Bullfroggery
from The annotated budak
9 Oct (Sat): Talk on "Pulau Ubin Shore is ALIVE!" by How Choon Beng
from wild shores of singapore
Public Forum on Biodiversity
from Raffles Museum News
Nesting of Grey Herons
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Psyche
from The annotated budak
"Many innocent animals are being killed by the litter we throw into the sea" from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore
Losing nature's medicine cabinet
from Mongabay.com news
They read like creatures in a gothic novel, but the species we've introduced round the world are real and cause untold harm
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk 4 Oct 10;
On a dark night last week a group of animal rights activists in Donegal made their own special contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity. They cut their way into a fur farm and released 5,000 mink. This, within their circles, was considered a clever thing to do. A spokesperson for the Alliance for Animal Rights said: "I commend whoever risked their freedom to do this." The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade announced that "we fully support what has happened".
Had these people tipped a tanker load of bleach into the headwaters of the river Finn, they would have done less damage. The effects would be horrible for a while, but the ecosystem could then begin to recover. The mink, by contrast, will remain at large for years, perhaps millennia. Like many introduced species, American mink can slash their way through the ecosystem, as they have no native predators, and their prey species haven't evolved to avoid them. Is there anything the animal lovers in Donegal could have done that would have harmed more animals?
But there's a second question raised by this act of preternatural imbecility: what were the mink doing there anyway? In other respects the Irish Republic appears to be a civilised country, in this case it looks barbaric. While the United Kingdom banned fur-farming in 2000, Irish governments have resisted prohibition, to protect a tiny but wildly destructive industry. The republic's five remaining fur farms are the sole source of continuing releases of mink, either through raids or accidents. They are also places of astonishing cruelty, in which intelligent carnivores are confined to cages the size of a few shoeboxes. The Irish government is considering phasing out fur farming in 2012. Until then, its citizens will continue to pay more to eradicate mink than they make from breeding them.
But Ireland is a small player. Two-thirds of the world's mink farming and 70% of its fox farming takes place in other EU countries. Denmark alone produces 40% of the global supply of mink pelts. Feral American mink on the continent are even more damaging than they are here, as they drive out the endangered European mink. The EU's 6,000 fur farms are an affront to the values it proclaims.
This month governments meet at Nagoya, in Japan, to review the Convention on Biological Diversity. It has, so far, been a dismal failure. Perhaps the starkest botch has been their inability or unwillingness to control the spread of invasive species. The stories I am about to tell read like a gothic novel.
Consider, for example, the walking catfish, which is now colonising China, Thailand and the US, after escaping from fish farms and ornamental ponds. It can move across land at night, reaching water no other fish species has colonised. It slips into fish farms and quietly works through the stock. It can burrow into the mud when times are hard and lie without food for months, before exploding back into the ecosystem when conditions improve. It eats almost anything that moves.
Its terrestrial equivalent is the cane toad, widely introduced in the tropics to control crop pests. It's omnivorous and just about indestructible: one specimen was seen happily consuming a lit cigarette butt. Nothing which tries to eat it survives: it's as dangerous to predators as it is to prey. Unlike other amphibians, it can breed in salty water: it's as if it had waddled out of the pages of Karel Capek's novel War With the Newts.
The world's most important seabird colony – Gough Island in the South Atlantic – is now being threatened by an unlikely predator: the common house mouse. After escaping from whaling boats 150 years ago, it quickly evolved to triple in size, and switched from herbivory to eating flesh. The seabirds there have no defences against predation, so the mouse simply walks into their nests and starts eating the chicks alive. Among their prey are albatross fledglings, which weigh some 300 times as much as the mice. A biologist who has witnessed this carnage observed that "it is like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus".
On Christmas Island the yellow crazy ant does something similar: it eats alive any animal it finds in its path. It is also wiping out the rainforest, by farming the scale insects that feed on tree-sap. Similar horror stories are unfolding almost everywhere. The species we introduce, unlike the pollution we produce, don't stop when we do. A single careless act (think of the introduction of the rabbit or the lantana plant to Australia) can transform the ecology of a continent.
