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Anthropogenic climate change and its consequences affect human mobility patterns, such as migration, displacement, autonomous and planned relocation and immobility both voluntary and involuntary.

South Tarawa’s water resources are highly stressed due to the capital’s small land area, lack of natural water storage, competing land uses, and densely populated urban environment. Kiribati already faces significant challenges from oceanic and meteorological conditions, all to be exacerbated by climate change. Sea level rise is of particular concern. Sea water over topping will increasingly threaten the fresh water stored in the groundwater lenses, and sea level rise will also exacerbate existing seasonal conditions such as heavy rains and king tides4 that affect access to safe water

This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets focuses on the complex and underexplored intersection between agricultural trade, climate change and food security. It is clear that we cannot tackle hunger without finding adaptation and mitigation solutions to climate change in agriculture and food systems. It is also clear that the uneven impact of climate change across regions and countries, and the corresponding changes in food availability and access will affect international trade patterns and trade routes. This report supports these discussions by providing an in-depth analysis of the Paris Agreement and the WTO agreements to enhance clarity and provide guidance on policy options that could strengthen the mutually supportive role of these accords in tackling climate change and hunger. Wide-ranging policy actions are necessary to ensure that trade will contribute to the efforts aimed at ensuring food security and promoting adaptation and mitigation to climate change. The uneven impact of climate change across the world and its implications for agricultural trade, especially for developing countries, underlines the need for a balanced approach to policies, which should enhance the adaptive role of trade, while supporting the most vulnerable.

The effects of climate change require strong actions from policy-makers, extension officers and communities to strengthen resilience to the expected negative impacts. Sea-level rise, changes in precipitation patterns and other effects cannot be avoided, but there are many means to reduce the vulnerability of communities. To equip the actors in this adaptation process with the right tools, the Regional Programme on Adaptation to Climate Change in the Pacific Island Region is setting up a knowledge management system including a database on climate change. A collection of best practices from the region and other parts of the world will be part of this venture. The collection of best practices from the region will be completed by the thematic teams of SPC Land Resources Division. This desk-study gathers examples from across the globe.

From the melting glaciers of Nepal and Tibet to the low-lying atolls of the Pacific Islands, like in the Solomon Islands, the impact of the climate change is taking its toll o

Plants, birds, insects, mammals, amphibians and fishes are rapidly responding to the observed changes in climate everywhere on the planet. Extreme high temperatures immediately result in hefty responses. The responses, however, significantly differ from species to species and from year to year, which complicates a clear attribution of causes. The ecological impacts are nowadays visible everywhere through changes in the timing of life cycle events and the geographic distributions of species. Plants have advanced flowering by up to 30 days and are now doing so at dates never documented in the last two centuries. Some species show a dramatic increase in range area, disrupting ecosystems like, for example, the rapid spread over millions of hectares of the Mountain Pine Beetle in North America and the northward expansion of the Oak Processionary caterpillar in The Netherlands. Also fires have increased catastrophically in tropical wet forests during the severe droughts of the El Niño years in the nineties. Other species show a dramatic decrease in distribution or population sizes, illustrated by bleaching corals and disappearing amphibians worldwide. Warm winters, hot summers, excessive precipitation and extended droughts are weather events that trigger these responses

One response to the urgent and dramatic challenge of climate change has been a growing interest by governments in carbon capture and storage at power stations. Tens of billions of dollar are being earmarked for a technology that aims to remove green-house gases from smoke stacks and bury it deep underground.In this UNEP-commissioned, Rapid Assessment report we present carbon capture and storage through a Green Economy lens outlining the potential in terms of natural systems – sys-ems from forests to grasslands that have been doing the job in a tried and tested way for millennia.

The goal of Article II of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to ensure stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

This report provides a snapshot of recent scientific literature and new analyses of likely impacts and risks that would be associated with a 4` Celsius warming within this century. It is a rigorous attempt to outline a range of risks, focusing on developing countries and especially the poor. A 4`C world would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on ecosystems and associated services. But with action, a 4`C world can be avoided and we can likely hold warming below 2`C.