A new report by Australia’s Climate Commission says that China is one of the world’s bright spots in global action to curb the effects of climate change.
Though China remains the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, the report, The Critical Decade: global action building on climate change, found that in 2012 China reduced the carbon intensity of its economy more than expected and almost halved the rate of growth for electricity demand.
Allowing carbon markets to collapse would be a “disaster” as they are a key driver for investment in the biggest emerging nations’ greenhouse-gas reducing efforts, according to the Center for American Progress.
A new global forum aimed at intensifying the dialogue on the deteriorating conditions in the North Pole could include the likes of China, India and Singapore among its member countries.
A new report by the US based Climate Policy Initiative has revealed that China was responsible for a mammoth 68 percent of the increase in energy-related global CO2 emissions during the first decade of this century.
The United States and China will establish a high-level joint working group on climate change in order, they say, to intensify global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of "increasing dangers" from global warming.
The two countries "recognize that the increasing dangers presented by climate change measured against the inadequacy of the global response requires a more focused and urgent initiative", they said in a joint statement issued in Beijing on Saturday.
The issue of how to deal with climate change has long vexed relations between the world's two biggest economies, which are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.
India could be on the verge of departing from its long-held negotiating position on climate change and preparing to adopt binding emission reduction commitments.
A report in the Times of India says that as part of the preparation, the government is likely to commission four studies including one assessing by when the country’s emissions will peak in absolute terms.
“The year when India’s emissions trajectory peaks before it starts to dip is expected to influence the date from when the government will be ready to take on a cap in absolute terms on greenhouse gases under the new global climate compact to be signed in 2015,” the newspaper said.
The Philippine government has announced that it will increase its spending on climate change adaptation and mitigation from PHP1 billion (USD24.4 million) in 2011 to PHP13 billion (USD317 million) next year.
Temperatures in South-East Asia's Lower Mekong Basin are set to rise by up to three times the global average temperature increase, according to a USAID-funded study.
Previous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that the basin would see increases in line with the global average of around two degrees Celsius.
But according to a preliminary report by the Mekong Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change Project (Mekong ARCC), parts of the basin could see annual temperatures increase by as much as six degrees Celsius by 2050.
Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City and the Dutch city of Rotterdam are set to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will see them co-operate in the fight against climate change.
Shenzhen, the Chinese Special Economic Zone and across the border from Hong Kong, will open carbon emissions trading market on Monday 17 June, according to city’s mayor.
Asia, especially China, is now taking center stage in preparedness for the low-carbon economy according to a report released on Tuesday by The Climate Institute, an independent research organization based in Australia.
Three of the top G20 countries best placed to compete in the global low-carbon economy are now from East Asia, having overtaken their European and American competitors, according to an index which measures how carbon-competitive countries are.
The Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS), the first institution dedicated to tropical climate and weather of Singapore and the wider Southeast Asia region, has been officially opened.
About 90 percent of glaciers in the world’s “Third Pole” are shrinking, accelerated by black carbon being transferred from South Asia to the Tibetan Plateau, a prominent Chinese scientist claims.
Covering more than five million square kilometers and with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, the Tibetan Plateau contains the headwaters of several major rivers flowing into surrounding countries and regions.
The region has been drawing increased scrutiny from the international academic community over the past three decades, but the results of former studies have been inconsistent, according to Yao Tandong, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research.
China will need to raise up to USD243 billion of additional funds per year by 2020 in order to adequately finance action to curb the impacts of climate change and invest in low carbon development, according to a new report commissioned by the Chinese government’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
The report, authored by The Climate Group and the Research Centre for Climate and Energy Finance at the Central University of Finance and Economics, China, is to be presented to the NRDC, the Ministry of Finance and other top Chinese government entities later this month. It calls for a two stage plan to reform China’s climate finance mechanisms by 2020.
China’s tax authorities will wait at least another year to introduce a tax on carbon, deferring to concern that economic growth might suffer, according to a Ministry of Finance (MoF) official.
Planning for a carbon tax has been underway since China’s 12th Five-year Plan was announced two years ago. At the beginning of last year MoF experts suggested levying a carbon tax in 2012 at 10 yuan (USD1.6) per tonne of CO2, increasing to 50 yuan (USD8) per tonne by 2020. Just last month Jia Chen, head of the Ministry of Finance’s Tax Policy Division, revealed a new set of taxation policies, including a tax on CO2 emissions, designed to preserve the environment.
Researchers have developed a more accurate model for predicting the amount of summer rainfall and number of tropical storms in East and South-East Asia.
The study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, advances understanding of the East Asian summer monsoon, a weather system that affects agricultural production and the lives of billions of people across the continent.
Researchers say the model could “significantly improve” monsoon and rainfall predictions in the region, which could aid governments and disaster-management specialists.
The conservation of one of the world’s most critical but threatened forest areas in the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo is to get USD4.5 million financial support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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