Carbon caps - who gets the cash?
The Real News in YouTube | 09 February 2010
James Boyce: Auction, cap and rebate is a better way to control carbon emissions
Read more... Sphere: Related Content10 February 2010
09 February 2010
Asian water wrangles
Pollution and water scarcity threaten livelihoods in central-south Asia. But, argues Michael Renner, international efforts could help to forge a solution
Michael Renner | China Dialog | February 08, 2010
The quantity and quality of available water play a crucial role in the politics of central-south Asia. Access to clean drinking water is a major, though largely unmet, objective and poor management lies at the heart of many problems.
Many areas are already experiencing physical water shortages – recent studies estimate per capita water availability in the densely-populatedIndus basin at around 1,000 cubic metres per year – and climate change will only exacerbate this.
The region’s water challenges do not inevitably lead to armed conflict. Unalleviated, however, they threaten to undermine human security and bring different communities into dispute. Cooperative approaches have been sparse and institutional structures remain fragmented. Yet cooperation will be critical for the region to meet its water challenges in the years and decades ahead.
In Afghanistan, the livelihoods of at least 80% of the population are based on agriculture and related occupations. The fertile plains of the Amu Darya basin, account for about 40% of Afghanistan’s irrigated lands. But poorly constructed canals translate into water losses as high as 70%. And droughts and dry years since 1999 have substantially reduced cultivated areas in the south and east.
Moreover, three decades of armed conflict have displaced a large portion of the population, impeded access to farmland, and destroyed irrigation systems. Buffeted by recurring drought and floods, and the population’s desperate coping strategies, the net result has been a severe degradation of Afghanistan’s natural environment and its water and farming infrastructure. According to Oxfam UK, overall agricultural produce has fallen by half in recent years and the loss of rural livelihoods has triggered migration to cities.
Millions of Afghans are either seasonally or chronically food insecure. As well as hunger, these desperate conditions have triggered local conflicts. Water contamination has become a severe public health threat, owing to poor waste management practices and a lack of modern sanitation; a 2003 United Nations assessment concluded no more than 12 to 23% of Afghanistan’s urban population has access to safe water.
In the wider region, the nations sharing the Amu Darya are locked into seemingly irreconcilable sets of interests. Tajikistan and Afghanistan look to the Amu Darya for hydropower as well as irrigation while Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan depend heavily on the river to irrigate their cotton, rice, and wheat fields.
Downstream, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have similar economic interests, yet their relationship is nonetheless conflictive. Tensions over shared irrigation systems near Tuyamuyun Reservoir could be further inflamed by Turkmenistan's plans to build an artificial lake in the Karakum desert by 2010.
Upstream, Tajikistan releases reservoir water in the winter months to generate hydropower for heating, frequently causing downstream flooding and damage to infrastructure. In the summer months, it builds up its reservoirs — at precisely the time when the irrigation needs of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are most acute.
All these countries plan to increase water extraction, which may exacerbate tensions. Tajikistani plans to complete unfinished Soviet-era hydropower projects on the Vakhsh River, for example, are worrying Uzbekistan, not only because of the potential impact on summer irrigation water flows, but also because it stands to lose income (and leverage) from selling natural gas to its neighbour.
In Pakistan and India, extensive irrigation is also placing Indus basin water resources under heavy stress, with about 90% of the available flow utilised. Overpumping and inefficient irrigation techniques have led to sharply declining groundwater levels, loss of wetlands and salinisation of agricultural lands. Future sea-level rise will place coastal areas at increasing risk of inundation and water availability will decline dramatically as a result of climate change and population growth; Pakistan’s per capita water availability is forecast to fall to a critically low level of just 800 cubic metres annually by 2020.
Already, an estimated 40 million to 55 million Pakistanis do not have access to safe drinking water, yet the government spends 47 times as much on the military budget as on water and sanitation. According to a Unescoreport, only 2% of Pakistan’s cities have wastewater treatment facilities and less than 30% of wastewater receives treatment in these cities. Water pollution is the leading cause of death in Pakistan.
Rising water demand in the region is causing trans-border issues as well as internal conflicts. Pakistan has an important agreement with India, the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, which divides the waters of the Indus and its eastern tributaries. However, a number of contentious projects undertaken by India in Kashmir — including the Baglihar Hydroelecric Dam, theKishanganga Hydroelectric project and the Tulbul Navigation project — have served as reminders that water disputes between the two neighbours are never far from the surface. It is increasingly important for India and Pakistan to improve their water management and ensure diplomacy, rather than threat of force, governs water relations.
Climate change will dramatically raise the challenges in central and south Asia. By the middle of the century, increasing temperatures and growing water stress may lead to a 30% reduction in crop yields. In central Asia, reduced rainfall and runoff will cause increased heat stress, drought and desertification and lead to increasing migration. Yet no mitigation and adaptation strategies are in place.
The melting of the Hindu Kush-Karakorum-Himalaya glaciers will also have serious consequences for hundreds of millions of people. The warming trend in these mountain ranges has been much greater than the global average and two thirds of the Himalayan glaciers are reported to be shrinking. Over time, this will reduce downstream runoff and compromise hydropower generation, decreasing production of foodstuffs and commodities like cotton. In turn, this may increase poverty and social disparities.
Significant changes to monsoon patterns are also expected. Much of south, east, and south-east Asia may see increased intensity of these storms by the century’s end, while most parts of Pakistan and south-eastern Afghanistan are expected to see a 20% reduction in rainfall. Destructive storm surges and greater salt-water intrusion in low-lying coastal areas could drive migration from urban centres such as Karachi and flooding is expected to increase across the Himalayas, as well as northern Pakistan and India.
International donor support is needed to fund infrastructure maintenance, improvements in water efficiency, and diversification toward more drought-resistant crops, in part by reprioritising existing funds. In Afghanistan, for instance, Oxfam observes that donors have spent less than US$300 million to $400 million directly on agricultural projects over the last six years – a fraction of overall assistance to the country.
The governance system for central Asia’s water that emerged in the post-Soviet era remains largely dysfunctional, limited by conflicting interests, mutual suspicions and a reluctance to cooperate. However, the UN Economic Commission for Europe has intensified its engagement in central Asia over the past few years, with a programme to strengthen cooperation among members. Its Water Convention also provides a legal framework for trans-boundary water cooperation, though Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are so far the only regional signatories. Other organisations, including theEnvironment and Security Initiative and the East-West Institute are also running programmes to boost regional collaboration.
As great as the challenges are, there are multiple avenues for addressing them. One of the most pressing needs is greater efficiency in water use. By 2015, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Energy and Water hopes to boost efficiency by 45%, while improvements in yields for rain-fed cereal crops in Pakistan could help relieve overall water pressures. Their neighbours can and must similarly boost water productivity. Better watershed management, rainwater harvesting, urban water conservation, investments in sanitation, and more integrated planning are vitally important.
The countries of the region have little influence over global greenhouse emissions trajectories, and hence will need to focus principally on adaptation measures. It is essential to build environmental, social, economic, and political resilience, as well as improve institutional capacities to cope with growing water scarcity and climate impacts. Water cooperation across national boundaries offers important benefits but may not be realised without disinterested, innovative third-party facilitation.
Michael Renner is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC and senior advisor to the Institute for Environmental Security in Brussels. A full version of this report was first published by the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre.
Homepage image from IRIN
Unless otherwise stated, this work is under Creative Commons' Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License and 2.5 China License.
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentGreen watch: No time to waste for detailed climate action plan
Jonathan Wootliff | The Jakarta Post | 02/09/2010
Pressure in mounting on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to specify how he plans to deliver his promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In a move welcomed by the UN’s climate change body as an important step towards achieving a legally binding global agreement, Indonesia is one of 55 countries — including the 27-member European Union — to have formally pledged to cut or limit their emissions by signing the so-called Copenhagen Accord.
These countries account for a total of 78 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, leaving 137 countries still to announce their targets.
