For a change, and climate change that is, lawyers today talked on the issues other than legal ones. They spoke on how the climate change issue was not just about more development, but doing it differently with stricter green rules in place and the need for a stringent pro-environment legal framework for the country.

Residents who are sensitive to the problems of global warming will shut down electric supply for an hour between 7.30 pm and 8.30 pm on Saturday. The "Hyderabad Unplug' event is being organised by World Wide Fund, India, to create awareness about global warming and its adverse impact on environment and the health of people.

Within a couple of years of the global rush to promote biofuels new questions are being asked about the claimed benefits of these fuels and serious negative impacts are coming to light. It is in this regard that the focus of the biofuel policy in India has been towards utilising an "oil bearing' plant, jatropha carcus, for oil extraction, processing and eventual blending with diesel. The advantage of this plant lies in the fact that it can be grown on cultivable wasteland and requires very little fertiliser and other inputs as normally required in agriculture. (Editorial) May 3-9, 2008

In a recent paper in the journal Carbon Balance and Management (vol 3, p 1), Ning Zeng, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park calculated that if we buried half of the wood that grows each year, in such a way that it didn't decay, enough CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere to offset all of our fossil-fuel emissions. It wouldn't be easy, but Zeng believes it could be done.

Climate change will be a direct threat to the rule of law. It is this and the fact that "current legal systems do not take into account complexities of consequences of global warming' that leading lawyers in India are now coming together for a "legal response to challenges of climate change' in the world.

"Most of the environmental compliance laws have outlived their utilities and loopholes in these laws quite prominent" There are more than 200 operative pieces of environmental legislations that need a relook to mitigate the adverse impact of the climate change in the country, the Bar Association of India (BAI) said on Thursday.The BAI is set to take up the matter with the Central government soon .

Boreal forests serve as important global sources or sinks of carbon (C) and wildfire is a major driver of C storage in these forests. Although fire releases CO2 to the atmosphere, it also converts plant biomass into forms of black carbon, such as charcoal, that are resistant to microbial attack and persist in the soil for thousands of years. It has frequently been suggested that, because of its resistance, black C can serve as an important long-term C sink that may help offset the release of human-induced CO2 to the atmosphere.

This report follows up on the World Bank Group

Climate-conscious consumers want to cut their carbon footprints. Retailers have responded, initially, labelling air freighted produce with an airplane. But this simplistic strategy hit developing country producers in an unfair way, and today schemes to consider the full carbon lifecycle of goods are underway.

Meeting in Bangkok in early April, climate change negotiators started grappling with key trade related issues, such as intellectual property rights and competitiveness concerns. Delegates also considered the responsibilities that countries could take on in the post-Kyoto climate regime they hope agree on by 2009. India proposed basing future commitments on per capita emissions, which could potentially

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