Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – in which a microorganism (such as a bacterium, virus, fungus or parasite) becomes resistant to an antimicrobial drug used to treat infections caused by it – is possibly the most serious public health threat of our time.
What happened at the Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Lima in December 2014 is a prelude to the bigger battles that can be expected in the three or four meetings scheduled for this year in order to negotiate an entirely new climate agreement in Paris in December. If it took two whole weeks to reach consensus on a simple text in Lima, how much more contentious and difficult the negotiations will be for a new agreement?
After tethering on the edge of a collapse, the United Nations Doha conference on climate change ended with an agreement, but it was an agreement of low ambitions. Avoidance of collapse is a poor measure of success and Doha revealed deep divisions on how to combat climate change, division which will surface when negotiations resume this year. In terms of progress towards real actions to tackle the climate change crisis, the Doha conference was another lost opportunity.
When the dust settles after the Cancun climate change conference of the United Nations, a careful analysis will find that the adoption of the “Cancun Agreements” may have given the multilateral climate system a shot in the arm, but that the meeting also failed to save the planet from climate change and helped pass the burden of climate mitigation onto developing countries.
The Copenhagen Accord drawn up after the UN climate conference in December is only three pages long. What is left out is probably more important than what it contains. The so-called deal, which the governments only
It now seems certain that the United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December will not see the adoption of a detailed and legally binding agreement.
With the world in economic recession, there is a temptation to downgrade or sideline climate change. That would be a great mistake.
The gathering of 2,000 scientists in Copenhagen in March found the climate change situation much worse than previously reported. They called on politicians to act quickly and decisively.
A gross imbalance in the World Trade Organisation proposals in agriculture and industry explains why the latest attempt in July to achieve a breakthrough in the Doha round collapsed. The US demand that developing countries institute a stringent special safeguard mechanism in agriculture that would make it different for developing countries to protect themselves against import surges was not the only obstacle.