Independent studies indicate the pledges as they stand are about half of what is required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Indonesia made the Jan. 31 deadline set by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in delivering a seven-page report on its emission reduction target by at least 26 percent from current levels by 2020 and up to 41 percent with international support.
SBY has clearly stated that climate change alleviation measures are a priority for his government, which is now in the process of preparing a presidential decree to achieve ambitious targets.
But environmental groups including Greenpeace are demanding more details from the government as to how it plans to fulfill this commitment to cut the nation’s climate-threatening emissions.
Oxfam, another leading international non-governmental organization, wants to know how the government is preparing adaptations and mitigation on the predicted impacts of climate change on the poor, who they say will be hardest hit.
Campaigners are now eagerly awaiting the publication of Indonesia’s national plan of action for emission cuts, which the Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa said would be completed by Feb. 20.
Having made impassioned speeches at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh and the climate change summit in Copenhagen on the urgent need to combat global warming, SBY’s international reputation is on the line.
He surely understands the vital importance for Indonesia to come up with a comprehensive and convincing plan of action that must include a detailed breakdown on how the targets will be achieved.
And countries like Britain, Sweden and Norway, which have offered funds to support a program saving on energy use and expected to help reduce emissions, need to have a detailed understanding of Indonesia’s plans before releasing much-needed funds.
Meanwhile, as domestic and international political machines grind in overtime, and climate scientists and skeptics continue to bicker as to the validity of studies conducted by the International Panel of Climate Change, there is mounting evidence of the severe consequences of global warming in Indonesia.
Lofty population density and high levels of biodiversity, together with its 80,000 kilometers of coastline and 17,500 islands, makes Indonesia one of the most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change.
That’s all the more reason why this country, which is among the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly due to forest fires, improper land clearance practices and shortfalls in the enforcement of environmental laws.
Two years have passed since Indonesia led the international climate talks in Bali, where countries agreed to prepare a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen.
But failure of the world’s governments to seal a deal at last December’s meeting has placed more pressure on climate-vulnerable countries like Indonesia to take the lead in introducing credible measures to combat global warming.
A recent Worldwide Fund for Nature study is one of many reports documenting shifting weather patterns making it increasingly difficult for farmers to decide when to plant their crops.
It is estimated that Indonesia is now losing at least 300,000 tons of potential crop production each year because of the scourge of global warming.
Harsher weather conditions mean that millions of fishermen are making less money because of dwindling catches caused by changes in ocean temperatures.
Indonesia’s 40 million poor who depend on healthy land and sea for their livelihoods will be the worst affected due to prolonged droughts, tropical cyclones and rising sea levels thanks to climate change.
SBY knows all too well the country’s decreasing rainfall is increasing droughts adversely impacting crop yields, thereby threatening the country’s economic stability, and result in more undernourished people.
There is good reason to be cautiously optimistic.
We can be proud of Indonesia’s performance at the Bali summit. Many experts attributed its success to the skillful way in which the conference chairman, then environment minister Rachmat Witoelar, navigated the highly complex negotiations; in stark contrast to the seemingly indelicate diplomacy displayed by the Danish government’s management of the Copenhagen talks.
Highly experienced Rachmat is the head of the National Council on Climate Change, thankfully playing a leading role in the development of the climate action plan.
Indonesia has much to lose if climate change is allowed to continue unabated. Scientists tell us we cannot afford to allow temperatures to rise beyond 2 degrees Centigrade.
Failure to stop this increase seriously threatens the future wellbeing of this great nation.
Indonesia must lead the world by example. SBY must ensure his government fulfills his promises on climate change.
There is no time to waste.
Jonathan Wootliff leads the Corporate Accountability practice at the consulting firm, Reputation Partners. He specializes in sustainable development and in building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan@reputationpartners.com and can be followed on Twitter.
Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentAfrican Farmers Urged to Innovate to Offset Climate Change
By Sarah McGregor | Bloomberg | February 09, 2010
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Africa’s failure to embrace modern farming methods is a greater impediment to food production than global warming, according to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.
Adopting this approach would help the continent offset possible temperature increases of as much as 3 degrees Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit), it said, citing conclusions made by computer modeling.
Africa emits less greenhouse gas than any other continent, though it will likely be the hardest hit by climate change because of its dependence on basic agriculture and a lack of funds to adapt to weather extremes.
The average global temperature is as much as 0.54 degrees Celsius higher than the yearly temperatures between 1961 and 1990, the institute said, citing the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Higher temperatures can stunt plant growth and result in reduced crop yields, it said.
“If governments can develop better agricultural policies they can improve livelihoods here and now, and adapt to climate change when it becomes a serious problem one day,” Peter Cooper, the report’s lead author, said in an interview from Kenya’s capital Nairobi, yesterday.
Double Production
“Even with a climate-change scenario, Africa could probably double food production with modern techniques,” Cooper said.
One key way the region can prepare for the future impact of climate change is by distributing government-subsidized fertilizer, said Cooper, a crop agronomist.
Fertilizer use in poor nations in Latin America and Asia grew more than 10-fold to 50 kilograms (110 pounds) per hectare (2.47 acres) over the past half-century, while in Africa it has stagnated at about 4 kilograms per hectare, he said.
“Increasing the availability and affordability of fertilizer would be a huge step forward,” he said.
Editors: Paul Richardson, Ana Monteiro.
©2010 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentBolivia expects 5,000 foreigners at climate forum
AFP in Yahoo! News | Feb 8, 2010
LA PAZ, Bolivia – Bolivia's government says it expects thousands of activists, environmentalists and scientists to travel to the Andean nation for conference on climate change.
Bolivia's foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, estimates roughly 5,000 foreigners will attend the event. The 3-day forum kicks off on April 20 in the city of Cochabamba.
Bolivian President Evo Morales announced in January that he would invite activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an alternative conference following the failure of a climate change summit in Copenhagen to produce binding agreements.
Choquehuanca said Monday that topics will include a "universal proposal for the rights of mother earth."
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentConflict conservation
Biodiversity down the barrel of a gun
The Economist | Feb 8th 2010
THERE was a time when conservation meant keeping people away from nature. America’s system of national parks, a model for similar set-ups around the world, was based on the idea of limiting human presence to passing visits, rather than permanent habitation.
In recent years this way of doing things has come under suspicion. To fence off large areas of parkland is often impractical and can also be immoral—in that it leads to local people being booted out. These days, the consensus among conservationists is to try to manage nature with humans in situ. But there are still “involuntary parks”, to borrow a phrase from the writer and futurist Bruce Sterling, that serve to illustrate just how spectacularly well nature can do when humans are removed from the equation.
AFP
Some such “parks” are accidents of settlement, or its absence. Nature is preserved in those rare places that people just have not got round to overrunning—for example the Foja Mountains in western New Guinea, an area of rainforest that teems with an astonishingly rich variety of plants and animals. Others are accidents of conflict: places from which people have fled and where the fauna and flora have thrived as a result.
The demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is a good example. Over the past six decades this narrow and dangerous strip of land running 248km (155 miles) across the Korean peninsula has become a de facto nature reserve. As agriculture and industrialisation have moved ahead elsewhere, the thousand-square-kilometre DMZ, uninhabited and heavily mined, has been a refuge for two endangered birds: the white-naped and the red-crowned crane. It also contains Asiatic black bears, egrets and, according to some, an extremely rare subspecies of the Siberian tiger. The biggest threat to all this biodiversity is probably peace. There are already calls for the DMZ to be turned into a park in the event of reunification.
The Chagos Islands of the Indian Ocean are a military zone, too. The locals were forcibly removed by the British government, starting in the late 1960s, to make way for an American base on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s main island. The Chagos Islands are thought to be home to some of the world’s healthiest coral reefs and the waters around them rank among the most pristine in the world. The Chagos Conservation Trust, a conservation group, would like to set up a reserve. The displaced islanders, however, plan to return one day, and if they do they will want to start fishing and building hotels and even an airport. Only military dominion keeps such activity at bay.
