Philippine climate activist starts global trek

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Manila: An internationally renowned Filipino environmental activist on Wednesday started a journey to climate change hotspots around the world to press for an accord at a United Nations summit later this year.

Naderev “Yeb” Sano — a former envoy to UN climate talks who came to world attention in 2013 by fasting to highlight the threat of global warming — said he hopes his “People’s Pilgrimage” will put pressure on delegates to reach agreement at the UN Conference on Climate Change in December.

Maldives divers hold underwater protest to free ex-leader

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Colombo, Sri Lanka: A hundred scuba divers in the Maldives held an underwater protest demanding the release of jailed ex-president Mohammad Nasheed who became popular as an environmental activist during his presidency.

Nasheed is serving a 13-year prison sentence for ordering the arrest and detention of a senior judge when he was in power three years ago.

Droughts in Syria and California linked to climate change

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Syria and California have both recently suffered their worst-ever droughts, exacerbated by global warming. Syria's may have helped trigger its bloody civil war, but not California's, which instead brought vermin invasions and wildfire. The difference points to the resilience that will be needed in a warming world.

Colin Kelley of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues analysed Syrian weather data since 1931, and found steadily less winter rainfall, which is crucial for crops, and higher temperatures, which dry soils faster. The only explanation for such a change over that timescale lies in man-made greenhouse emissions, says Kelley. Climate models, his team found, consistently predict such changes for the Fertile Crescent, the Middle Eastern area that includes Syria and Iraq .

Amazon deforestation soars after a decade of stability

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Deforestation in the Amazon has skyrocketed in the past half a year, according to analysis of satellite images issued by Brazil's non-profit research institute, IMAZON.

The results compared the deforestation in a particular month with figures from the same month a year before, and the difference ranged from a 136 per cent increase in August to a 467 per cent rise in October.