UNWTO launches its 2008 Photo Competition around this year’s World Tourism Day (WTD) theme: “Tourism Responding to the Challenge of Climate Change”. This competition is part of the year-long campaign highlighting the call for action towards a climate neutral planet.
“This online photo competition will showcase climate solutions in tourism – business and leisure travel – from around the world. Examples include communities, companies and individuals –visiting or visited - acting to help respond to climate change as tourism stakeholders. Whether they are airlines testing new fuel, hotels installing solar energy, villages educating guests on good practice or tourists offsetting their impacts”, says UNWTO Assistant- Secretary General and Spokesperson Geoffrey Lipman.

Financial markets are expected to play a crucial role in promoting and implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures. Suitable financial instruments can foster commercially viable and high impact climate-related investments, provide necessary funding for climate protection in emerging and developing countries, and help efficiently mitigate the associated risks.

The conference will take an integrated, multidisciplinary approach when addressing the different kinds of risks affecting society today, risks which might be far beyond any particular stakeholder’s capacity to control and that may adversely affect multiple parties across geographic borders, sectors and industries.

"Key challenges in climate variability and change"
The NCCR Climate, Switzerland's Centre of Excellence in Climate and Climate Impact Research, invites young scientists to join leading climate researchers in a scenic southern Swiss alpine setting for keynote lectures, workshops and poster sessions on the occasion of the seventh NCCR Climate Summer School 2008.

The topics covered at the NCCR Climate Summer School 2008 will include:
* pertinent aspects of climate physics and dynamics, extreme events
* climate phenomena and processes from seasonal to centennial time ranges
* assessment of predictability, and approaches to operational prediction
* associated impacts of climate change and variability
The Summer School invites young researchers from all fields of climate research. The courses cover a broad spectrum of climate and climate impact research issues and foster cross-disciplinary links. Each topic includes keynote plenary lectures and workshops with in-depth discussion in smaller groups. All Summer School participants are expected to present a poster of their research and there will be ample opportunity for discussion.

Climate change has profound implications for developing countries, and increasingly development professionals and agency staff working in or for developing countries are being asked to integrate climate change management issues into planning, projects and policy. National governments also are increasingly engaged in official communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other initiatives, which require assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity.

The purpose of this interactive short course is to equip participants with a comprehensive understanding of what climate change may mean for low-income populations and what the scope and prospects are for adapting to change in a development context. Drawing on staff from some of the world’s leading research institutes on climate change and development (including the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia and UK’s The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research), participants will gain a state-of-the-art knowledge and have the opportunity to develop their analytical skills in this field through project work focussing on their own country context or professional sector.

To ensure participants have a thorough grounding in all aspects of climate change the course incorporates expert sessions on climate science and climate change mitigation. Key emphasis is then placed on vulnerability and adaptation – exploring what climate change implies in terms of impacts/vulnerability, what adaptation means for different sectors, how best to go about building resilience, international mechanisms relating to adaptation, and linkage with other development imperatives such as poverty reduction and disaster risk reduction.

The focus of the conference is on impacts and interactions of air pollutants and climate change on the tree performance across latitudinal and altitudinal ranges. In particular, the regional specificities of tree and ecosystem responsiveness to anthropogenic stressors such as elevated CO2 and O3 regimes, enhanced nitrogen deposition and scenarios of climate change, as represented through altered seasonal temperature and moisture regimes will be emphasized. The overall aim of the conference is the advancement in risk assessment: which are the consequences for carbon sink strength in respect to the post-Kyoto policies? How are strategies such as the critical levels concept in risk assessment to be defined and evaluated by exposure versus dose-related approaches of stress diagnosis? How realistic are potentials towards process-based, i.e. mechanistic concepts for risk assessment? In respect to the above questions the state of the art will be highlighted. The outcome of the conference will provide a cause-effect related basis for environmental policy making.

Les villes jouent un rôle central dans l'évolution des Alpes. C'est pour cette raison aussi qu'elles assument une responsabilité importante dans la protection du climat dans ce milieu sensible. L'aménagement du territoire, les transports, l'efficacité énergétique des bâtiments, l'utilisation d'énergies renouvelables, la gestion des risques naturels ne sont que quelques-uns des thèmes qui seront présentés par les conférenciers internationaux. Une session de posters est prévu en fin de conférence pour permettre l'échange d'idées et de contacts.
La manifestation durera une journée et fera l'objet d'une traduction simultanée en 3 langues (français, allemand et italien) ; elle s'adresse aux administrations des villes et des communes, aux politiques, aux experts en planification et en énergie, aux ONG et à tous les autres acteurs intéressés par cette thématique. La participation à la conférence est gratuite.
Formulaire d'inscription: http://www.alpenstaedte.org/f/kontakt/anmeldung.htm
Le programme serait à disposition prochainement.

The NCCR Climate invites scientists to the "International Dimensions of Climate Policies" conference that will take place on 21 - 23 January 2009 in Bern, Switzerland. Contributions from the following fields are welcome:
* Trade theoretical foundations of integrated assessment models
* Trade implications of promoting adaptation
* Effect of technological transfers and spillovers in the context of global climate policies
* International competitiveness in the presence of climate policies

The conference will cover a broad spectrum of climate economic research issues and foster cross-disciplinary links. Each topic includes a keynote plenary lecture and numerous parallel sessions. It is open to all interested researchers.

The Organisers of the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP15) to be held in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 have asked IARU to organise this Congress as a part of the run-up to the COP15. The purpose of the Congress is to try and capture some of the enormous research energy currently being devoted to the elucidation, mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Thus, the focus of the Congress is on providing a picture of the big issues” that the scientifi c community feels is necessary that policy makers are aware of in order to make enlightened decisions with respect to the balancing of adaptation and mitigation in the societal response to climate change.