Agri. Education Pakistan

As world leaders enter the home stretch of the Paris climate negotiations they should keep in mind a key measure of success in limiting carbon emissions: cheap oil. The lower the global price of oil, the more it stays in the ground – due to the brutal, if counterintuitive, logic of the petroleum marketplace. Most of the easily extracted oil deposits are long gone. What are left are high-cost, high-risk long shots such as the Alberta tar sands, deep-water reservoirs off Brazil, and drilling the high Arctic. Companies hoping to profit from the last dregs of the petroleum age need to convince their investors to part with massive amounts of capital in hopes of competitive returns often decades down the road. Billions have already fled the Alberta oil sands in the last year as the global price of oil collapsed from over $100 per barrel to below $40. Shell has just called a halt to its Carmon Creek project in Northern Alberta, writing off $2bn in booked assets and 418 million barre...

United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization jut releases the new collection of eBooks. Please click on the given link to download; FAO eBooks Collection For More eBooks on Agriculture and Allied Fields, Please follow the given link: AEP BOOK BANK

Want to save some dollars while conserving the environment? Even few simple changes around your home can reduce your carbon footprint. From opting for a shower instead of a bath to supplying your own reusable bags at the grocery store, you can prevent waste and pollution. Take a look at some fixes that will have you living greener in no time. 1.  Dial it down.  Moving your thermostat down just two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. 2.  Turn it off.  Artificial lighting accounts for 44 percent of electricity use in office buildings. Make it a habit of turning off the lights when you're leaving any room for 15 minutes or more. Same goes for electronics; switch off power strips and unplug electrical devices when you're not using them. 3.  Use cold water.  Using cold water can save up to 80 percent of the energy required to wash clothes. Choosing a low setting on the washing...

Rules governing international trade of food and agricultural products should be crafted with an eye to improving countries' food security and other development objectives. For this, a pragmatic approach that would align agricultural and trade policies at the national level is needed, a new FAO report argues. The expected increase in global trade of farm products along with shifting patterns of trade and multiples sources of risks to global supplies will give trade and its governance a heightened influence over the extent and nature of food security everywhere. As a result, the challenge for policy makers has evolved into one of ensuring that its expansion "works for, and not against, the elimination of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition," according to  The   State of Agricultural Commodity Markets  (SOCO). The new edition of this flagship FAO report aims to reduce the current polarization of views on agricultural trade, wherein some insist that free trade ...

A new report released today by IUCN, Climate Advisers and WWFreveals the huge potential that more effective and ambitious forest conservation and restoration could make in the fight to combat climate change. This report has found that if just 12 forest countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, meet their existing forest goals this would cut annual global climate emissions by 3.5 gigatonnes in 2020 – equivalent to the total annual emissions from India and Australia put together. With additional ambition on top of these goals, achieving near zero forest loss in these countries by 2020 would save nearly 5 gigatonnes a year - as much as India, Australia plus Japan’s annual emissions.  But even current national plans to reduce deforestation and restore forest landscapes might not be realised without stronger international support, as most are conditional on international finance. In the run up to the Paris climate change talks, dozens of countries included action...

The US Geological Survey used satellite and on-ground data to estimate that 38% of mainland Alaska has permafrost, a band of soil, rock or sediment that is frozen underground for at least two consecutive years. In Fairbanks, Alaska, the soil has been frozen for several thousand years at just 30 to 40cm underground, with only the upper level of soil thawing every summer before freezing again in winter. But this icy mass is now under threat from warming temperatures. Under scenarios calculated by USGS, 16% to 24% of Alaska’s permafrost will disappear by the end of the century under varying climate change outcomes. The declines are expected to be sharper in the heavily forested central areas of Alaska, rather than the state’s north. Alaska divided as Shell halts Arctic drilling: heartbreaking news or a miracle?   Read more “Increasing air temperatures have led to widespread thawing and degradation of permafrost, which in turn has affected ecosy...