Nearly one-third of the world's economy by 2025 will be in countries at the greatest risk climate change, says risk consultancy Maplecroft, highlighting the global impact of countries vulnerable to climate change.

Its latest annual Climate Change and Risk Atlas is based on Maplecroft's Climate Change Vulnerability Index, which considered a nation's exposure to extreme weather events over the next 30 years alongside…

Climate change in the UK is happening faster than the global average, say the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute

Their new report has analysed Met Office data and found that average temperatures in the UK rose by 0.18°C each decade from 1950. This compares with a global average surface temperature rise of 0.12°C, which was highlighted in the IPCC report last month…

Zero carbon homes are an important step in the fight against climate change – but modern, efficient building design mustn’t give the cold shoulder to wildlife. The RSPB and other conservation partners have joined Bat Conservation Trust in a new guide which help architects and planners incorporate designs for wildlife into new buildings.

New standards now require buildings to be more energy efficient and…

John Lanchbery Principal Climate Change Advisor

The climate challenge: Achieving zero emissions. That’s the title of an important speech in London this week by the head of the OECD, in reaction to the new IPCC report on the science of climate change.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is a conservative body, traditionally thought of as the developed world’s country club and reflecting such…

Helen Crow, RSPB Climate Change Policy Officer

We welcome the outcome of a vote in the European Parliament today recommending that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) should be mandatory for the majority of unconventional oil and gas proposals, including all those using the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’).

Fracking involves injecting fracturing fluid at high pressure down…

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Advisor

In the few days since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its report on climate science, there have been some liberal interpretations of what it says.  One major source of confusion has been the IPCCs’ projections of future climate change, especially in the longer term through to 2100.

Usually, projections are made by assuming that things carry…

John Lanchbery  Principal Climate Change Advisor

Finally, we have it - after all the waiting and tit-for-tat teases from the various interests, the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published the summary of its report on climate science. And it’s pretty strong stuff.

The two page headline findings are as clear and concise as you are going to get for a complicated subject. Quite an achievement…

There’s a lot of noise from the climate sceptics at the moment, as no doubt you’ll have seen.

I’m confounded by the dismissal of science and hard information as we build and shape our views, activities and the world we live in. Of course, science rarely says things are exactly so – the world is just too complicated – yet we’re able to get pretty close to that. So we have to use the best information in the…

Today’s controversial biofuels vote in the European Parliament leaves wildlife and our climate at risk from damaging biofuels production.

Melanie Coath - the RSPB's Senior Climate Change Policy Officer has been working on this issue and is disappointed at the outcome “Proposals to limit damaging biofuels in today’s vote fall far short of what is needed. As a result the biofuels industry will continue to receive…

This week we are talking about the RSPB’s plans to build a wind turbine at our headquarters, The Lodge in Bedfordshire.

Here’s our conservation director Martin Harper talking about why the RSPB cares about renewable energy, here is a post from our near neighbours in Gamlingay talking about their experiences of having a wind farm on their doorstep and - if you have a head for figures - here are the numbers…

As followers of this blog will know the RSPB has put in a planning application for a wind turbine at our headquarters at the Lodge in Bedfordshire.

We think this is vitally important if we are going to lead the way in reducing our carbon footprint and help halt the climate change which will push many species towards extinction if we do nothing.

If you want to hear more about why we are taking this big step then our…

Last week we submitted a planning application to install a wind turbine at our HQ, The Lodge, in Sandy. Nearby neighbours in Gamlingay built a community turbine earlier this year. Here, Jennifer Docherty from the Gamlingay Environmental Action Group shares her experiences.

I always liked the idea of “knowing which way the wind blows” and now I can actually see it - but it’s not quite as easy as I thought it would be …

Sarah Alsbury, Project Manager - Environmental Management System

Using less energy in the first place is basic common sense but often gets forgotten in the hot debate about how we’re going to produce more energy. Insulation, draught exclusion, lagging, switching things off – just doesn’t sound sexy, does it? Estimates vary from 30% to 80% as to how much could sensibly be saved - but it’s good whatever number you pick…

Land based wildlife seems to be responding more slowly to climate change than both life in the oceans, and agricultural pests and diseases, suggest two papers in Nature Climate Change.

