BLOGS

Pchum Ben Festival: Respecting ancestors

This weekend is the conclusion of the Pchum Ben festival, a 15-day period of reflection, paying respect to your ancestors and giving offerings to monks.

3things on climate change, locked-up kids & Wolverine

This week we scrutinised the two most pressing ticking time bombs in human history, heard from a girl who spent seven months in Woomera and got up close and personal with Hugh Jackman.

Oxfam invites you to Sow the Seed of change

Climate change is impacting the world’s poorest communities now. Working with Oxfam partners from around the world we’ve created a new project called Sow the Seed – it’s simple, it’s fun, and we hope it has the power to bring about real change.

Building blocks in China on the way to Cancun

The latest round of United Nations climate talks in China this week are crucial to ensure a practical outcome in the much-anticipated December talks in Cancun, reports Phil Ireland from Tianjin.

Righting two wrongs…

So far the media interest in the Tianjin talks has been, well – lackluster – but like many of these conferences before – you never really know until the minute you are there. This one will hold a bit of a special place in the history of Climate Change talks as it will be the first climate negotiations being held in a Chinese city.

A day of optimism and anger

Things are stirring at the Tianjin climate negotiations. Participants are getting impatient. The Australian delegation is getting impatient. The lead negotiator from the US, publically declared his impatience in a speech that bordered on anger. I think many in the room sympathised with him.

From blue skies to haze

This morning I had the opportunity to speak with a senior negotiator from a different delegation to Australia. When I asked about progress he was tight-lipped. After a few moments he paused and said “well, you can think of it this way, there were blue skies yesterday… but today we can’t see far at all because of the haze”. I think the negotiator was correct in both literally and metaphorically.

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Waiting for a mandate… Send the Australian delegation your climate fortune

It’s the opening day of the climate negotiations in Tianjin, China. As I am writing this, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Christiana Figueres is giving her opening address to all the nations of the world. She just said “Now is the time to advance the search for common ground…It is in no one’s interest to delay action”.

Hear Ursula’s story of climate adaptation in the Pacific

We'd encourage you all to go along to this Australian Conservation Foundation night of inspirational stories from Ms Ursula Rakova from the Carteret Atoll in Papua New Guinea, accompanied by wine, music and comedy.