According to a government report, invasive species cost Britain several billion pounds a year. The global damage they cause, it says, amounts to almost 5% of the world economy. A single introduced species – a speargrass called Imperata – keeps 2 million square kilometres in the tropics out of agricultural production, equivalent to the arable area of the US, while ensuring that the native ecosystem can't regenerate.
In most cases there's a brief period in which an invasive species can be stopped. So you would expect governments to mobilise as soon as the threat appears. But in many parts of the world the policy appears to consist of staring dumbly at the problem while something can be done, then panicking when it's too late. When museum weed (Caulerpa taxifolia) escaped into the Mediterranean from the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, the authorities responded by bickering over whose fault it was. In 1984, when the invasion was first documented, the weed occupied one square metre of seabed. It could have been eradicated in half an hour. Now it has spread across 13,000 hectares and appears to be uncontrollable.
Australia, the continent that has been hit hardest by introductions, still seems incapable of regulating the trade in dangerous species. As the Guardian's new Biodiversity100 campaign shows, 90 potentially invasive plant species are being sold in nurseries there, while 210 species of aquarium fish can be imported without a licence. The UK has some good policies at home. It spent £10,000 in 2006, for example, on a strategy (successful so far) for excluding the South American water primrose, whose control now costs France several million euros a year. But in its overseas territories – of which Gough island is one – it reacts slowly, if at all.
The mink, the walking catfish, the cane toad, the mutant house mouse, these are potent symbols of humanity's strangely lopsided power. We can sow chaos with a keystroke in an investment bank, one signal to a Predator drone, a seed dislodged from the sole of a boot, a fish tank emptied into a canal. But when asked to repair the mess we've made, we proclaim our impotence. Our challenge this century is to meet our capacity for harm with an equal power for good. We are not, so far, doing very well.
• A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com
FAO 4 Oct 10;
But conservation efforts are growing - FAO releases Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010
4 October 2010, Rome - The world's forest biodiversity is threatened by a high global rate of deforestation and forest degradation as well as a decline in primary forest area. In many countries, however, there is a continued positive trend towards the conservation of forest biological diversity via dedicated conservation areas.
These are some of the key findings of the final report of FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 (FRA 2010), the most comprehensive assessment of the state of the world's forests ever undertaken. The final report of FRA 2010 was published today at the start of the latest biennial meeting of the FAO' Committee on Forestry and World Forest Week, in Rome.
Globally, around 13 million hectares (ha) of forests were converted to other uses (including agriculture) or were lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010. That is down from around 16 million ha per year during the 1990s, the report said.
More than one-third of all forests are classified as primary — showing no visible signs of human intervention. Primary forests, in particular tropical moist forests, include some of the world's most species-rich and diverse ecosystems. Primary forests account for 36 percent (1.4 billion ha) of the world's forest area but their area has decreased by more than 40 million ha — at a rate of 0.4 percent annually — over the last ten years.
This does not necessarily mean that these forests have disappeared; rather, in many cases they have been reclassified because selective logging or other human interventions were carried out during the reporting period, FAO said. The UN agency emphasized that forests where humans have intervened can still hold important biodiversity values, contribute significantly to environmental protection, and sustain livelihoods, provided they are well managed.
South America accounted for the largest proportion of the loss in primary forests, followed by Africa and Asia.
Other threats to forest biodiversity include unsustainable forest management, climate change, forest fires, insect pests and diseases, natural disasters and invasive species — all of which are causing severe damage in some countries.
Better conservation and management
At the same time, the forest area designated for the conservation of biological diversity has increased by more than 95 million ha since 1990, according to FAO's report. The largest portion (46 percent) was designated between 2000 and 2005. Today 12 percent of the world's forests (more than 460 million ha) are designated primarily to conserve biological diversity.
Legally established protected areas, such as national parks, game reserves and wilderness areas now cover more than 10 percent of the total forest area in most countries and regions. The primary function of these forests may be the conservation of biological diversity, the protection of soil and water resources, or the conservation of cultural heritage.