A little to the west of the Chagos, the Scotsman recently reported, the sea off Kenya’s northern coast currently has a profusion of fish because Somali pirates are keeping out all the big foreign fishing boats. Since the collapse of Somalia’s government in 1991, this part of the world has reportedly been plagued by illegal fishing. Now, goes the story, such boats are too afraid to enter the area because of the pirates.
The illegal dumping in the region of barrels of radioactive waste from European hospitals and factories, which has also been reported, has probably been similarly deterred, if it was taking place. This, though, is unlikely to bother the fish either way. Perhaps the most famous of the Earth’s involuntary parks is the evacuated area around Chernobyl, in Ukraine, where the burgeoning wildlife has been little affected by the risks of radiation.
Military conflict and the preparations that surround it are not, in themselves, good for the environment: far from it. Animals big enough to be eaten, or with body parts that can be sold for a profit, are well advised to stay out of war zones. It is depopulation that matters. Armed conflict and its knock-on effects simply happen to be one of the few forces on the planet that can cause quick and thorough depopulation. These areas struggle to survive when peace arrives. The nasty truth is that the likelihood of random and violent death is the cheapest form of conservation yet invented.
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2010. All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentIndia bauxite mine 'threatening health'
India: Government must stop bauxite mine and refinery expansion until human rights are addressed
Amnesty International UK in OneWorld.Net | 09 February 2010
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PRESS RELEASE - February 9 2010
(Delhi) Indian authorities have given local communities scant or misleading information about the potential impact of a proposed alumina refinery expansion and mining project to be operated by subsidiaries of UK-based company Vedanta Resources in Orissa, Amnesty International said in a new report published today.
The Amnesty International report, Don’t Mine Us out of Existence: Bauxite Mine and Refinery Devastate Lives in Indiadocuments how an alumina refinery operated by a subsidiary of UK-based FTSE 100 company Vedanta Resources in Orissa, is causing air and water pollution that threatens the health of local people and their access to water.
“People are living in the shadow of a massive refinery, breathing polluted air and afraid to drink from and bathe in a river that is one of the main sources of water in the region,” said Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, Amnesty International’s researcher on South Asia. “It is shocking how those who are most affected by the project have been provided with the least information”
Adivasi (Indigenous), Dalit, women and other marginalised communities in the remote part of Orissa where the refinery is located have described to Amnesty International how authorities told them that the refinery would transform the area into a Mumbai or Dubai.
The Orissa State Pollution Control Board has documented air and water pollution from Vedanta Aluminium’s refinery in Lanjigarh, Orissa. Amnesty International found that the pollution threatens the health of local people and their access to clean water yet there has been no health monitoring.
“We used to bathe in the river but now I am scared of taking my children there. Both my sons have had rashes and blisters.” a local woman told Amnesty International. The organization recorded many similar accounts from people living around the refinery.
Despite these concerns and the environmentally sensitive location of the refinery near a river and villages, the government is considering a proposal for a six-fold expansion of the refinery. Neither the Indian authorities nor Vedanta have shared information on the extent of pollution and its possible effects with local communities.
The Orissa Mining Corporation and another Vedanta Resources subsidiary also plan to mine bauxite in the nearby Niyamgiri Hills. The proposed mine threatens the very existence of the Dongria Kondh, an 8,000 strong protected indigenous community that has lived on the Niyamgiri hills for centuries. The hills are considered sacred by the Dongria Kondh and are essential for their economic, physical and cultural survival, yet no process to seek the community’s informed consent has been established.
A Dongria Kondh man told Amnesty International, “We have seen what happens to other Adivasis when they are forced to leave their traditional lands, they lose everything.”
“The people of Orissa are among the poorest in India and their health is being threatened by pollution from the refinery. Their voices are being ignored by Vedanta Resources and its partner companies as well as by Orissa’s government. There has been inadequate consultation with local people about the changes on the ground and yet it’s their lives and futures which hang in the balance,” said Ramesh Gopalakrishnan.
Amnesty International is calling on the Government of India and Vedanta Resources to ensure that there is no expansion of the refinery and mining does not go ahead until existing problems are resolved. Amnesty International is also calling for full consultation with local people and for the Indian authorities to set up a process to seek the free, prior and informed consent of the Dongria Kondh.
Notes:
· The alumina refinery in Lanjigarh is operated by Vedanta Aluminium Ltd. Vedanta Resources owns 70.5 per cent of Vedanta Aluminium and Sterlite India Ltd. owns the remaining 29.5 per cent. Vedanta Resources owns 59.9 per cent of Sterlite India and has management control of the company. The mining project would be operated by a joint venture, the South-west Orissa Bauxite Mining Corporation, involving Sterlite India (74 per cent) and the state-owned Orissa Mining Corporation (26 per cent).
* The Dongria Kondh are an adivasi (Indigenous community) and were described as ‘endangered’ by India’s Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC).
* Under international law, the government of India has an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights including the rights to water and health and to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples over the lands and territories they traditionally occupy. The obligation to protect requires measures by states to ensure that other actors (such as companies) do not undermine or violate human rights. Government failure to protect human rights does not absolve companies from responsibility for their operations and the impact of those operations on human rights. Companies should – at minimum – respect all human rights.
* This report is part of Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity campaign which aims to end the human rights violations that drive and deepen global poverty. The campaign aims to mobilise people all over the world to demand that governments, big corporations and others who have power, listen to the voices of those living in poverty and recognise and protect their rights. For more information visit www.demanddignity.org
Public Document
****************************************
International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentAsia's biggest logging company accused of bribery, violence in Papua New Guinea
Jeremy Hance | mongabay.com | February 08, 2010
A local organization in Papua New Guinea, known as Asples Madang, is fighting against one of the region's biggest industrial loggers, Rimbunan Hijau (RH) chaired by billionare Tiong Hiew King. Aspeles Madang has accused Malaysian company, RH, of acquiring land illegally and of using brute force and bribery in its dealing with locals.
A lawsuit by a local landowner claiming that the Forest Management Area was illegally granted to RH has put the company's logging on hold for two months along the Ramu River in Madang Province. However according to Ecological Internet, which has started a campaignto expel RH from the area, the lawsuit is “only a temporarily reprieve”.
Ecological Internet working with Asples Madang, hopes to use the reprieve in order to bring attention to RH's alleged abuses which it calls "sociopathic", as well as highlight the possibilities of sustainable logging and alternatives to logging altogether in the region.
RH logging site in Papua New Guinea. Photo courtesy of Ecological Internet.
According to Ecological Internet RH has bribed local landowners, government officials, and police. The organization also reports on an incident where two teenage boys were shot by police allegedly paid off by RH after the boys broke into an RH tool shed.
This isn't the first time that RH has faced allegations of corruption and environmental degradation. A report by Greenpeace of RH's operations in Papua New Guinea found that the company conducted large-scale illegal logging in Papua New Guinea and had violated numerous human rights.
JK Balasubramaniam, RH company secretary, called Greenpeace's allegations “baseless, frivilous, vexatious” saying that Greenpeace was committing “economic terrorism”.
However, a report by the Papua New Guinea Department of Labor and Employment also found evidence of bribery, corruption, and slave-like treatment of employees by RH.
The Ramu River Valley in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea is home to 2.47 million acres of lowland rainforest and swamp forest.
Rimbunan Hijau (RH) did not respond to request for comment.
Copyright mongabay 2010
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentPost-Copenhagen Scorecard
The deadline has passed for countries to submit CO2-reduction targets under the new climate accord. Here's the verdict
BY DAVID ROBERTS | Foreign Policy | FEBRUARY 4, 2010
NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images
The international climate talks in Copenhagen last December were generally regarded as a disappointment, if not an outright failure. The frenzied final hours of negotiation had an air of farce, with heads of state pursuing one another through hallways and conference rooms. In the end, the agreement that emerged from the talks was "noted" rather than ratified under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). That designation, produced through a complex U.N. procedure known as "winging it," carries no legal force and amounts to little more than an affirmation that participating countries will voluntarily do what they had already said they would do.
