Headline: Events in 2015

Bioenergy is a fast-growing sector, but experiences have been mixed and there are conflicting messages about the potential for different sources of bioenergy to contribute to low carbon energy budgets and socio-economic development objectives.

The global process of urbanisation and the importance of city-level action for tackling climate change are widely acknowledged. Related implications for rural communities and their changing role in the fight against climate change have been relatively neglected.

The world’s first deep-sea mine will open in 2018 in the waters off Papua New Guinea, with purpose-built machinery to extract precious metals from the sea bed.

In October 2015, South Africa will become the sixth country, and the first in Africa, to host the International Renewable Energy Conference (IREC). Convened by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21^st Century (REN21), IREC is a high-

2015 is considered to be a ground-breaking “year of summits”, with far-reaching decisions for combining development prospects with the future protection of the climate and global resources: This autumn, the international community will readjust the Millennium Development Goals, which

India represents the second most populous country in the world, poised to overtake China in the near future.

The IASS is initiating and facilitating a Series of Critical Dialogues and curated LABS on the practicalities of implementing the New Urban Agenda – and its possible constraints – in the political context of Habitat III (UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, 2016

As the recent earthquakes in Nepal have reminded us, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, impinging on the development of increasingly complex and vulnerable societies.

Emissions of methane, other volatile organic compounds, and oxides of nitrogen can occur during all stages of gas exploration and exploitation and for all types of gas deposits (conventional and unconventional).