"The world's forests represent a vital source of forest biological diversity. This biodiversity is an important treasure, especially as forests will not just have to adapt to climate change but are also expected to help mitigate it," said FAO Assistant Director-General Eduardo Rojas. "Greater investments in sustainable forest management are urgently required to better conserve and manage forest biodiversity."
FAO noted that there is an accelerating trend among countries to integrate biodiversity conservation into forest management planning and practices. However, there is a clear need for action to improve the effective conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in production forests, particularly in forest concessions.
"Over-exploitation and unsustainable use of wildlife in many tropical regions, often from protected areas and most pronounced in Central African forests, is a major concern," Rojas said.
Wildlife at risk of extinction
FRA 2010 also warned that commercial hunting driven by consumer demand in cities will probably drive many wildlife species to extinction in the near future unless effective measures are implemented soon, including law enforcement, community participation, provision of alternative protein and the establishment of simple and practical wildlife monitoring systems.
The report contains data from 233 countries and areas covering seven themes: the extent of forest resources; biological diversity; forest health; productive; protective and socio-economic functions of forests and the legal, policy and institutional framework guiding their management and use. More than 900 experts from 178 countries contributed to the report, which is the result of a four-year effort.
* Indonesian paper giant APP to preserve Sumatran forest
* Aims to sell carbon credits on voluntary market
* Sceptical greens point to APP plans to log elsewhere
Sunanda Creagh and David Fogarty Reuters AlertNet 4 Oct 10;
JAKARTA/SINGAPORE, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Indonesian pulp and paper firm Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), accused by green groups of large-scale deforestation, has signed a deal to protect a large area of forest in return for carbon offset revenue.
The deal is the first privately funded project turning a pulpwood plantation concession into a carbon reserve, said APP.
The deal with APP and Singapore-based Carbon Conservation, which helps governments protect areas of forest, is to set aside 15,640 hectares (38,650 acres) of peat forest in a 33-year pilot project aimed at encouraging plantation firms to become greener.
The land on the Kampar Peninsula on Indonesia's Sumatra island had been earmarked for clearing by concession holder PT Putra Riau Perkasa, a supplier to APP, but the two firms have agreed to work with authorities to preserve the forest instead.
APP said the deal was the first for the company as a way to save the forest and boost livelihoods from the sale of carbon credits.
Greens and analysts criticised the deal, saying the area protected is tiny compared with the amount of land APP and its pulp suppliers have cleared or is under threat of clearance.
APP and other plantation firms have become embroiled in a dispute with environmentalists over the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests. French retail giant Carrefour
Forests play a key role in fighting climate change by soaking up huge amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
APP is part of the Sinar Mas empire founded by the Widjaja family, which also runs Golden Agri-Resources
The APP project covers an area about a fifth the size of Singapore, rich in plant and animal species and sitting on top of peat that, if cleared, would release large amounts of carbon.
SMALL START
"The Kampar Carbon Reserve is a gift from Indonesia to the world," said Aida Greenbury, sustainability director for APP.
Greenbury said the area would be audited to calculate the amount of carbon and how much could be locked away annually based on a plan that would include protection from fires and illegal logging and enlisting help from communities in the area.
Greenbury and Dorjee Sun, CEO of Carbon Conservation, said the goal was to design the project to meet rules laid out by the respected Voluntary Carbon Standard, which aims to make forest carbon projects transparent and credible for investors.
"We actually think this is a huge opportunity to create a working commercial pilot so that everyone can see that good behaviour need not be a loss-making endeavour," Sun told Reuters.
He said he recognised there were risks but felt it was better to engage APP and try to improve industry practices.
He estimated it would be at least two years before the project would produce CO2 credits for the voluntary market.
Conservationists said the deal, backed by the Ministry of Forestry, was a start but wouldn't improve APP's image overnight.
"While we support the conservation of the Kampar, this project in no way makes up for the tremendous amount of damage that APP and its affiliates are having on rainforests and peatlands across Indonesia," said Lafcadio Cortesi of U.S.-based Rainforest Action Network in emailed comments to Reuters.
