OSLO (Reuters) – Nations including Democratic Republic of Congo are making surprise progress toward taking part in a $200 million project for slowing deforestation from late 2010, World Bank experts said.

They also said Latin America, with forested nations around the Amazon, had strong incentives to take part since most of the continent’s greenhouse gas emissions came from deforestation and shifts in land use, rather than use of fossil fuels.

JUVFONNA, Norway (Reuters) – Climate change is exposing reindeer hunting gear used by the Vikings’ ancestors faster than archaeologists can collect it from ice thawing in northern Europe’s highest mountains.

“It’s like a time machine…the ice has not been this small for many, many centuries,” said Lars Piloe, a Danish scientist heading a team of “snow patch archaeologists” on newly bare ground 1,850 meters (6,070 ft) above sea level in mid-Norway.

OSLO (Reuters) – Green taxes are among ways to spur jobs and economic revival despite less focus on environmental solutions since the U.N.’s Copenhagen summit in 2009, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Monday.

“Green issues are still on the agenda,” he told Reuters during a one-day jobs conference in Oslo that had scant focus on U.N. calls for a shift to renewable energies such as wind and solar power to cut unemployment and help end recession.

OSLO (Reuters) – Natural disasters are tending to kill fewer people but climate change may add to the toll by unleashing more extreme weather and causing after-effects such as disease and malnutrition, experts say.

Better warnings of cyclones or heat waves and an easing of poverty in developing nations in the past few decades have made many nations better prepared for weather extremes, helping to curb death tolls.

OSLO (Reuters) – The world should safeguard coral reefs with networks of small no-fishing zones to confront threats such as climate change, and shift from favoring single, big protected areas, a U.N. study showed.

“People have been creating marine protected areas for decades. Most of them are totally ineffective,” Peter Sale, a leader of the study at the U.N. University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told Reuters.

OSLO (Reuters) – Natural disasters are tending to kill fewer people but climate change may add to the toll by unleashing more extreme weather and causing after-effects such as disease and malnutrition, experts say.

Better warnings of cyclones or heat waves and an easing of poverty in developing nations in the past few decades have made many nations better prepared for weather extremes, helping to curb death tolls.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Almost 50 nations made progress on Friday towards a “Green Fund” to help poor countries fight global warming but hosts Mexico and Switzerland said a full U.N. climate treaty was out of reach for 2010.

Environment ministers and senior officials meeting in Geneva also examined how to raise a promised $100 billion a year in climate aid from 2020 — perhaps from carbon markets, higher plane fares or taxes on shipping — to be managed by the Fund.

GENEVA (Reuters) – A website launched on Friday will help track whether rich countries are keeping a pledge to come up with $30 billion in climate aid for the poor, seen by the U.N. as a “golden key” to progress in talks on global warming.

The United Nations-backed site (www.faststartfinance.org) so far lists cash promises by 6 European donors including Germany and Britain and 27 recipients from Bangladesh to the Marshall Islands. Many of the developing nations have blank entries on the amount of aid received.

GENEVA (Reuters) – About 45 nations met on Thursday to seek ways to raise billions of dollars in aid to help the poor combat climate change as the United Nations warned them of a long haul to slow global warming.

Environment ministers and senior officials in Geneva were reviewing whether rich nations, hit by austerity cuts, are keeping a promise of $30 billion in “new and additional” climate aid for 2010-12 made at the U.N.’s Copenhagen summit.