WILD

The Politicians Take the Stage in Copenhagen

One day remains in the UN’s climate talks in Copenhagen. Negotiators have been working around the clock in a desperate race against time to resolve outstanding issues and rise above the many controversies that have wracked these talks. From the secret Danish proposal, which to the dismay and anger of developing countries has continued to hover in the background of the negotiations, to the sometimes violent demonstrations outside the Bella center, to the eviction of NGOs from the negotiating process – a disgrace, all the more so in the country where the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation ... Read More

Extreme Ice Survey Presents at UN Climate Change Conference

James Balog, founder and director of the Extreme Ice Survey, is representing NASA and the U.S. State Department at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 15. Over the course of the 12-day conference, he is speaking a total of six times—five times on behalf of NASA and once on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund—about the Extreme Ice Survey’s ongoing photographic documentation of stunningly rapid glacial retreat and the implications of these findings. Read More

Report from Copenhagen: Tuvalu & Wilderness

Delegates arrived at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen expecting talks to focus around a few key players. In particular, expectations were that China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases around the world, would be in the spotlight. These two large and powerful countries, neither of which are currently bound by any emissions reductions commitments, and both of which must be part of a new agreement if we have any hope of avoiding dangerous climate change, were being watched very closely by all present. And then, Tuvalu stole the spotlight. Read More

Mensaje de Merida sends urgent message to reunite climate change with wilderness protection and biodiversity conservation

JUST ANNOUNCED - THE BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENT OF WILD9! Today at WILD9 the Chairman and Executive Committee issued The Message from Merida, calling for the protection of critical land and sea wilderness areas to mitigate climate change and conserve biodiversity. The Message was launched with 18 founding signatories, and many individuals and organizations quickly responded with their support following the announcement. “Wilderness protection on land and sea is key to both of these missions and the UNFCCC and CBD must work in a coordinated and urgent manner to facilitate protecting wilderness around the world,” said WILD9 Chairman Exequiel Ezcurra. The Mensaje ... Read More

Making Forests Count

WILD's just signed on to Make Forests Count, adding our name to the growing list of global citizens who are asking their governments to include emissions caused by cutting forests and draining wetlands in the upcoming UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December.  You can sign too! Forest and wetland destruction account for 20% of the world’s carbon emissions. It’s time to take this threat more seriously and Make Forests Count in Copenhagen.  Read more about wilderness and climate change > Take action and make forests count in the global climate agreement! Read More

The WWC Chronicles – Trista Patterson, US Forest Service

Trista Patterson, Senior Scientist with the US Forest Service, writes about her experience at the 8th World Wilderness Congress, Anchorage, Alaska (2005). I feel deeply that participation in the 8th WWC challenged me to develop my speaking style. The resulting growth in my work and ability to 'reach' people is something I'm so deeply grateful for, and I'm not sure how to express it. My work as a scientist was very influenced by my participation in the 8th WWC, in understanding how to communicate science differently and more effectively, using images and ideas, rather than statistics and tables. In 2005, during the ... Read More

Photo of the Week — 9.21.09

Our photo of the week was taken by James Balog, iLCP member and our photographer of the month. This photo was taken in Disko Bay, located off the western coast of Greenland. It shows ice drifting in the North Atlantic Ocean that had broken off of the Greenland Ice Sheet. These ice pieces melt and contribute to the rise of sea level. Balog will be one of the many premier photographers presenting during the WILD9 plenary presentation and also participating in the many events planned by the iLCP for WILD9 (WiLDSpeak). WILD9, the 9th World Wilderness Congress, will convene from 6-13 November, ... Read More

Photo of the Week – 9.14.09

Our photo of the week was taken by James Balog (iLCP member and our photographer of the month). The image is of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The meltwater lakes and streams shown on the glacier, located east of Kangerlussuaq, are believed to be extremely important in understanding how large amounts of ice have disappeared in the past. One of the missions of Balog's current project, the Extreme Ice Survey, is to show the effects of melting glaciers on global sea level. This photo of the partially melted Greenland Ice Sheet is a great representation of the ice that is melting. Balog will be ... Read More

Offsets, Climate Change & Wilderness

A recent review of the UK's strategy to reduce carbon emissions in a blog by George Monbiot in the Guardian used back of the envelope calculations to show that the UK's emissions reductions plan relied heavily on offsets in poor countries to reach its targets, with the very perverse result that under the UK plan, poor countries would in fact be expected to reduce their domestic emissions more than the UK. This would of course be an absurd outcome, even if the UK were paying for those emissions reductions, and in any case unacceptable to developing nations around ... Read More

100 Days over 100 Degrees

The White House recently released an interagency report detailing potential climate impacts in the United States. The "plain language" report entitled "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" includes data up to December 2008 and is therefore more up to date than the Fourth Assessment Report compiled by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The key conclusion of the report is that human induced climate change is already impacting the United States, and that our early actions today are critical to reduce the severity of the changes we will experience in the future. The longer we wait, the ... Read More