Sinar Mas and APP have had a major role in generating carbon emissions through conversion of natural forests and peatlands, said Christopher Barr, a forest industry analyst with U.S. consultancy Woods & Wayside International.
He said Sinar Mas and APP had been expanding pulp and paper capacity in both Indonesia and China in recent years.
Greenbury said of the 2.5 million hectares in concessions managed by APP pulpwood suppliers, about 1 million had been set aside for a wide range of uses, including conservation areas, community use and indigenous species development. (Editing by Robert Birsel)
APP invests in carbon scheme using Kampar peatland forest
The Jakarta Post 5 Oct 10;
Under a new project launched Monday by an international paper company, more than 15,000 hectares of unique forest destined to become a pulpwood plantation, in Kampar, Riau, will be used as a carbon reserve.
The project involves Sinar Mas Group subsidiary Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and Carbon Conservation carbon-footprint consultancy.
Multiple assessments have found that this peat dome area, previously allocated as concession for PT Putra Riau Perkasa (PRP), which supplies APP with pulpwood, is rich in biodiversity and needs to be protected.
The peat dome is expected to preserve significant amounts of carbon for the next 33 years, Carbon Conservation chief executive officer Dorjee Sun said.
“Carbon credits earned from the conservation area will then be sold to interested companies around the globe,” he said
Dorjee said the project was designed to use the sale of carbon credits to inject millions of dollars into job creation and community development programs for indigenous people around the conservation area.
“We must make sure this project brings long-lasting community benefits,” he said at the project launch at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta.
However, the project will need US$2 million to get started.
Sun said the company had yet to formulate detailed strategies or programs to develop local communities. However, the company planned to spend the next six months discussing such issues with local community groups, regional administrations and other related stakeholders to figure out their real needs, he said.
APP sustainability managing director Aida Greenbury said the company and Carbon Conservation were working together with the Forestry Ministry, PRP and other stakeholders to run the project, which she said could act as a model in tackling climate change.
“We are creating real community investment programs directed at the true root of Indonesia’s environmental issues: poverty in the indigenous communities surrounding the rainforests,” Greenbury said.
Among the main greenhouse gas emissions problems Indonesia needed to tackle was the traditional slash-and-burn technique employed by forest farming communities, who relied on this forest-clearing method for survival.
APP has been widely accused by green groups and environmentalists of committing large-scale deforestation. Retail giant Carrefour has stopped buying paper from APP because of environmental issues.
Indonesian National Climate Change Council (DNPI) executive director Rachmat Witoelar said he appreciated the commitment made by Carbon Conservation and APP to preserving the environment and developing local communities.
“Now we have a concrete example of what Indonesia should and could do,” he said.
Forestry Ministry secretary-general Hadi Daryanto said public-private partnership schemes such as the one in Kampar were the best way to preserve Indonesian forests, since the ministry had “only” Rp 2 trillion per year for this purpose.
“The budget is insufficient, so private investment is needed,” Hadi said.
Gopal Sharma PlanetArk 5 Oct 10;
India's environment minister said on Monday the country could not have high economic growth and a rapid rise in carbon emissions now that the nation was the number three emitter after China and the United States.
Jairam Ramesh's comments come as negotiators from nearly 200 governments meet in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin. The U.N. talks aim to reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012.
Indian per-capita emissions are still low but demand for energy is rising as the middle-class buys more cars, TVs and better housing. Much of that energy comes from coal oil and gas, the main sources for planet-warming carbon dioxide.
But Ramesh said India's rush for wealth could not come at the expense of the environment.
Officials said his comments are the first time a government minister has said India has overtaken Russia as the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
"We will unilaterally, voluntarily, move on a low-carbon growth path. We can't have 8-9 percent GDP growth and high-carbon growth," Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in the Nepalese capital.
"It has to be low-carbon 8 percent, 9 percent growth and that is the objective that we have set for ourselves," he said.
