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Guyana may cut more forests despite Norway deal
20 Nov 2009 12:47:00 GMT
Author: Olesya Dmitracova

LONDON (AlertNet) - An agreement by Norway to pay Guyana for preserving forests to help slow climate change will still allow the South American nation to increase its rate of deforestation, Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo said.

Norway could pay Guyana up to $250 million by 2015, in a possible forerunner of a global scheme where rich nations pay the developing world to preserve rainforests.

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Colombia failing to support displaced and abused women - report
17 Nov 2009 11:58:00 GMT
Author: Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA (AlertNet) - The Colombian government is failing to provide adequate humanitarian assistance to thousands of displaced women and girls, many of whom are victims of sexual violence and abuse, aid agency Refugees International said in a report.

Colombia's constitutional court ruled last year that the government was not fulfilling its legal obligations to provide health care, education, housing, job opportunities and training for displaced women and their families. Despite that landmark decision, little progress has been made, the agency found.

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Hundreds stranded after floods hit El Salvador
09 Nov 2009 22:17:00 GMT
Author: Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Hundreds of flood victims remain stranded and some communities are cut off from aid assistance following days of heavy rains that killed 124 people in El Salvador, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Monday.

Torrential rains in recent days, a result of a low pressure system in the Pacific, have caused rivers to burst their banks and hillsides to collapse, leading to severe flooding and widespread damage to the Central American country's infrastructure.

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Forest protection efforts face crime, corruption perils
05 Nov 2009 15:31:00 GMT
Author: Laurie Goering

BARCELONA (AlertNet) - Cutting down forests around the world accounts for close to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. So getting right a U.N. effort to pay forest nations to keep their trees intact is important to limiting climate change.

But the road to a functioning REDD - the United Nations' programme of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries - is a perilous one, experts said at climate change talks in Barcelona.

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Climate migration will grow as changes take hold - experts
05 Nov 2009 12:38:00 GMT
Author: Laurie Goering

BARCELONA (AlertNet) - Seferino Cortes has lived his life at the foot of Illimani, one of Bolivia's tallest snow-capped peaks, tending cattle, fruit trees and fields of maize, beans and potatoes.

But in a few decades he and his family expect to have to abandon their land and move on. Illimani's glaciers, which provide his community's water, are shrinking fast as winter snowfall plummets, and are now expected to vanish within 40 years.

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