That might not sound especially encouraging. But, still, the scorn heaped on the Copenhagen Accord was premature. The brief text of the agreement released after the conference contained a notable gap at the end: the appendices, where participating countries were to list their national policies and goals. The deadline for countries to submit their commitments was Jan. 31, and though the deadline, like the rest of the process, carried no legal force, the most significant emitters met it. According to the U.S. Climate Action Network, as of Feb. 4, “91countries, including the 27-member EU, are likely to or have engaged with the accord, representing 80.5% of global emissions."
Most of the cards are now on the table. So what's the verdict? Is there reason for hope, or was all the discontent justified?
In one sense, the news is clearly grim: Existing commitments don't add up to a solution. Though the accord recognizes "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius," the climate consultancy Ecofys estimates that the policies pledged thus far set the world on the path to a disastrous 3 degrees of warming.
This would seem to confirm the fears of green internationalists, who have long portrayed binding emissions targets as the sine qua non of seriousness on climate change. But would putting the UNFCCC stamp on all those signatures have made a difference? The fact that the Kyoto Protocol was legally binding didn't prevent several countries from failing to meet their targets. There is no international enforcer to punish scofflaws, no blue-helmeted U.N. climate cops to dispense justice. In the end, an international treaty is only as binding as participating countries want it to be.
Are there, then, any signs of progress? Yes. What the Copenhagen Accord pledges begin to do is put countries on the record behind policies and programs that can be "measured, reported, and verified" -- MRV, in the lingo. (Of course, the details of MRV are hotly contested, especially by China, whose concerns about sovereignty almost sank the entire deal. But, in the end, all countries agreed to report their progress to international observers.)
It's this aspect of the pledges -- not their cumulative size, but their detail and transparency -- that has the potential to shake up energy politics in participating countries. Recall, for example, when the U.S. Congress created the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) as part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986. The TRI was a consolation prize -- all that remained after a vicious political fight over a much larger effort to regulate toxic chemicals. Yet when information was released, allowing the public to directly compare companies' chemical pollution, it had a galvanic effect. Even in the absence of binding regulations, companies frantically competed to reduce their pollution, if only to escape from the dread "Top 10 Polluters in Your Area" lists. (In a similar spirit, Obama's 2011 budget includes $21 million for the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule, which would put emissions from U.S. companies on public record.)
The transparency of the Copenhagen Accord commitments could have a similar effect, exposing countries' efforts to public scrutiny and motivating them to follow through. Admittedly, this effect will be somewhat muted by other geopolitical crosscurrents, but it will be felt. So how do countries' existing public commitments stack up?
The United States has pledged to reduce its emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. That happens to be the short-term target in the climate bill that passed the House last year and is currently being hashed over in the Senate; the White House's pledge is a clearly a nudge to the Senate to get the job done. Commitments to the international community may not matter much to the likes of Sen. Mary Landrieu, a centrist Democrat recalcitrant on climate-change legislation. But, for any legislator even notionally concerned with America's reputation on the world stage, the commitment will exert some pull. At the very least it might convince some wavering senators that the administration is serious about using the EPA to regulate carbon pollution if Congress doesn't act.
China is sending a different signal with its pledge -- almost downplaying or obscuring its ambition. When browbeaten into putting forward a verifiable target, China reiterated the conservative goal in its latest five-year economic development plan: The country will reduce its "carbon intensity" -- emissions per unit of GDP -- 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
There's reason to believe, however, that China is pursuing a kind of underpromise-overdeliver strategy -- at once minimizing international obligations and aggressively pursuing clean energy development. Premier Wen Jiabao has charged his new national energy commission with getting 15 percent of the country's power from renewable sources and increasing energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2020. Many familiar with China say that the sheer scale of investment underway means the country is almost certain to blow past its stated targets. Given that it surpassed the United States as the world's largest manufacturer of wind turbines last year and is on target to do the same on solar panels soon, China's leaders may be content to downplay their ambitions internationally while the U.S. Senate dithers.
And finally, the Maldives is using the international attention another way entirely. The low-lying island nation, existentially threatened by climate change, has issued what amounts to a moral clarion call. It has it has pledged 100 percent carbon neutrality by 2020, a target its foreign minister said is "voluntary and unconditional." That should serve as an example to other countries of what ambition (not to say desperation) looks like.
In a sense, what is happening in international climate politics parallels what is happening domestically in the United States. As hopes for a single comprehensive solution fade, attention is turning to bottom-up efforts -- from the UNFCCC to a group of leading emitters, and from national governments to regions, states, and localities.
"Everyone is waiting for a U.N. deal, but carbon-cutting actions have been going on all along," says Terry Tamminen, an energy and environment consultant who advises state and provincial governments on developing climate plans. "It's been right under everyone's nose." The Copenhagen Accord, having surfaced an existing web of national and subnational policies, may ultimately prompt a needed shift of attention and pressure to what is happening on the ground and what is required to link up and accelerate the many promising efforts already underway.
ALL CONTENTS ©2009 WASHINGTONPOST.NEWSWEEK INTERACTIVE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentTo save Amazon rainforest, expert pushes smarter farming to replace slash-and-burn
By: BRADLEY BROOKS | Associated Press | 02/08/10
NOVA CANAA DO NORTE, BRAZIL — Walking on a dusty field of cut rice that was once rainforest, researcher Flavio Wruck explains how farming, the Amazon's biggest killer, can be turned into its best defender.
At the government-run experimental farm where he works, he points toward plots where crops, cattle and timber live together.
It's a simple system, long practiced in the U.S., of rotating crops and revitalizing pasture instead of simply chopping down forest and planting new grasslands. But here in the state of Mato Grosso ("thick forest"), where ranchers and farmers have destroyed more of the Amazon than anywhere else, it's a relatively new idea.
In the Amazon, the practice has been for ranchers to raze a patch of jungle, plant pasture and graze cattle on it for about 20 years until it's exhausted, and then rip up a fresh patch of virgin forest.
It's up to Wruck and others to convince farmers and ranchers that by diversifying and renewing the nutrients in soil, they can farm the same tract for several generations — and make more money.
"Our integration system rapidly increases the efficiency of crop and pasture land, allowing, for example, ranchers to graze as much as five times more cattle on the same piece of ground," Wruck said during a recent visit to the 750-hectare (1,850-acre) Fazenda Gramada farm run by Brazil's agricultural research agency Embrapa.
"That means we can break the cycle of ranchers needing to deforest to create more pasture."
Brazilian officials and environmentalists agree that cattle ranching is the biggest cause of deforestation of the nation's Amazon, an area the size of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, about 20 percent of which has been destroyed.
The rainforest may be the world's best defense against climate change because it absorbs the carbon dioxide blamed for global warming. But the gains are offset by burned or rotted vegetation that releases about 75 percent of Brazil's carbon emissions.
Right now the government is claiming stepped-up policing has produced the biggest annual drop in deforestation since it started keeping records 20 years ago — 7,008 square kilometers (2,705 square miles) from August 2008 to July 2009. That was 46 percent less than the previous year.
But with only 1,400 agents overseeing about 5 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) of the Amazon, and most of those bunched in targeted areas, environmentalists have their doubts, saying the real reason is the global economic slowdown and the drop in demand for cattle, soy and timber.
The government aims to reduce deforestation by 80 percent within a decade, and the challenge for Wruck is to foster smarter farming.
Across Brazil some 60 million hectares (150 million acres) of pasture is considered degraded, supporting less than one head of cattle per hectare.
"We have the technology to make that five head per hectare quickly," Wruck said.
But the slash-and-burn mentality among Brazilian farmers is hard to crack. Moreover, the drive for more ranching and farming land is higher than ever to feed Brazil's rising demand for meat and China's appetite for soy.
