Establishes first-in-the-world comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases (GHG).

This law was passed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) to control air pollution and protect the environment and human health.

The annual report describes the environment of Japan in FY 2004. It includes an overview on efforts to build a Low Carbon Society, as well as the environmental issues and environmental conservation measures led by the Japanese government.

The document reports on the state of the environment of Japan in FY 2005. It consists of an overview on population decline and the environment of Japan. It also describes the origins of Japan's environmental problems, citing the example of Minamata disease. In the second part of the report, it summarizes the environmental issues and government environmental conservation measures in Japan, FY 2005.

California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. This bill would require Air Resources Board (ARB) to adopt a statewide greenhouse gas emissions limit equivalent to the statewide greenhouse gas emissions levels in 1990 to be achieved by 2020. ARB shall adopt regulations to require the reporting and verification of statewide greenhouse gas emissions and to monitor and enforce compliance with this program. AB 32 directs Climate Action Team established by the Governor to coordinate the efforts set forth under Executive Order S-3-05 to continue its role in coordinating overall climate policy.

This report is the first report of its kind that attempts to overlay a detailed distillation of climate change science with U.S. insurance industry activities around climate change. This report aims to go beyond an investigation of only hurricanes to also address the implications for the U.S. insurance industry of other impacts of climate change including forest fires, floods, and storm surge (although storm surge is not commercially insured, this report describes how government insurance backstops interact intimately with commercial insurance products and with consumer perception of risk). The report finds that U.S. insurers are far ahead of many of their overseas counterparts in assessing current catastrophic (cat) risk through sophisticated cat risk modeling that is based on historical weather events; however, U.S. insurers appear to lag behind their European peers who have begun to conduct studies of climate change and are beginning, though slowly, to incorporate future climate change scenarios into cat risk models, particularly for flooding.

Numerous independent analyses indicate that we must limit climate change to less than 2ºC above preindustrial temperatures to avoid dangerous impacts to nature, humans, and the global economy.Average global warming of 2°C will result in dangerous and irreversible effects, which rapidly worsen above 2°C warming.This paper seeks to identify the massive difference between the impacts that will happen at 2 and 3°C.

This legislation establishes a commission to assess the impact of climate change on the economy, population, and landscape of Alaska.

This law was passed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) to safeguard public health by protecting drinking water resources from pollution by dumping, logging, industry, nuclear waste, ranching, recreation, mineral exploration and extraction, transportation, and other activities.

The publication looks to the prospect for the East and Southern African drylands in the context of recent history and the changes that have occurred in the realms of policy, economic and social conditions and the environment. It further points out three of the biggest challenges facing East and Southern Africa in the foreseeable future— climate change, land tenure and HIV/AIDS.

This report summarizes recommendations for the development and assessment of new emission scenarios for possible use in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

This publication describes major global environmental issues and policy decisions during 2006.

A brochure explaining the likely dynamics of the carbon-climate-human system with projections for the future, and recommendations for points of intervention and windows of opportunity for human societies to manage this system.

It is widely, often intuitively, understood that human societies and the well being and health of their populations depend on the flow of materials, services and cultural enrichment from the natural world. Nevertheless, to date there has been little formal description and study of the relationships between global environmental changes and human health, and of the ways in which social institutions and processes modulate those relationships. For several human-induced global environmental changes, particularly changes to the world's climate system and to the ultraviolet radiation-filtering functions of the stratosphere, there has been a recent increase in research into the main health risks. But for most other global environmental changes little formal research on the risks to human health has been carried out. Indeed, among the practitioners of the various scientific disciplines engaged in studying the processes and impacts of global environmental changes - including environmental sciences, ecology, geography, economics, etc. - there has been relatively little recognition that ecosystem disruptions, species extinctions, degradation of food-producing systems, the perturbation of cycling of elements and nutrients, and the spread of cities pose risks to the well being and health of human populations. This science plan and implementation strategy proposes to address this gap …

A bill for an act relating to energy; prohibiting recovery of certain costs of electric service.