Poorer nations are now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and many big developing countries have taken steps to curb the growth of their emissions but say they won't agree on absolute cuts, fearing this will hurt their economies.
India weathered the global financial crisis better than most, and is setting its sights on economic growth of almost 10 percent over the coming years. Its economy currently grows at around 8.5 per cent.
"We are the third largest emitter of the greenhouse gases in the world ... China is number one at 23 percent, the United States is second at about 22 percent and India is number three at about five percent."
GREENER PATH
In India, any talk of a low-carbon economy was once seen as politically very risky, given the economic costs involved. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in January asked a panel to begin charting a path to a greener economy. The report is expected by the year-end.
Although India has announced a new climate plan which identifies renewable energy, such as solar power, as a key element, coal remains the backbone of energy supply in a country where almost half the 1.1 billion population has no access to electricity.
"The gap between the second and the third (highest emitters) is very very high, but nevertheless we need to be conscious of our contribution," Ramesh said.
The fraught U.N. talks have been hobbled by lack of trust between rich and poor nations over climate funds, demand for more transparency over emissions cut pledges and anger over the size of cuts offered by rich nations.
The risk of the talks stalling is so great that the United Nations has stopped urging nations to commit to tougher pledges to curb carbon emissions, fearing further debate could derail already fraught talks on a more ambitious climate pact.
(Editing by David Fogarty)
Lisa Friedman of ClimateWire The New York Times 4 Oct 10;
A new study out says vulnerable countries could sue the United States and other industrialized nations for action on climate change.
The report, published by the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), based in the United Kingdom, says small island nations and other threatened countries have the right and likely the procedural means to pursue an inter-state case before the United Nations' International Court of Justice.
"Some of these countries are getting increasingly desperate," Christoph Schwarte, the paper's lead author, said. With little movement toward a new global climate change treaty, he said, many leaders are looking for ways to make the United States and others understand the threats they face from rising sea levels, droughts and storm surges.
"They need to see some movement; otherwise, their existence is under threat," Schwarte said. "If nothing significant happens within the next two or three years, I really wouldn't be surprised if countries go to court. There's an increased realization that some form of legal action is actually possible."
Suing to force a country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions is a tricky proposition. If a person is harmed or a livelihood threatened, he or she can take the offender to court for the damages incurred. But what if the victim is an entire country, and the damages -- thousands forced to relocate or the loss of tourism dollars because of coral bleaching -- are expected but not yet seen? More complicated still is is pinpointing the perpetrator. A smokestack in China? The 24/7 air conditioner blasting from a shopping mall in Iowa? Emissions-belching SUVs in Sydney, Australia?
"Which court? Which case? Under which law and against whom? Those are all extremely valuable questions," said Edward Cameron, former senior adviser to the Maldives. And beyond the impossibility of tracing a particular climate change impact to a molecule of CO2 emanating from a particular source, he said, are still more legal and political hurdles. Should a country bring a suit based on human rights law? Trade? Pollution? And what if the reaction to such a lawsuit was that industrialized countries threatened to withdraw foreign assistance?
"There's very much a political cost-benefit when thinking about this kind of action," Cameron said. But he also described legal action as a critical tool in vulnerable countries' limited arsenal. And, he argued, as important as any particular court ruling is the "court of public opinion" that could be moved by putting human faces on the often abstract global climate debate.
'A huge negative backlash'
The FIELD study does not advocate a particular avenue for legal action. Instead, it reviews the existing literature on inter-state lawsuits. It concludes that "a credible case for a legal wrong can be made" by vulnerable nations under the so-called "no harm rule." That is a principle in international environmental law that holds that countries are obligated not to cause or allow environmental harm outside their borders.
The study says that "in a limited number of possible scenarios there are also the procedural means to pursue an inter-State litigation before an international judicial forum."
The paper argues that litigation could help to create the political pressure needed to invigorate international negotiations toward a global climate change treaty within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington, D.C., agreed.
