Best of our wild blogs: 4 Jul 10

Article on Coral conservation in Singapore
from wonderful creation

7 Jul (Wed): Talk on "Tree vs. Tide - How mangroves colonise bare mudflats" from wild shores of singapore

Some videos of our shore life
from wonderful creation

Life History of the Chocolate Sailor
from Butterflies of Singapore

Yellow-vented Bulbuls’ “rain dance” – an answer at last?
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Wetlands magazine now online!
from wild shores of singapore

Short walk at CCNR
from Urban Forest

SBG - The Man Who Planted Trees
from Fahrenheit minus 459

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United Nations warned that corruption is undermining grants to stop logging

Campaigners say countries intend to abuse system by pocketing billions in subsidies while continuing to fell trees
John Vidal, The Observer 4 Jul 10;

A revolutionary scheme backed by the World Bank to pay poor countries billions of dollars a year to stop felling trees is the best way to stop logging and save the planet from climate change, according to wealthy countries and conservationists, yet documents seen by the Observer show the plan is actually leading to corruption and possibly more logging.

Human rights and environment groups yesterday called for a radical rethink of the United Nations scheme, known as Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation), after it emerged that many countries were trying to cheat the system.

Under Redd, 37 mainly tropical countries have requested more than $14bn in grants from rich countries by 2015 in return for cutting their carbon emissions from logging and other forestry activities. This is expected to lead to an income of more than $10bn a year by 2020 when a global carbon offset scheme is running. The carbon money flowing from rich to poor countries will then theoretically dwarf international aid and could reduce global emissions by 17-20% – more than that emitted by all the world's transport.

But analysis of the 16 forestry reform plans so far submitted by Redd countries to the World Bank shows that many intend to abuse the system in order to collect the money while carrying on logging as usual.

Documents seen by the Observer show that the Democratic Republic of Congo wants to open up 10 million hectares (25m acres) of new logging concessions as part of its plan. The country, which is ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world, argues that it will reduce emissions by planting more trees elsewhere.

Guyana intends to use some of its Redd money to pay a property dealer from Florida to build a road and a major hydroelectric plant in some of its most densely forested areas. Indonesia has said it will impose a moratorium on the conversion of its extensive peat forests to palm plantations, but only after 2013, allowing logging companies to ravage its forests until then. Other countries are setting the present rate of deforestation deliberately high or are ignoring all present logging, so that they can be paid to do nothing.

The environment groups, which include Global Witness, Greenpeace International, Fern and Rainforest Foundation, also fear that Redd is being used by governments to victimise and steal the carbon rights of people who live and depend on the forests.

Last month police arrested a UK-based businessman alleged to have paid government officials and others in return for the emission rights on 20% of Liberia's forests. Interpol said last year the chances were "very high" that criminal gangs would seek to take advantage. Peter Younger, Interpol environment crimes specialist and author of a report for the World Bank on illegal forestry, said: "Alarm bells are ringing. Redd is simply too big to monitor. The potential for criminality is vast and has not been taken into account."

Simon Counsell, director of Rainforest Foundation, said: "Redd has been touted as the quickest and cheapest way of preventing climate change, but what we are seeing are expensive and ill-conceived plans that fail to address the underlying causes of deforestation, and might make things worse. Redd needs to be taken out of the hands of the World Bank, and a new global institution [must be] established to rigorously oversee payments to tropical countries on the basis of the actual amount of logging or deforestation that is averted."

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Obama gives $2 billion to solar energy companies

Yahoo News 3 Jul 10;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama announced on Saturday the awarding of nearly two billion dollars to two solar energy companies that have agreed to build new power plants in the United States, creating thousands of new jobs.

"We're going to keep fighting to advance our recovery," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "And we're going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America."

One of the companies, Abengoa Solar, has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world in Arizona, which will create about 1,600 construction jobs. When completed, this plant will provide enough clean energy to power 70,000 homes.

The other company, Abound Solar Manufacturing, is building two new plants, one in Colorado and one in Indiana.

These projects will create more than 2,000 construction jobs, and over 1,500 permanent jobs as the plants produce millions of solar panels each year, according to White House officials.

"So that's some of what we're doing," Obama said. "But the truth is, steps like these won't replace all the jobs we've lost overnight. I know folks are struggling."

The president warned that it would "take months, even years, to dig our way out" of the most recent economic recession.

The announcement came as the US government reported the US unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent last month as more than half a million people abandoned the job hunt, fueling doubts about the economic recovery.

The Labor Department reported on Friday a net loss of 125,000 jobs last month.

The biggest cause for concern had been the weakness of the private sector, which created a modest 83,000 jobs in June, well up from May's revised total of 33,000.

Faced with an uncertain outlook and poor access to credit, US firms have been reluctant to rehire workers.

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Fighting climate change - while adapting to it

IRIN Reuters AlertNet 2 Jul 10;

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
GOLD COAST, 2 July 2010 (IRIN) - Environmental scientists are calling on policy-makers to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, rather than focus resources on reducing carbon emissions alone.

