Yahoo News 4 Sep 09;
GENEVA (AFP) – Countries could speed up their action against climate change if they tackled air pollution as well as carbon dioxide enissions, the UN Environment Programme said Friday.
UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said there is strong evidence that the world's climate is changing faster than initially expected, adding to the urgency for concrete measures against global warming.
"It is... becoming clear that the world must also deploy all available means to combat climate change," Steiner said.
"At this critical juncture, every transformative measure and no substance contributing to climate change should be overlooked."
Troubled negotiations on emissions targets in climate change talks are focusing on carbon dioxide, but scientists estimate that nearly 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from other compounds, according to UNEP.
The agency believes that national efforts to control the pollutants -- such as black carbon or soot, low level ozone or smog, methane and nitrogen compounds -- could simultaneously generate health and economic savings as well, and address other environmental concerns.
CO2 cuts and other international steps at the Copenhagen conference in December were the "over-arching concern," Steiner said.
But countries could also take individual action to control air pollution from inefficient burning of wood, coal, diesel engines, methane emissions from agriculture and by tackling deforestation, officials underlined.
"There remains some scientific uncertainty about some of these pollutants' precise contribution to global warming," Steiner acknowledged.
"But a growing body of evidence points to a potentially significant role," he added.
The air pollutants highlighted by UNEP also tend to have a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Efforts to tackle them could have a swift impact in reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases, according to scientists.
Widen global warming fight beyond CO2: U.N.
Alister Doyle, Reuters 4 Sep 09;
GENEVA (Reuters) - The world should widen a fight against global warming by curbing a string of pollutants other than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Friday.
Heat-trapping methane, nitrogen compounds, low-level ozone and soot are responsible for almost half of the man-made emissions stoking climate change in the 21st century, it said.
A wider assault on pollutants, twinned with cuts in carbon dioxide, would help toward a new U.N. climate pact due to be agreed in December and have other benefits such as improving human health, raising crop yields and protecting forests.
"The science is showing us that global warming is happening faster and on a greater scale than anticipated," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told Reuters on the sidelines of a World Climate Conference in Geneva.
"There are other avenues by which we can move forward" than cutting carbon dioxide, the main focus of a planned new U.N. climate deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. "And there are multiple benefits."
Soot or 'black carbon', for instance, is among air pollutants blamed for killing between 1.6 and 1.8 million people a year, many from respiratory diseases caused by smoke from wood-burning stoves in developing nations.
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And ozone, a component of smog often linked to emissions of fossil fuels, has been blamed for loss of more than 6 billion euros ($8.56 billion) worth of crops in the European Union in 2000. U.S. studies suggest it cuts annual U.S. cereals output by 5 percent.
Nitrogen compounds, from sources such as sewage and inefficient use of fertilizers, stoke global warming and can cause "dead zones" in the oceans that cut fish stocks.
And methane, which comes from sources such as deforestation and livestock, contributes up to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
"We believe that those involved in the negotiations (on a new climate pact) should broaden their field of vision," Joseph Alcamo, UNEP chief scientist, told a news conference. "It's not just a matter of carbon dioxide and energy."
Many of the non-carbon dioxide pollutants are not regulated by international treaties.
The U.N.'s existing Kyoto Protocol for combating global warming, for instance, sets limits only for developed nations on emissions until 2012 of six gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