"Where politics breaks down, law can sometimes break through and often be really transformative," he said. Developing nations, he said, "are not giving up on the negotiations. The UNFCCC remains the place where these issues have to be addressed. But at the same time, you can use the law to move things forward in the near term as those political negotiations go on, and help change the dynamics."
Muffett also called the transboundary nature of greenhouse gas pollution a not-insurmountable legal problem. Not only are countries contemplating taking on other countries to rein in emissions, they also are looking for ways to hold individual emitters liable. Meanwhile, individuals and citizen groups also are exploring ways to sue both governments and private companies in other nations.
"I can tell you that lawyers are looking at all of these options," Muffett said. "I'm anticipating that in the next few years we're going to see some really groundbreaking litigation that is not from countries, but from citizens."
The U.S. State Department did not return a call seeking comment on the issue. But Mark Helmke, senior adviser to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), called the strategy "counterproductive," and one that lawmakers considering climate change and energy legislation would likely resent.
"I think it would have a huge negative backlash in the U.S. Congress," Helmke said.
Activists, though, noted that countries haven't had much luck with the United States so far, and developing countries are getting tired of waiting. Climate legislation tanked in the Senate earlier this year, though President Obama vowed in a recent Rolling Stone interview to tackle rising emissions in possibly separate "chunks" of legislation in 2011.
Some called litigation a necessary backup plan.
"We are seeing climate change impact people's lives today," Cameron said. "The message to come across to people on the Hill is that climate action is inevitable. It's going to come one way or another. If you're frightened of regulation, you should be even more frightened of litigation."
For more news on energy and the environment, visit www.climatewire.net.
Nations must substantially narrow their differences ahead of crunch summit in Mexico later this year, Artur Runge-Metzger tells delegates at China climate talks
Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk 4 Oct 10;
International climate talks are at risk of becoming irrelevant if countries fail to substantially narrow their differences before the end of this year, a senior European diplomat warned today.
The grim prognosis by Artur Runge-Metzger, director of the climate policy division in the European commission, came at the opening of a six-day conference in China aimed at refining possible areas of agreement before crunch UN talks in Cancún in November-December.
"If Cancún does not produce a solid outcome that takes the fight against climate change forward, then I think it risks becoming irrelevant in the eyes of the world," Runge-Metzger told reporters. "We meet in these wonderful places, travel miles to come here. If this process is not effective, then people will say, 'If you can't come to agreement, then why should we bother supporting you?' "
His comments were echoed by other senior negotiators in the Chinese coastal city of Tianjin, where 3,100 negotiators, administrators, journalists and non-governmental climate activists are trying to restore credibility, trust and momentum lost after the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate change summit last year.
In the opening plenary, the UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres told participants they must "accelerate the search for common ground" so Cancún can make progress toward securing a global treaty to tackle global warming. "As governments, you can continue to stand still or move forward. Now is the time to make that choice."
The conference looks set to be a six-day reality check. Expectations among the delegates are considerably lower than they were last year. Nobody predicts a comprehensive, binding deal in Mexico, but some expressed hopes for progress on the protection of forests and the transfer of finance and technology to help developing countries adapt to climate change.
The top Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said there was also a possibility of advances on the vexed issued of transparency – how to monitor, report and verify each nation's emissions to ensure they are honouring their pledges. This question of trust and accounting has been a key difference between the United States and China.
"I don't think this will be a major obstacle," said Xie, who said China was trying to move the process along by hosting its first UN climate talks. "We hope our efforts here will lay a sold foundation for the Cancún conference at the end of the year."
The opening day formalities saw none of the histrionics and posturing that marked much of the Copenhagen conference. It is a lower-level gathering, but observers said the mood music was positive.
"It was good, I was mildly surprised," said Kelly Dent of Oxfam. "At the risk of sounding like an optimist, what I saw today was a willingness to sit down and start working."
Climate activists warned, however, that the real test would come later in the week as participants try to trim down the 70-odd pages of the negotiating text and the 1,630 brackets that mark disputed terms and targets.
