French President Nicolas Sarkozy today pushed for reforms to the United Nations and urged climate negotiations to continue with a small “representative” group to accelerate action.

Sarkozy, opening a one-day conference on deforestation in Paris, said while there is “no alternative strategy” to the United Nations since it gives all nations a voice in a global arena, it is essential that there be changes to the system.

By: Gayathri Vaidyanathan

It has been a long journey for the latest shipment of seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The vault, built into a Norwegian mountain near the North Pole, is the final defense for agriculture in the face of growing populations, a changing climate and rising threats to food security.

And the vault now contains the world’s most diverse collection of crops as the shipment, which included a wild strawberry species painstakingly collected from a remote Russian archipelago, brought its numbers to more than half a million.

Because the Canadian government has not provided additional funding for the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Canada’s Ellesmere Island, the remote climate change research facility will be forced to close by next year, researchers said during a conference call earlier this week.

Researchers said the decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government not to fund the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences demonstrates skepticism about climate change. They said forcing the research facility to close will stifle climate research that might support action to prevent global warming.