Food security should be used as an indicator of vulnerability to climate change Staple food varieties better adapted to future climatic conditions must be developed “Potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes are expected to increasingly hit the developing world in the future, and action is required now to prepare for those impacts, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned on Thursday in a report to the United Nations...

Rita Sharma, Secretary of India's National Advisory Council (NAC), has been appointed to a new commission on climate change to be chaired by Britain's chief scientific adviser Sir John Beddington. The new Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, has been set up by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security program (CCAFS). Sharma is among 13 members of the commission which, in...

At the Cancun climate change conference in December 2010, Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for environment and forests, raised the white flag of surrender when, departing from the prepared text, he declared, “all countries, we believe, must take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms”. The minister thus signalled that India will give in to pressures from developed countries to convert its voluntary, nationally-determined mitigation actions into internationally-binding commitments in an...

The climate talks ended with uncertainty over the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and no agreement on binding emission reductions. The difference between optimists and pessimists is that the optimists have more fun, joked Elias Freig-Delgado, a member of Mexico's Ministry of Finance Special CO{-2} Task Force and the working groups of the U.N. High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing. Mr. Delgado was speaking at the Forest Day meeting during...

India's position is seen as a move to boost image, but it has little support from allies.India's attempt to be part of a climate change solution was reflected in a major departure from stated policy on Wednesday, when Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh said all countries must take on binding commitments in an appropriate legal form. He was speaking at the plenary of the high level segment of the United...