"The effort and money spent on mitigation is enormous compared to adaptation," said Andrew Ash, director of the climate adaptation flagship at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [http://www.csiro.au/].

"There is a huge lack of awareness about the need for adaptation. Scientists need to get in there and start to influence policy," he said during a three-day climate change adaptation conference [http://www.nccarf.edu.au/conference2010/] on Australia's Gold Coast this week.

Scientists reiterated that marginalized groups contribute the least to climate change but stand to suffer the most.

"In India, women are very vulnerable to climate change because they don't have social equality," said Shailendra Kumar Mandal, a professor at the National Institute of Technology Patna [http://www.nitp.ac.in/] in India. "Women often have no land ownership and poor access to health services."

He said India would have one of the largest populations in the world that would have to adapt to climate change, as numbers are predicted to grow by 300 million to 700 million over the next 40 to 50 years.

"We expect severe drought in the west of India, and our coastal megacities, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata will have to deal with severe flooding as sea levels rise."

These cities are part of the Asian mega-deltas, the most vulnerable to rising sea levels, along with small islands and Africa. The Asian mega-deltas also include Guangzhou, Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City, which are also already experiencing more intense tropical cyclones.

"We are having trouble communicating these changes to the most vulnerable. We need to give them time to adapt," Mandal said.

Mitigation and adaptation

Climate change adaptation covers a broad range of efforts, from implementing early-warning systems for natural disasters to transforming land use and moving homes away from coastlines.

While both mitigation and adaptation efforts are needed to tackle climate change, scientists warn of the dangers of prioritizing one over the other.

Speaking on the linkages of climate change mitigation and adaptation, Bruno Locatelli from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) [http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/] said trade-offs between the two needed to be considered.

"Building dams and dykes to improve water management, for example, could have adverse effects on mitigation efforts," he said. While they help control flooding, they also erode soil, potentially releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.

Billions needed

Martin Parry, a professor of climate change policy from Imperial College, London [http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/], estimates the cost of adaptation at US$50 billion annually, which would cover transformations in agriculture, water, health, infrastructure and coast lines.

During climate change talks in Copenhagen [http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/Climate-Energy/COP15-Copenhagen-2009/cop15.htm] last year, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said her country was committed to joining others in mobilising $100 billion annually to climate change aid for developing countries.

"If half of that goes to adaptation, then this estimate is a reasonable cost," Parry said. "But it would mean doubling our current spending on overseas aid."

Joseph Alcamo, chief scientist of the UN Environment Programme [www.unep.org], told IRIN that no one really knew whether mitigation or adaptation warranted more money.

"Even as a scientist I can't yet make a judgment about which to give more attention to, so it would be wise to give them both equal attention," he said.

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Kyoto may push factories to pollute more: UN report

Michael Szabo Reuters AlertNet 2 Jul 10;

LONDON, July 2 (Reuters) - A Kyoto Protocol scheme may be encouraging projects to emit more greenhouse gases because of incentives to earn carbon offsets from subsequently destroying these, a U.N. report said. The projects under investigation are the most lucrative under Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and account for more than half carbon offsets sold under the scheme. Limiting their output could impact carbon prices.

The $2.7 billion scheme allows companies and countries in the industrialised world to meet carbon caps by funding emissions cuts in developing nations, earning offsets called certified emissions reductions (CERs).

"There is a strong incentive to ... not improve the efficiency of the plant ... during any refurbishment because of the CDM benefits," said the report published late on Thursday.

"Further investigation is required ... to identify situations in which overestimation of CERs occurs and improve the methodology accordingly," it added.

The U.N. methodology panel advises the scheme's supervisory executive board on what types of carbon-cutting projects qualify for offsets.

It asked the board for "guidance on possible action" at its next meeting from July 26-30. Three out of 10 board members can form a blocking minority, making decisive action unlikely, said one carbon market expert on condition of anonymity.

The investigation was sparked when a green group earlier this year made a submission to the board saying said that the most profitable CDM projects, which destroy a potent greenhouse gas called hydrofluorocarbon-23 (HFC-23), were emitting more HFCs than necessary in order to destroy these and sell more CERs. [ID:nLDE659169]

HFC gases are a waste product from the manufacture of refrigerants, and trap around 12,000 times more heat than the more common, climate-warming carbon dioxide. Most HFC projects are registered in China and India.

In its submission to the executive board, green group CDM-Watch said plants "intentionally operated in a manner to maximise the production of CERs", and produced less HFC-23 during periods when they were unable to request CERs.

Thursday's report said that the efficiency of refrigerant plants was improving, and that "it is probable" that new factories unable to claim carbon offsets were producing fewer waste greenhouse gases than those registered under the CDM.

Among "possible actions", the report proposed: "A reconsideration of a cap ... at a level representing the best available technology," which could be half the present cap on the production of HFC-23.

Benchmark CER futures were trading at around 13 euros ($15.91) a tonne on Friday. (Reporting by Michael Szabo; Editing by Gerard Wynn)

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