They are looking for substantive progress on financing. At Copenhagen, rich countries promised to provide $30bn (£19bn) over three years in climate funding to poor nations, increasing to a total of $100bn (£63bn) annually by 2020. But details about where this money will come from and how it will be allocated remain sketchy.
While progress will be limited – if it comes at all this week – Mexico wants to continue work in small groups all the way to Cancún – a proposal supported by China.
"It's very different from Copenhagen. That was a sobering experience that many people don't want to repeat," said Barbara Finamore, China programme director for the US-based Natural Resources Defence Council. "There is a real risk that we will lose momentum if we don't move forward. That is why people have come here to roll up their sleeves and get to work."
Delegates told to ID achievable goals on climate
Tini Tran, Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China – The U.N. climate chief urged countries Monday to search faster for common ground on battling climate change so that a year-end meeting in Mexico can produce results in that fight.
Christiana Figueres told 3,000 delegates in China — the last negotiations before Cancun — that countries must identify achievable goals ahead of December's conference so progress can be made toward a global climate treaty.
"As governments, you can continue to stand still or move forward. Now is the time to make that choice," she told delegates in the northern port of Tianjin.
"If you want a tangible outcome in December, now is the time to clarify what could constitute an achievable and politically balanced package for Cancun, and what could be subject to further work after Cancun," she said.
With a binding global deal largely out of reach for this year, negotiators in Tianjin will focus on smaller initiatives that can lay the foundation for a legal framework that could be approved later, possibly in South Africa in 2011.
The scaled-down ambitions are largely due to the collapse of climate talks in Copenhagen last year, when political leaders failed to produce a global and legally binding treaty on curbing the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Instead, nations agreed to a nonbinding political declaration on fighting climate change.
Expectations still are small because countries remain deadlocked over the same issues. Distrust has only deepened between industrialized and developing countries over how to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
As the host, China will seek to reduce those differences, said State Counselor Dai Bingguo, the country's top foreign policy official, who urged countries to renew efforts in order to "hammer out a binding agreement at an early date."
Since a single climate package deal is unlikely, the focus has turned to finding areas of agreement on essential components, including financing and transfer of clean technology and ways of reducing deforestation.
Ultimately, if talks in Cancun fail to produce concrete results, the entire U.N. process could be in jeopardy, said Artur Runge-Metzger, a negotiator with the European Commission.
"If Cancun does not produce a solid outcome ... then I think it risks becoming irrelevant in the eyes of the rest of the world," he said. "Decision-making will go to some other forum."
Much of what needs to happen in Tianjin is the less tangible task of restoring trust and some momentum in order to "set the stage for what's realistically possible in Cancun," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council.
Two of the key pieces will be financing and transparency, he said. At Copenhagen, rich countries had pledged to give $30 billion over three years in climate funding to poor nations, rising to a total of $100 billion dollars annually by 2020, but little money has materialized.
"It's critical that countries move on really delivering the 'prompt-start' funding and show those commitments are real. We have a long history of developed countries promising a lot of money and not committing, so it's a chance for developed countries to prove this time is different," he said.
With China playing host to the climate talks for the first time, it has the opportunity to highlight its own commitment to clean energy, said Deborah Seligsohn, a Beijing-based adviser with the World Resources Institute.
Last year, China pledged it would cut its carbon intensity — emissions per unit of GDP — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level. Nationwide efforts have also been made to reach the goal of improving energy efficiency by 20 percent from 2005 to 2010.
"They're serious and they chose something that's not easy," she said. "China has redoubled domestic efforts since Copenhagen. I don't think anyone can doubt that. China wants people to look at what they're doing on the ground. They'll use this as an opportunity to do that."
Climate Chief Urges Nations To Show Deal Can Be Done
Chris Buckley PlanetArk 5 Oct 10;
The U.N. climate change chief urged governments on Monday to make real steps toward a new treaty to fight global warming or risk throwing negotiations into doubt.
Negotiators are meeting in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin to try reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012.
The fraught U.N. talks have been hobbled by lack of trust between rich and poor nations over climate funds, demand for more transparency over emissions cut pledges and anger over the size of cuts offered by rich nations.