Complicating the problem, only about 5 percent of private land in the area is even titled. That makes it hard to prove who is responsible for illegally destroying the forest, leading to a culture of impunity and even more deforestation.
Wruck wants to change the thinking of Brazilians like 34-year-old Haullingtom Barbosa, who runs 1,300 head of cattle on 500 hectares (1,200 acres) at his ranch 2,170 kilometers (1,350 miles) from Rio de Janeiro.
Walking in his luminescent-green pasture, among blackened trunks of felled trees, Barbosa explains the ease of starting a ranch in the Amazon.
"We came here three years ago because we heard a good living could be made and that land was available," he said. "We cleared the forest, threw out some grass seed and let it grow. We can feed cattle on this pasture for 20 years without doing anything."
It's a truth that Wruck and other agriculture scientists acknowledge: Temperate climate and ample rainfall mean just about anything can grow with little help.
And if Barbosa runs out of land? The rancher's answer was simple: Raze more rainforest, at least up to the legal limit of 20 percent of his holdings.
"This land here just gives and gives," he said.
Wruck said his role is to persuade ranchers that his system gives much more.
A typical plot on Wruck's farm alternates rows of balsa or eucalyptus trees, a cash crop, with 30-meter (-yard) wide areas of pasture. Every five years, the pasture is replaced by a grain or cereal crop which replenish nutrients in the soil.
With hundreds of acres put to use this way, a rancher will have constantly rotating areas of grazing and crop lands, along with timber.
"Our methods will allow Brazil to grow much more and deforest much less," Flavio said, standing next to a row of eucalyptus trees bordering soybeans. "It's a simple way to increase revenue and halt deforestation at the same time."
One convert is Mario Wolf Filho, a rancher, farmer and president of his farmers' union in Nova Canaa do Norte, a town in the area.
"I've been able to triple my productivity in the same area without opening more forest," he said. "It's fantastic. I make economic gains and not at the expense of the environment. It's Brazil's way forward."
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentADB approves $135 mln loan for China's green power plant
Xinhua in People Daily Online | February 08, 2010
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Monday said it has approved a 135 million U.S. dollar loan to help China build a coal-fired integrated gasification combined cycle ( IGCC) power plant, whose carbon dioxide emission rate is only one tenth of a usual coal-fired plant.
The 419.59 million U.S. dollar project, scheduled to be completed in northern city of Tianjin by 2012, will be the first IGCC plant in a developing country and can generate up to 1,470 gigawatt-hours of electricity every year, the Philippines-based development lender said.
Plants using IGCC technology turn coal into a synthetic gas, removing impurities, before the gas is burned in a gas turbine, ADB said, adding that it is more efficient than other clean coal technologies but its adoption has been slow due to high costs and some perceived technology complexity and risks.
ADB said it is providing additional 1.25 million dollars in technical assistance to pave the way for the second and third phases of the program which will result in a scaled-up IGCC plant fitted with carbon capture and storage technology by 2013.
Studies showing that it is now the least-cost option to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants by up to 90 percent, ADB added.
The bank said the remaining costs of the Tianjin IGCC project will be funded from equity contributions of 84 million dollars, a loan of 195.59 million dollars from a group of local banks, and the grant from ADB's Climate Change Fund.
The ADB loan has a 26-year term, including a grace period of six years, with the interest rate determined in accordance with ADB's LIBOR-based lending facility.
China is among the world's top coal consumers. The government has launched a clean coal power generation program aiming to sharply reduce pollution as well as lower the carbon dioxide emissions.
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content‘We cannot eat electricity’
The adverse impacts of climate change on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam will be amplified several times if hydropower dams planned upstream by other countries are built, experts say
Thannhien News | February 8, 2010
Land erosion on the Mekong River in Dong Thap Province
Both local and international experts said at a forum on the Mekong River environment organized by the Can Tho University on Wednesday that the dams will seriously threaten food security in riparian countries.
Dao Trong Tu, former Vietnam country coordinator for the Mekong River Commission, said three hydropower dams are already under construction in China, and another 11 were planned in Laos and Cambodia.
La Chhuon, an expert of Oxfam Australia in Cambodia, said fishermen in the country had told him they wanted to eat fish and would not be able to eat electricity generated by hydropower dams.
Without exception, every resident was unhappy with the building of dams and did not care for the compensation they would get when they are displaced by such projects, he added.
Carl Middleton, Mekong Program Coordinator of International Rivers, an INGO, that seeks to protect rivers and defend the rights of communities that depend on them, stressed that the projects threatened food security in the region.
He estimated that Mekong riparian countries would lose 700,000 to 1.6 million tons of fish a year to the dams, while this has been the main food for millions people there.
Who benefits?
Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen of Palang Thai, a Thailand-based non-profit organization, said the predicted electricity consumption in Thailand was always higher than actual demand.
According to the Palang Thai website, it “works to ensure that the transformations that occur in the region's energy sector are economically rational, and that they augment, rather than undermine, social and environmental justice and sustainability.”
Sangarasri accused companies investing in hydropower projects of being motivated solely by economic benefit rather than helping fight power shortages. She said such motivations should be eliminated and more accurate assessments made of power needs.
Natural resources can meet genuine demand but cannot satisfy human greed for profit, she said.
Nguyen Huu Thien, a Vietnamese wetlands expert, said the river flows would be controlled by the managers of hydropower dams to the detriment of other people’s interests.
He said there would be less silt supplied by the river and farmers would have to spend more on fertilizers. The losses caused to farmers and other residents would outweigh by far the total benefits generated by dams, he added.
Reported by Thanh Nien staff
Copyright © 200
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentAmazon rainforest will bear cost of biofuel policies in Brazil
Rhett A. Butler | mongabay.com | February 08, 2010
Business-as-usual agricultural expansion to meet biofuel production targets for 2020 will take a heavy toll on Brazil's Amazon rainforest in coming years, undermining the potential emissions savings of transitioning from fossil fuels to biofuels, warns a new paper published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research suggests that intensification of cattle ranching, combined with efforts to promote high-yielding oil crops like oil palm could lessen forecast greenhouse gas emissions from indirect land use in the region.
Conducting a spatially-explicit analysis of potential land-use change from biofuel feedstock expansion in Brazil, David M. Lapola of the University of Kassel (Germany) and colleagues find that while relatively little forest land will be directly converted for biofuel production, large swathes of rainforest and cerrado will be indirectly impacted through displacement of cattle ranching, presently the dominant form of land use in the Brazilian Amazon.
Soy in Mato Grosso state, Brazil.
"To fill the biofuel production targets for 2020, sugarcane would require an additional 57,200 [square kilometers] and soybean an additional 108,100 sq km. Roughly 88% of this expansion (145,700 sq km) would take place in areas previously used as rangeland," the authors write. "In our simulations, direct deforestation is only caused by soybean biodiesel and amounts to only 1,800 sq km of forest and 2,000 sq km of woody savanna."
A carbon payback time of four years would be needed to compensate for direct emissions from conversion for cane relative to emissions from fossil fuels. The payback for soy biodiesel would be 35 years, according to the research.
But factoring in indirect land use — cattle ranching displaced to forest lands by cropland expansion — dramatically extends the amount of time needed for emissions savings from biofuel production (relative to fossil fuel use) to compensate for emissions from deforestation: by 40 years for cane ethanol and 211 years for soy biodiesel.
Modeled direct (A) and indirect (B) LUC caused by the fulfillment of Brazil’s biofuel (sugarcane ethanol and soybean biodiesel) production targets for 2020. Image and caption from Lapola et al. 2010.
"Indirect land-use change could considerably compromise the GHG savings from growing biofuels, mainly by pushing rangeland frontier into the Amazon forest and Brazilian Cerrado savanna," Lapola and colleagues write. "In our simulations, there is an expansion of 121,970 sq km of rangeland into forest areas, and 46,000 sq km into other native habitats, due to the expansion of biofuel croplands."
"Sugarcane ethanol and soybean biodiesel would be responsible for 41% and 59% of this indirect deforestation, respectively."
