. The epicenter was located in the coastal area from Maule, South from Santiago, with a depth of 35 km and a distance of 325 km from Santiago.
Iconic landmarks around the world will switch off their lights for Earth Hour 2010, joining hundreds of millions of people across every continent committed to resolving the issue of global warming. At 8.30pm on Saturday, March 27 some of the world’s most recognised symbols of hope, peace, human endeavour and natural wonder will plunge into darkness for Earth Hour as a powerful sign of the unrelenting resolve of the global community to respond to the threat of climate change.
CN Tower in Toronto, Table Mountain in Cape Town, Grand Palace in Bangkok and the world’s second tallest building Tapei 101 will go dark for Earth Hour. While a host of world-famous landmarks across the US, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Building, Mount Rushmore and even the lights of Las Vegas, will switch off in a decisive display of climate action from one of the most significant nations on the climate landscape.
Rwanda Named Global Host of World Environment Day 2010
Kigali (Rwanda)/Nairobi (Kenya) - Rwanda, the East African country that is embracing a transition to a Green Economy, will be the global host of World Environment Day 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced.
World Environment Day (WED), which aims to be the biggest global celebration for positive environmental action, is coordinated by UNEP every year on 5 June. This year's theme is 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future.' - a message focusing on the central importance to humanity of the globe's wealth of species and ecosystems. The WED theme also supports this year's UN International Year of Biodiversity.
Copenhagen - The UN Climate Change Conference, known as “COP15,” currently taking place in Copenhagen faced a simple problem – how do you hold a global conference on the environment without increasing greenhouse gas emissions, wasting paper and otherwise being un-green?
Not surprisingly, the Climate Change Conference answered all these questions correctly and more, producing a successfully green conference of an enormous magnitude. What can we take away from the UN’s success? The knowledge that if a large scale operation can be green, there is no reason that businesses can’t act similarly on a smaller scale.
Domino effect needed: leaders can still save Copenhagen Copenhagen
Leaders arriving to sign a Copenhagen climate agreement and finding that they now need to salvage it need to take a global rather than national approach to the numerous outstanding issues, WWF said today.
“It looks like The Copenhagen Climate Summit could have made it through the valley of death”, said Kim Carstensen, Leader of WWF’s Global Climate Initiative.
Reflecting most severely affected countries over almost two decades: Copenhagen needs to respond
Copenhagen/Bonn - The climate and development organization Germanwatch published its Global Climate Risk Index 2010 in Copenhagen today, ranking Bangladesh, Myanmar and Honduras as the countries most severely affected by extreme weather events from 1990 to 2008.
When only considering the year 2008, Myanmar, Yemen and Viet Nam have been hit hardest. According to Germanwatch, the Index, based on data made available by the NatCatSERVICE database of Munich Re, underlines the need for the current climate summit to step in and to help those countries to adapt to climate change.
South Africa -Representatives from different countries met before the Climate Meeting in Copenhagen in December. Delegates from Brazil, China, India and South Africa, met in Beijing on 27-28 November 2009 along with Sudan, the current chair of G-77 to discuss a coordinated approach to the forthcoming UN Climate Conference at Copenhagen.
The purpose of the meeting was to prepare for and contribute to a positive, ambitious and equitable outcome in Copenhagen.
Newswise — A period of global warming from 53 million to 47 million years ago strongly influenced plants and animals, spurring a biodiversity boom in western North America, researchers from three research museums report in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Today, the middle of Wyoming is a vast desert, and a few antelope and deer are all you see," said lead author Michael Woodburne, honorary curator of geology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. "But 50 million years ago, when temperatures were at their highest, that area was a tropical rainforest teeming with lemur-like primates, small dawn horses and a number of small forest rodents and other mammals. In fact, there were more species of mammals living in the western part of North America at that time than at any other time."
Beijing, China / Major China-based producers and
users of palm oil have announced they intend to provide more support for
sustainable palm oil, an important boost for efforts to halt tropical
deforestation.
The public statement, made at the 2nd International
Oil and Fats Summit in Beijing on July 9,
committed the companies to “support the promotion,
procurement and use of sustainable palm oil in China,” as well as “support the
production of sustainable palm oil through any investments in producing
countries.”
Germany - Abu Dhabi / Masdar City shall be supplied exclusively withrenewable energy and produce neither carbon dioxide nor waste. Fraunhoferresearchers are involved in the development of new technologies for planningand realising the ecological model city.
Last June,2009, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company,representing the Masdar City Project, signed a cooperative agreement for astrategic partnership. The aim of the cooperation between the largest European institutionfor applied research and the ecological futuristic city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabiis firstly to found a joint project group. Over the long term the goal is toestablish a close cooperation in the field of sustainable urban development andbuilding planning. Participating in the cooperation are the FraunhoferInstitutes for Industrial Engineering IAO and for Building Physics IBP as wellas the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE.
Singapore / Rising demand for pangolins, mostly from mainland China, compounded by lax laws is wiping out theunique toothless anteaters from their native habitats in SoutheastAsia, according to a group of leading pangolin experts.
Illegaltrade in Asian pangolin meat and scales has caused the scaly anteaters todisappear from large swathes of Cambodia,Viet Namand Lao PDR, concluded a panel ofexperts whose findings were announced today by the wildlife trade monitoringnetwork, TRAFFIC.
“Chinahas a long history of consuming pangolin as meat and in traditional medicine,”the report states. “Due to continual demand and the decreasing Chinese wildpopulation, in the past few years pangolin smuggling from Southeast Asia hasresulted in great declines in these producing countries’ wild populations, aswell.”
