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.

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.

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.

In Italy, as in the rest of the world, the market centred on renewable energy is capable of guaranteeing high returns in economic development and job creation.

Climate change, the security of energy supplies and the global economic crisis impose categorical obligations on our medium- and long-term development strategies and clearly indicate the course to be followed to change the way we perceive economic and energy development which is sustainable for the planet.

In the run-up to Expo Milano 2015, EnerSolar+ will be launched in 2009 with the aim of taking advantage of the likely synergies and shared imperatives with the Milan International Festival for the Environment.
EnerSolar+ is the new sector wholly dedicated to technologies and services required to achieve sustainable energy. It represents a developing sector within the scope of EnerMotive 2009, the international exhibition dedicated to Power and Factory, which is scheduled to take place from 26th to 30th May 2009 in parallel with LivinLuce 2009, the international exhibition dedicated to Building and Lighting.

EnerSolar+ will form the technological heart for the development of sustainable industrial solutions in the broad arena of the intellectual exchange of ideas, projects and programmes which the International Festival for the Environment represents.

Thanks to these two events, one socio-cultural, the other business-oriented, Milan in 2009 will become the most important international platform for environmental sustainability, the protection of the environment and the conservation of the planet’s resources. All of this is due to take place in the build-up to Expo Milano 2015.

In addition to focusing on the solar photovoltaic and thermal energy sectors, EnerSolar+ will showcase the most advanced solutions in terms of energy production from other renewable sources: wind, hydroelectricity, geo-thermal, biomass, liquid biofuels and biogases, hydrogen and fuel cells, energy produced from cogeneration and distributed generation.