Nearly 20% of green house gas emissions worldwide are caused by deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. Estimating and reducing these emissions is therefore one of the key goals for the international community as the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development in June draws closer. One country attempting to do just that is Tanzania. The country is currently in the process of drawing up a comprehensive inventory of its forests as you can see in the video above by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The inventory is meant to help the East African country to better manage its natural resources. Today more than a third of Tanzania is forested, but almost 1% of that forest is being lost annually. The inventory will measure how much carbon is stored within Tanzania’s forests and will help the country to understand the role it can play in mitigating climate change.

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As a Journalist from Berlin, traffic in Asian cities is usually quite chaotic and for foreigners mostly an adventure. In Mumbai, India crossing a street could be a struggle of survival as one has to pass a mixture of motorbikes, cars, cows and rikshas. It’s the same in Bangkok,Thailand – just without cows.  The worst about the traffic is not the chaos, it’s the pollution. The air people inhale is filled with dust, it sticks on the skin and it is also full of emissions polluting the air.

In Laos, the chaos has not arrived yet. The streets of its capital Vientiane are quiet and mostly empty. There are just a few bikes, scooters or motorbikes – sometimes a car. That keeps the CO2-emission low: 2010 Laos emitted a little more than 1,5 million tons, the United States for example 5,7 billion tons. Another reason is, that Laos has no heavy industry. But it would be a mistake to think of Laos as climate-friendly country where everyone could take a deep breath of clean air. Because it is not people’s climate-awareness that makes Laos climate friendly. The reason is the poverty of the country. The Human Development Index lists Laos as a one of the poorest countries in the world. People just can´t effort a car.

As the world tries to find ways the reduce global emission in Durban, Eco, a publication of Climate Action Network CAN at COP17, is reporting on Brazils plans of igniting a real carbon bomb. A bill to change the country’s Forest Law is supposedly about to be approved, resulting in the increase of deforestation. The proposed bill, they say, will be sent to President Dilma Roussef for final cinsideration in coming weeks. One of the foreseeable consequences is that an area almost the size of France and Great Britain combined will loose legal protection, according to estimates presented by the Brazilian government itself. Since Brazil will be hosting the Rio+20 con fence next year, the situation is even more delicate.
In the corridors at Durban, these developments are causing considerable consternation. It is expected that Brazil President Dilma Roussef will send a clear message to the world that the country will meet all commitments announced previously in fighting climate change and protecting the Brazil forest.

Welectricity, the innovative social network, that we have mentioned before in GLOBAL IDEAS, has won an award at the prestigious Knowledge@Wharton/Wipro Technologies Innovation Tournament. The competition was held at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania on April 27th 2011. Welectricity has excelled and beat 44 other teams, that also made it to the semifinals. Welectricity’s web-based service was judged to be the “Best New Sustainability Innovation” (full press-release here). Well, congrats for the award! The idea behind Welectricity is absolutly worth it in our opinion. It allows users to track, compare and reduce their electricity consumption at home. Users from 86 countries worldwide are participating already.

We would like to give you the opportunity to watch the report that GLOBAL IDEAS made with the help of Welectricity again. In this post you will also find an interview we did during the filming in Kingstown, St. Vincent.

Sometimes it's easier to understand a complicated issue if you can play with it. Take climate change as an example. To garner support for climate action a video game is released today. The game is called Fate of the World that and it is based on state-of-the-art climate models, the developers say. Red Redemption from Oxford have created that strategy game in cooperation with the global TckTckTck campaign. People who are downloading the game are literaly ‘players’ in the climate change debate and can contribute towards real-life changes. In the game users must find a way to deal with Earth’s resources and the climate crisis. At the same time the needs of the growing world population need to be minded, such as more food, energy, and living space. TckTckTck and Red Redemption seek to increase the understanding and awareness of climate change by providing gamers with the opportunity to learn and explore the subject. More informations you will find here: http://tcktcktck.org/fotwgame/