The authors suggest that planting oil palm instead of sugarcane or soy on pasture lands would result in some direct deforestation (300 sq km) but significantly reduce emissions from indirect land-use change due to the crop's substantially higher oil yield. They also note that restoring the productivity of Brazil's 290,000 sq km of degraded and abandoned rangeland could reduce pressure to convert native forests, thereby mitigating potential emissions.
Direct (red) and indirect (blue) land-use change to meet Brazil’s biodiesel production target for 2020 with soy and palm oil biodiesel. Adapted from Lapola et al. 2010.
Lapola and colleagues conclude by calling for "an increased interconnection between land-use sectors."
"We argue that to avoid the undesired indirect land-use change by biofuels presented here, strategies for cooperation between the cattle ranching and biofuel-growing sectors should be implemented by the biofuel sector (based on the sector’s own interest in minimizing GHG emissions), and institutional links between these two sectors should be strengthened by the government."
"In other words, biofuel organizations and the government should support initiatives toward modernization of the cattle ranching sector to guarantee that the production of biofuels is not causing ILUC, which would compromise the efficacy (in terms of carbon savings) of their own product. Such a requirement should also be considered as a standard for the production of sustainable biofuels."
Lapola et al. Indirect land-use changes can overcome carbon savings from biofuels in Brazil. PNAS Early Edition for the week of Feb 8, 2010. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0907318107
Copyright mongabay 2010
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentClimate change impact of soil underestimated: study
AFP in Yahoo! News | Feb 8, 2010
HELSINKI (AFP) – Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate change estimates Monday after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than previously thought.
Swamp soil being converted for cultivation in South Africa. Finnish researchers called for a revision … AFP/File
"A Finnish research group has proved that the present standard measurements underestimate the effect of climate warming on emissions from the soil," the Finnish Environment Institute said in a statement.
"The error is serious enough to require revisions in climate change estimates," it said, adding that all climate models used soil emission estimates based on measurements received using an erroneous method.
The institute said that while emissions from soil were known to have a significant influence on climate warming, previous studies took into account short-term measurements which gave "systematically biased estimates on the effects of climate change on the emissions."
The Finnish scientists' experiments in boreal forests used radiocarbon measurements and showed that the more abundant, slowly decomposing compounds in soil were more sensitive to rises in temperature, the statement said.
This showed "carbon dioxide emissions from the soil will be up to 50 percent higher than those suggested by the present mainstream method," if the mean global temperature rose by the previously forecasted five degrees Celsius before the end of the century, and if the carbon flow to soil did not increase.
The institute said a 100 to 200 percent increase of forest biomass was needed to offset the increasing carbon emissions from soil, whereas previous estimates called for a 70 to 80 percent increase.
The research was carried out by the Finnish Environment Institute, the Finnish Forest Research Institute and the Dating Laboratory of the Finnish Museum of Natural History at the University of Helsinki.
The results are published in the February issue of the journal Ecology, the statement said.
Copyright © 2010 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved
Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentThe case for climate action must be remade from the ground upwards
With the science under siege and the politics in disarray, it may fall to civil society to keep this still crucial fight alive
Ian Katz
guardian.co.uk
8 February 2010
What a difference three months makes. Back in November, the world broadly agreed that emissions of carbon dioxide were heating up the planet and that we needed to do something about it, even if we couldn't agree exactly what. And though we'd had the usual pre-summit rollercoaster ride of dire predictions and naive exhortations (yes, I plead guilty to some of those), even hardheaded types dared to hope that Copenhagen might produce the basis of a global climate treaty.
As late as 7 December, 56 newspapers around the world could declare in a common, Guardian-led editorial: "The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it."
Now, with climate science under siege and climate politics in disarray, that sounds like the rhetoric of another age. The American commentatorWalter Russell Mead recently captured the mood: "The global warming movement as we have known it is dead … basically, Sarah Palin 1, Al Gore zip." A senior British diplomat compares those trying to secure global action on climate change post-Copenhagen to "small groups wandering in different directions around the battlefield like a beaten army". A leading scientist offers an equally pithy assessment: "Everybody is completely clueless."
Not depressed yet? This weekend a BBC poll showed a dramatic fall in the number of people who believe warming is happening; carbon markets have tumbled; a Guardian survey of over 30 leading figures involved in climate negotiations found almost none who believed a global deal was possible this year; in Australia a man who described climate change as "absolute crap" could soon be prime minister.
What went wrong? How long have you got: the leak of the "climategate" emails that showed scientists behaving just as tribally as their detractors, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's great glacier meltdown (enough "gates" for now), the abject failure of Copenhagen, Obama's Massachusetts disaster and a bitterly cold winter in much of Europe and the US. If you doubt the effect of the last of these, take a look at stories like "The mini-ice age starts here" in the Daily Mail, or the website entitled If Global Warming Is Real Then Why Is It Cold?. Add to that lot a mildly hysterical binary culture in which the case for action on climate change is either unanswerable or in tatters, and the perfect storm is complete.
It's worth considering a few of these setbacks in a bit more detail. WhatFred Pearce's brilliant investigation of the East Anglia emails, published last week in the Guardian, showed was embattled scientists doing some pretty shabby things: conspiring to keep sceptics out of journals, using every trick they could to avoid handing over data to their critics and, in at least one case, apparently trying to hide weaknesses in a major piece of research.
The apparent abuse of the peer review process is perhaps the most worrying aspect because it is meant to be the gold standard that allows us to distinguish credible science from pseudoscience.
It is hard to see how Phil Jones, the director of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and some of his colleagues will escape censure for the behaviour Pearce exposed. But it is also worth pointing out what neither he nor any other journalist has so far found: any evidence of scientists fiddling their results, or indeed anything that calls into question the scientific case that man is causing dangerous climate change.
Given that, some, particularly in the climate science community, have wondered why the Guardian devoted so much energy and space to excavating the affair. Myles Allen, a distinguished Oxford physicist, suggested on these pages that the Guardian was "hoping against hope to turn up a genuine error which fundamentally alters conclusions". The truth couldn't be further away, but only by looking thoroughly under every rock can those of us pressing for action on climate change maintain with confidence that the scientific case remains sound.
Which brings us to the dismal case of the IPCC and the Himalayan glaciers. Many scientists are still bemused at how the expert panel could have made quite such an eye-watering howler: the prediction that the glaciers would melt by 2035 was not just wrong but wrong by a factor of 10. One scientist tells me that glaciologists had spotted the error and notified the IPCC about it as early as last September, but no effort was made to correct it.
One-off mistakes happen, of course, even in the most scrupulous organisations, but the glaciers affair seems to point to some wider problems. The first is that not all IPCC-cited science is quite what the public imagined it to be. Landing with a thud every five years or so, the panel's vast "assessment reports" have been treated as scientific tablets of stone: Here is What We Know About Climate Change Now.
But many of us have been shocked to discover that some claims are based on research conducted by pressure groups, or even journalists. Whereas so-called Working Group I, which deals with the pure science, is based almost exclusively on peer-reviewed work, Working Group II, on the impact of warming, leans heavily on "grey literature". Researchers argue that is necessary because peer review studies simply aren't available for many of the remote areas the report seeks to cover, but the result is a fat target for critics: In recent weeks there have been a string of stories about apparently flaky assertions in the report. The IPCC's problems have been compounded by an approach to crisis management best characterised as "aim at foot, fire". Having failed for months to correct the glacier error, the panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, then managed to come across as haughty and unapologetic. The posse of journalists and bloggers now hounding him with (unfair, I think) allegations of venality and hypocrisy, will not stop till he has been cast into the rising sea.
The consequences (and causes) of the Copenhagen lash-up may take a little longer to divine. Certainly it showed that China was not ready to accept the constraints on its growth that a legally binding carbon settlement would entail. And that Europe was not prepared to lead the way to a low carbon world by cutting deeper in the hope that others would follow.
