U.N. and other international resources on climate change

The Gateway to the U.N. System's Work on Climate Change provides links to various U.N. agencies that are concerned with climate change.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses "scientific, technical and socio-economic information" relevant to understanding climate change, its potential effects and the options for curbing and adapting to its negative consequences. The IPCC's website carries summaries and full versions of all the body's key reports, as well as press releases and webcasts of important press conferences.

The website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the official source for the latest on U.N. climate change negotiations. It has many webcasts of meeting sessions, press conferences and side events at its December 2008 meeting in Poznan, Poland.

The World Meteorological Organization provides information and resources on weather and climate change.

The World Bank has a web page setting out its approach to climate change and clean energy, with links for more detailed information.

Science, statistics and predictions

Britain's Royal Society, a leading independent academy of science, has produced an easy-to-digest document called "Climate change controversies: A simple guide".

The Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters has a database of data and statistics on disasters.

The U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration gives storm forecasts, and makes seasonal hurricane predictions. Tropical Storm Risk does the same on a global scale.

The Humanitarian Early Warning Service provides an overview of natural hazards around the globe, including storms, floods and droughts.

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) has done a lot of work to promote climate risk management and help poorer countries improve their access to weather and climate information.

Humanitarian impact of climate change

The International Institute for Environment and Development produces briefings, reports and videos that explore how climate change and related policy impact on developing countries and poor communities.

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by the British government, compared the potential costs of the impact of climate change with the cost of acting to curb global warming now.

Among aid groups, Oxfam and Christian Aid have produced regular research on the humanitarian impacts of climate change and the action and financing needed to help poor countries adapt.

Advocacy group Germanwatch also issues papers on climate change policy, adaptation and development, and tracks U.N. negotiations closely. And environmental group WWF has useful background information and news on issues like forests.

The Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum hosts high-level conferences and commissioned a major piece of research published in May 2009: "Human Impact Report: Climate Change - The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis".

International Crisis Group gives a very clear explanation of the links between climate change and conflict, plus useful links to related resources.

Peacebuilding organisation International Alert has published a report identifying 46 countries where the consequences of climate change include a high risk of armed conflict and a further 56 countries where there's a high risk of political instability.

And "Climate Change and Human Security" is a report by a group of disasters experts that looks at how climate change could affect security in different ways.

Disaster preparedness and risk reduction

AlertNet has a briefing on disasters and what's being done around the world to prepare for them and reduce the risk of natural hazards turning into catastrophes.

The U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction provides a wide range of resources on high-level work to cut the risk of disasters. It also backs a specialised site for disaster risk reduction, called PreventionWeb.

Britain's Institute of Development Studies has a Climate Change and Disasters Group that publishes research on a range of issues, from helping cities adapt to how children are affected by climate change.

The website of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Centre on Climate Change and Disaster Preparedness explains what the organisation is doing to help reduce the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on those it works with.

Financing

Climate Funds Update, sponsored by the Overseas Development Institute and the Heinrich Boll Foundation among others, provides information on international funding initiatives designed to help developing countries address the challenges of climate change, including the amounts they have generated.

The UNFCCC's Adaptation Fund has a website with updates on its meetings and activities, as does the World Bank's set of Climate Investment Funds.

The UNFCCC site hosts information about the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Media coverage of climate change

This paper from the International Institute for Environment and Development reviews how the media reports on climate change in different parts of the world, arguing that climate change stories could be told better.

The Oxford Environmental Change Institute tracks newspaper coverage of climate change in 50 newspapers across 20 countries and 6 continents on a monthly basis.

Britain's Institute of Public Policy Research published an interesting report, "Warm Words: How are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?", which explored the way climate change is communicated in the media. It argues that some media coverage tends to sensationalise climate change - an approach that it dubbed "climate porn".