This Initial Science Plan identifies key environmental changes that affect the people and societies of the regions of Asia affected by monsoons. The plan pinpoints people and environments which are most vulnerable to monsoon damage. The plan ends with a reflection on important scientific issues and lists a number of future actions for the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study.

Recognizing the profound implications that global warming and climate variation could have on the economy, environment and quality of life in the Southwest, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed Executive Order 05-33 on June 5th, 2005, establishing the New Mexico Climate Change Advisory Group. The Governor directed the CCAG to prepare a report that includes a projection of the State's future GHG emissions and policy recommendations for reducing New Mexico's total greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by the year 2012, 10 percent below 2000 levels by 2020 and 75 percent by 2050.

This is the third Basic Environment Plan of Japan. The theme of the plan is "integrated improvements of the environment, economy, and society." The plan develops long-term goals and will be assessed by quantitative targets and indicators for management. The plan calls for a clear public information campgaign.

This proceedings provides possible answer to the question of what social network analysis can contribute to addressing the problem of climate change. In the workshop, social scientists from Japan, the USA, and Europe reported on social network theory, applications and methodology to envision their use for on-the-ground social change regarding carbon management. The earth has always cycled carbon in the atmosphere (mainly as CO2); in the oceans (surface, intermediate waters, deep waters and marine sediments); in terrestrial ecosystems (vegetation, litter and soil); in rivers and estuaries; and in fossil carbon, which is being remobilized by human activities. However, with the rate of fossil fuel burning feeding industrialization, urbanization and transportation and with large scale land clearing, the naturally balanced carbon cycle is in a non-analogous and dangerous state. The participants agreed that current management of the carbon cycle is piecemeal, careless, inconsistent, profligate and shortsighted. Enabled by past and current networks of power, the world has embraced a carbon culture that has spun out of control in the past 100 years. This issue has often been referred to as a problem of scale in the climate change research community (or frames in the social science community). Climate researchers have focused …

This paper provides an assessment of broad trends in progress on assessment and implementation of adaptation to climate change in “developed countries”, defined here as being Member states of the OECD and/or Parties listed under Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Primary inputs to this analysis are the National Communications (NCs) by these countries to the UNFCCC. NCs follow a standardised reporting format which facilitates cross-national comparison. They also reflect “whole government” perspectives. At the same time, however, the coverage of particular issues within these documents need not be comprehensive, nor might it necessarily reflect policy priorities on the ground. Therefore, this paper also examines other policies and projects which highlight progress on implementing adaptation, but which have not been reflected in the NCs.

This law was passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to protect human health and the environment by controlling water pollution.

Among other topics, the panel introduced a proposal for further work on emission scenarios, which was developed based on the recommendations of the Task Group on New Emission Scenarios, established following a decision by the Panel at its 23rd Session. In the plenary debate several countries expressed support for the proposal and some underlined the need to also cover the requirements of impact, adaptation and vulnerability studies, the importance of regional scenarios and developing country involvement in scenario development. Some concern was expressed that integrated scenarios may go beyond the scope of the IPCC. Different views were expressed about the IPCC role in scenario development, including the view that the IPCC should no longer itself commission or direct scenario development. The suggestion was also made to draw on the expertise of the Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Assessment (TGICA). It was recommended to take a clear decision on the future role of the IPCC and to focus in the further consultations on aspects where urgent decisions were required.

This Resource Kit is designed to be used by Project Teams on national MSP projects supported by GEF and UNDP and implemented within the framework of the portfolio project ‘LDC and SIDS Targeted Portfolio Approach for Capacity Development and Mainstreaming Sustainable Land Management Project’. The portfolio project is hereafter referred to as the LDC-SIDS Portfolio Project.

This Science Plan and Implementation Strategy sets out the research agenda for the second phase of IGBP. The document describes the IGBP strategy for producing high quality, unbiased, credible, fundamental scientific research in the area of global change: a strategy centered on ten projects, to be carried out by the several thousand scientists worldwide who are part of the IGBP network. Further, the document describes how the organization will communicate the results of this research to different audiences, in order to realize its vision: "to provide scientific knowledge to improve the sustainability of the living Earth".