But whatever the full postmortem reveals, it is clear that the energy has drained from the push for a global deal. Before Copenhagen a senior British negotiator told me it was crucial that the politicians at least agreed a clear timetable to a legal deal: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay." In his analogy the crowd have left the stadium and there is no scheduled replay.
Back then Gordon Brown warned that the world needed to seal a deal within the first six months of 2010. In the runup to a dangerous mid-term election, President Obama would not risk trying to push a controversial cap and trade bill through the US Congress.
And that was before the Democrats' shock defeat in Massachussets. Since then only the most relentless optimists – climate change secretary Ed Miliband among them – suggest this year might see the US climate bill many regard as the necessary prerequisite for a global deal.
So far, so grim, but what can be done? First, climate scientists must make a public commitment to greater openness. They should acknowledge that the huge implications and importance of what they do mean the public expect and are entitled to a greater degree of scrutiny of their work. They should repudiate the laager mentality and evasions of the East Anglia researchers. Instead of grudgingly yielding to Freedom of Information requests, they should publish their data and workings online wherever possible.
In the longer term more open ways of reviewing science should be explored. Royal Society president Martin Rees talks about an Amazon-style system where reviewers can openly rate papers online. It is in this spirit that the Guardian will today publish Pearce's full 28,000 word account of the East Anglia emails affair online and invite anyone involved to tell us if we've got it right.
Then, the case for action must be remade from the ground up. It's no good politicians and scientists going on TV and insisting that the overwhelming body of climate science has not been touched by the scandals. They need to go back to first principles and explain how we know that CO2 causes warming, how we know CO2 levels are rising, how we know it's our fault, and how we can predict what is likely to happen if we don't act.
Next, the credibility of the IPCC – or some form of scientific high court – must be restored. In the short term that means appointing independent experts to review any alleged errors in the panel's reports. At the same time the IPCC should renounce, or at least severely restrict the use of, grey literature. "If that means you can't be comprehensive then don't be," says a senior scientist advocating this course. There is a strong case for more radical reforms: the panel should arguably be replaced by a body controlled by national scientific academies rather than governments.
Those who want action on climate change will meanwhile have to accept a more incremental approach. Mead describes the effort to secure a global deal as "like asking a jellyfish to climb a flight of stairs; you can poke and prod all you want, you can cajole and you can threaten. But you are asking for something that you just can't get". Even the head of an NGO who has argued passionately for a binding, comprehensive deal tells me: "Maybe you've got to unpick the uber-deal and work out which bits are possible to do now, and build confidence."
Finally, anyone who cares about this issue must fight to keep it alive. With Barack Obama embroiled in a domestic political battle, powerful advocates like Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown likely soon to exit the stage and European leaders notably reticent in Copenhagen, it is hard to see where the political leadership for a global deal will come from. So it may fall to civil society – to individuals, organisations and businesses – to pick up the baton. The choice remains the one described in that global editorial, only now the answer is likely to be decided by us.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentWhy Africa should not support the Copenhagen accord
By Benard Namanya | The New Vision | 8th February, 2010
THE Copenhagen accord on climate change was neither adopted nor endorsed by the 15th conference of parties in Copenhagen, Denmark. This means the accord does not have any legal standing within the UN system.
Notwithstanding, the accord’s lack of legal standing, the UN and some developed countries have taken the view that the accord should be implemented by a coalition of the willing countries.
As a result, on January 18, the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) wrote to all countries inviting those that wish to be associated with the accord to do so. The letter also invited developed countries to submit their emission targets for 2020 and developing countries to submit their mitigation actions.
This latest move from the UNFCCC indicates that future climate change negotiations are likely to revolve around the accord. This, therefore, calls for further review of the accord for a better understanding.
Whether or not African countries should associate themselves with the Copenhagen accord is an issue that needs urgent resolution. For Africa, one of the most important issues is that developed countries must undertake emission reductions that science demands, to avoid dangerous climate change.
Fortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already resolved this scientific question of the required level of emission reductions. In its fourth assessment report (2007), the IPCC concluded that in order keep global temperature within safe limits, developed countries must cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80–95% below 1990 levels by 2050.
What does the accord say about this important issue? It does not set out emissions targets, but has made provision for developed countries to submit emissions targets for 2020, which will then be annexed to the accord. The anticipated submissions of developed countries on emission targets should be carefully examined. African countries should demand that when developed countries complete their submissions, a technical assessment must be made to determine whether they are consistent with what science demands.
Should African countries associate with the Copenhagen accord in its current form as has been requested by the UNFCCC? As can clearly be seen from the above, the accord is an incomplete agreement that lacks fundamental provisions.
African countries should not associate with it until developed countries have put on the table emission targets that are consistent with what science demands.
Without emission reductions by developed countries, severe climate change impacts will continue to hit poor continents such as Africa and adaptation alone will not be the answer.
Some have argued that since the accord has an offer of $30b for the period 2010-2012 for climate change activities in developing countries, African countries should quickly embrace it to get a piece of the cake.
However, I disagree with this argument, not because I do not appreciate the financial needs of African countries, but because climate change aid without the corresponding emission reductions in developed countries, is simply not the correct approach to addressing the problem.
African countries must also bear in mind that the accord is vague on the source of this financing and developed countries have not made any financial commitments. Ultimately, the promise of financing from developed countries, that has been a source of attraction, might not materialise.
The writer is a lawyer and director of Climate Change Concern
© Copyright The New Vision 2000-2010. All rights reserved.
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentDisclosing financial climate-change risks
By Nancy K. Kopp | The Hill | 02/08/10
Legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn ushered in the 1933 Truth in Securities Act in the grim depths of the Great Depression. It was based on the principle that the purchase and sale of securities should be an honest bargain, and disclosure its cornerstone.
But business trends change with the times, and today one that Sam Rayburn never heard of — climate change — presents a new major challenge to investors’ bottom lines.
Investors representing over $1 trillion in assets filed a petition in 2007 requesting that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission clarify the types of information public companies should be disclosing about material impacts from climate change. Investors with more than $5 trillion of holdings submitted letters supporting the petition.
That’s just what the SEC did last month in approving new climate-related interpretive guidance for corporate disclosure. It is exactly the kind of “be-prepared” posture that is its mandate. The commission acknowledged what many of us know: that climate change is here, that it is already affecting businesses and their prospects, and that the high-potential opportunities it represents are as much in need of disclosing as potential costs.
Climate change is already guiding decision-making on a massive scale. In the U.S., more than 1,000 cities and towns are carrying out reductions in greenhouse gases. Over two-dozen states have mandates for boosting renewable energy. Over 20 states have mandated greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
Companies that address these issues are swooping in to seize the opportunities these actions represent. That’s a positive thing for our economy, but also something material that investors need to know about.
As institutional investors we don’t legislate, but we do have an unwavering responsibility to make rigorous, prudent decisions about the investments we are entrusted with managing.
But analyses of the 10-K filings we depend on have repeatedly revealed widespread disclosure deficiencies. Studies relying on detailed qualitative reviews and sophisticated search engines examining thousands of filings show that disclosures of climate-related information are inadequate and inconsistent.
These disclosure weaknesses represent what investors should dread the most: hidden risk. This is risk that can and does implode in fund portfolios — like the risks deeply embedded in packages of subprime mortgages and credit default swaps that nearly took the world economy down. Digging out from that avoidable debacle will take many years and much pain, particularly for Main Street citizens who depend on functioning credit markets and value stability in 401(k)’s and other benefit funds.
Climate change risk should be different — and will be with a commitment to stay ahead of developments, and regulators like the SEC acting to improve disclosure.
Kopp is the Maryland state treasurer.
© 2010 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentGovernments Confirm Climate Accord Pledges, No New Commitments
Environnment News Service | February 8, 2010
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has received national pledges to cut and limit greenhouse gases by 2020 from 55 countries, including China and the United States that together account for 78 percent of global emissions from energy use.