A new synthesis of observed changes in marine biodiversity reports widespread and systematic shifts which show remarkable consistency with the changes to be expected from climate change. Analysis of a range of observations including species…

Melanie Coath, Senior Climate Change Policy Officer

UK sustainability standards for bioenergy, burning wood and other organic materials for heat and power, have finally been published today by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). These standards are intended to safeguard wildlife and the climate while ever greater amounts of bioenergy are brought on stream. However, we are concerned to see that significant…

Two-thirds of all solar PV operating worldwide has been installed since January 2011. Perhaps perceived as the Cinderella renewable, a new dawn appears to be breaking for solar’s contribution to global power.

Whilst It took almost four decades to install the first 50 gigawatts of solar generation worldwide, the second 50 gigawatts has been achieved in some 30 months. And alongside this, solar prices have tumbled…

Mel Coath - our Senior Climate Change Policy Officer has been looking at the long list of airport proposals published today - here's her initial thoughts.

Today, the Airports Commission made public the fifty or so proposals on the future of airports in the UK that it has received.

The Commission, set up to advise Government on how to tackle aviation expansion in the UK, now has the unenviable task of sifting through…

Ellie Crane, RSPB Agriculture Policy Officer

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) has gone on record as saying that climate change is the biggest threat facing UK farming. He points out that though farmers may be able to adapt to gradual changes in temperature, extreme weather events can be devastating. The floods, droughts and heatwaves we’ve experienced in recent years have had a severe impact…

Government have today published new planning guidance for local authorities in England on renewable energy, following similar guidance for oil and gas earlier this month.

These are part of a suite of guidance aimed at Local Authorities and other users of the planning system, but their publication has been brought forward to help deliver the Coalition’s increasingly damaging pursuit of shale gas and to give communities…

Mitigation or adaptation? Carbon conservation or nature conservation? A recent paper by Chris Thomas and others looks at whether these two things can be balanced effectively.

The approach is based on mapping, for carbon and for nature. The maps for conservation importance are produced using ‘zonation’, whereby map grid squares are ranked for their importance in their species distributions. Separately, each map square is…

Today the BBC is reporting that the Government is turning away from subsidies for wood-fired power stations. This follows confirmation from Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, that burning wood for electricity generation "is not a long-term answer to our energy needs", and reflects two important steps forward this year by Davey’s Department that will mean good news for forests and our climate. The RSPB…

Alexa Morrison, RSPB Scotland Conservation Policy Officer (Climate and energy)

How is the revised Scottish Planning Policy shaping up for wildlife and for tackling climate change? Here are some of our thoughts so far...

Here in the planning team at RSPB Scotland, good planning policy is music to our ears. And everyone knows that, to have a great orchestra, you need a strong conductor. They must be authoritative, responsive…

By Archie Davies, Head of European Policy Campaigns

Today we have seen progress on an issue that affects wildlife across the globe – biofuels. The link between wildlife and biofuels might not be an obvious one, but it's deep-rooted, linked to the carbon emissions and habitat destruction that biofuels made from crops can fuel.

The European Union has set targets to reduce the amount of carbon pollution produced…

The RSPB has today welcomed the official opening of the London Array offshore windfarm

The 175 turbine project will make the London Array the largest offshore windfarm in the world, generating a significant amount of green electricity and helping in the fight against climate change.

Just as important, however, has been the developer’s sensitive approach to ecological impacts, and in particular the risk that could have…

Government has launched its National Adaptation Programme for climate change in the UK. The plan is a legal commitment in the Climate Change Act (2008) that we and many others fought hard for. We did this because it was clear that our climate was changing and that even if we were successful in meeting our climate targets a considerable amount of change was still inevitable. Five years later and this rings even truer,…