The national pledges were required under the Copenhagen Accord agreed at the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December. The pledges were made for the period after the end of 2012 when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol emissions targets expires.
"The commitment to confront climate change at the highest level is beyond doubt," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. "These pledges have been formally communicated to the UNFCCC. Greater ambition is required to meet the scale of the challenge. But I see these pledges as clear signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion."
"This represents an important invigoration of the UN climate change talks under the two tracks of Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, said de Boer, the UN's top climate negotiator.
Expanding desert in Africa stretches across Mali and Burkina Faso. (Photo by Breaking the Cycle)
The main outcome of the UN climate change conference, the Copenhagen Accord was negotiated on the final day by the leaders of 28 developed and developing countries and the European Commission. These countries account for over 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The conference then took official note of the Copenhagen Accord.
In their pledges, countries did not go beyond the commitments that many of them made at or before the Copenhagen summit. Yet countries retained the level of ambition in their earlier pledges, setting a basis for building additional commitment over the coming year.
The steepest emissions cut was pledged by Norway, which offered to cut greenhouse gases 30 to 40 percent below 1990 levels for the period beyond 2012 as long as major emitting Parties agree on emissions reductions in line with the 2°Celsius target.
Keeping the global temperature rise to 2°Celsius above the pre-industrial temperature, or around 1.2°C above today's level, is the level that most scientists say is necessary to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change - the most severe floods, sea level rise, droughts and heat waves, disease migration and species extinctions.
Scientific evidence shows that to keep within the 2°C ceiling, global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to peak by 2020 at the latest, be cut by at least 50 percent of their 1990 levels by 2050, and then continue to decline.
Though the developed country targets pledged under the Copenhagen Accord fall short of these levels, if implemented, the cuts would reduce the emissions linked to climate change.
Japan pledged the next steepest cut of 25 percent below 1990 levels, while Russia pledged a 15 to 25 cut depending on accounting of the potential of Russia's forests to absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
The European Union repeated its unilateral commitment to reduce the EU's overall emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels and a conditional offer to increase this cut to 30 percent provided that other major emitters agree to take on their fair share of a global reduction effort.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, "The EU is determined to move ahead rapidly with implementing the Copenhagen Accord in order to make progress towards the agreement that we need to hold global warming below 2°C."
"The Accord provides a basis on which to build this future agreement and I therefore urge all countries to associate themselves with it and notify ambitious emission targets or actions for inclusion as we are doing," said Barroso.
European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said, "Swift action is needed to make operational key elements of the Accord such as fast-start financing for developing countries, the fight against deforestation and the development and transfer of low carbon technologies."
European heads of state and government will assess the post-Copenhagen situation at the Informal European Council on February 11.
Road sign in Australia (Photo by Quirinoviera)
Australia will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent level 2000 levels by 2020 "if the world agrees to an ambitious global deal capable of stabilizing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent or lower."
The United States and Canada each pledged a 17 percent cut below 2005 levels.
The U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said Thursday, "The Copenhagen Accord includes important advances on funding, technology, forestry, adaptation and transparency. The United States is committed to working with our partners around the world to make the Accord operational and to continue the effort to build a strong, science-based, global regime to combat the profound threat of climate change."
While a blizzard this week buried the east coast under inches of snow, that is no indication that global warming is abating. A new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows 2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.
Canada was the only developed country to reduce its emissions pledge, scaling it back from 20 percent to 17 percent. The new pledge amounts to a 2.5 emissions increase above 1990 levels.
If global sea level rise amounts to 39", the areas in red will be susceptible to inundation. (Map by Weiss & Overpeck University of Arizona)
The Harper government has a pattern of announcing climate plans and then failing to implement needed measures to meet them, says the nonprofit Council of Canadians. Cabinet documents leaked in December indicated that the government plans to allow emissions from the tar sands to increase.
The developing countries pledged a variety of voluntary actions that are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Brazil pledged to reduce Amazon deforestation, restore grazing lands, and increase the use of biofuels.
China pledged to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared to the 2005 level, increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15 percent by 2020 and increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from the 2005 levels.
India pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20-25 percent by 2020 in comparison to the 2005 level.
Indonesia pledged to aim for an emissions reduction of 26 percent by 2020 by sustainable peat land management, reduction in rate of deforestation and shift to low-emissions transportation and renewable energy.
South Africa pledged to reduce emissions 34 percent by 2020 and 42 percent by 2025 below a "business as usual" growth trajectory.
Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Resources Institute's Climate and Energy Program, is one of many environmentalists urging governments to do more.
"Following a month of uncertainty, it is now clear that the Copenhagen Accord will support the world in moving forward to meaningful global action on climate change," said Morgan. "However, although important in showing the intent to move to a low-carbon economy, the commitments are far below what is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The level of ambition must be ratcheted up if the world is to avoid dangerous levels of warming."
Click here to see the pledges of developed countries.
Click here to see the pledges of developing countries.
The next round of formal UNFCCC negotiations is set for Bonn, Germany, at the end of May 2010. De Boer said several countries have indicated their wish to see a quick return to the negotiations with more meetings than the scheduled sessions.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2010. All rights reserved.
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentAustralian Greens question colossal China coal deal
AFP in Yahoo! News | Feb 8, 2010
SYDNEY (AFP) – A massive Australian coal export deal with China, seen as boosting the economy and creating jobs, would ultimately result in enormous greenhouse gas emissions, The Greens political party said Sunday.
Australian miner Resourcehouse announced Saturday it had secured a 60-billion-US-dollar deal with energy-hungry China to ship 30 million tonnes of coal a year from a proposed mine in Queensland.
But Greens Senator Bob Brown said the deal would result in the release of significant carbon pollution into the world's atmosphere once the coal was shipped to China and burned to create electricity.
The deal did not line up with the Australian government's push to introduce a carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) to limit greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, he said.
"In one signed contract this single coal export deal with China will produce more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere... than the government's CPRS scheme, in fact more than double," Brown told reporters.
"They are saying we have to act on climate change in this country... but we don't have to act on it. It's going to come out of chimneys in China so why should we worry."
A spokesman for Treasurer Wayne Swan declined to comment on Brown's remarks.
Coal is Australia's largest export, contributing some 54.7 billion dollars (47.5 billion US) to the national coffers in 2008-2009.
Australia's government, which has been pushing to get a proposed carbon trading scheme through parliament, has said it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by between five and 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, depending on the commitments of other nations.
The Resourcehouse deal, described as Australia's biggest ever export contract, would supply China Power International Development (CPI) from a thermal coal mine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland for 20 years.
Queensland's Labor premier, Anna Bligh, said the development, which will include four underground mines, two open cut mines, a new coal port and a rail line, would be good for the state's economy.
"What the signing of this contract with the Chinese company means is that Australia's largest single export deal ever signed will be happening right here in Queensland," Bligh said on Saturday.
Australia is already China's largest source of coal imports, accounting for 43.9 million of the 125.8 million tonnes of coal imported by the country in 2009.
Copyright © 2010 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved
Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentU.S. forming new climate change agency
Office will work with weather, ocean services to report on warming
AP in MSNBC | Feb. 8, 2010
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's administration is forming a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.
Climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.
NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
Researchers and leaders from around the world met last month in Denmark to discuss ways to reduce climate-warming emissions, and a follow-up session is planned for later this year in Mexico.
"More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it's going to affect them," Lubchenco explained. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.
One-stop shopping on climate information
Portions of the Weather Service that have been studying climate, as well as offices from some other NOAA agencies, will be transferred to the new NOAA Climate Service.
The new agency will initially be led by Thomas Karl, director of the current National Climatic Data Center. The Climate Service will be headquartered in Washington and will have six regional directors across the country.
Lubchenco also announced a new NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect a vast array of climatic data from NOAA and other sources. It will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information," she said.
Creation of the Climate Service requires a series of steps, but if all goes well, it should be finished by the end of the year, officials said.
© 2010 msnbc.com
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