Delaying agreement would leave less time for the world to figure out how to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and would add to uncertainties weighing on companies unsure where climate policy and carbon markets are headed after 2012.
"Now is the time to accelerate the search for common ground," Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told hundreds of delegates from some 177 countries at the opening session of the Tianjin talks, which last until Saturday.
"A concrete outcome in Cancun is crucially needed to restore the faith and ability of parties to take the process forward, to prevent multilateralism from being perceived as a never-ending road," she said in an opening speech at the meeting.
The talks are the last major round before the year's main climate meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun from November 29.
Negotiators from nearly 200 governments failed to agree last year on a new legally binding climate pact. A meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009 ended in bitter sniping between rich and developing countries, and produced a non-binding accord that left many key issues unsettled.
Governments are struggling to overcome lingering distrust and turn sprawling draft treaties dotted with caveats into a binding agreement, possibly by late 2011.
"This week is to some extent going to be an indicator of how far forward we can go," the U.S. negotiator at the Tianjin talks, Jonathan Pershing, told Reuters.
"It now looks like the differences are quite large, but there's some hope of achieving consensus on some issues," the chief Chinese climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, told reporters.
DROUGHTS AND FLOODS
Recent devastating floods in Pakistan and severe drought in Russia are the kind of severe weather that rising temperatures are likely to magnify if countries fail to make dramatic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, said Wendel Trio, the climate policy coordinator for Greenpeace.
Figueres told Reuters in a separate interview that she hoped the Tianjin talks could agree on important specifics of a future pact, including how to manage adaptation funds and green technology to help poorer countries, and a program to support carbon-absorbing forests in Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere.
"I think there's a pretty good chance that the governments will agree on the creation of the (climate) fund," she said.
Governments have said the fund could disperse up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with global warming. But negotiators have been wrestling over how to manage the money and the fund's design.
Developing countries want a more direct say, while the United States and other countries that would provide the funding want more vetting.
"When you're thinking about that scale of finance...we want to think about people who have expertise," said Pershing, the U.S. negotiator. "There's clearly a need to bring in guidance."
He said that could come from ensuring countries' finance ministries and other economic agencies help oversee spending.
Even if the negotiations make progress, the current pledges of governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to avoid pushing the world into dangerous global warming, roughly defined as a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above average pre-industrial temperatures, said Figueres.
Governments should nonetheless focus on securing formal pledges of the emissions cuts already made, "fully realizing it is a first, necessary but insufficient step," she said.
(Editing by David Fogarty)
UN climate chief urges Chinese flexibility
Dan Martin Mon Yahoo News 4 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – China should show more flexibility in global negotiations on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the UN climate chief said on Monday, although she praised the Asian nation for helping lead the talks.
"It is absolutely indispensable that China show leadership, accompanied by all other countries, to be flexible in order to be able to reach the compromises that are necessary before Cancun," Christiana Figueres said.
The head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change spoke on the opening day of talks hosted by China that are aimed at paving the way for agreements at a UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, starting on November 29.
The six days of talks in the northern port city of Tianjin are part of long-running efforts through the United Nations to secure a post-2012 treaty to limit global warming and avoid potential environmental catastrophes.
China is now the world's largest source of greenhouse gases and its emissions continue to increase as its economy expands at near double-digit pace.
It pledged last year to slow the growth in those emissions by reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
That is essentially a vow of greater energy efficiency that would likely, however, see emissions continue to increase.
China's top climate change official Xie Zhenhua appeared to reject suggestions that Beijing be more flexible on key issues such as emissions cuts and allowing outside verification of Chinese progress toward its targets.
"We must note that it (verification)... must not interfere with a developing country's sovereignty," Xie said.
China has long opposed any outside verification of its green progress in the name of national sovereignty.
It has also resisted pressure to commit to emissions reduction targets through the UN, arguing that doing so would hurt its economic development.
Dai Bingguo, China's top foreign policy official, called for a spirit of cooperation but also indicated China would hold firm on some of the key disputes with the United States and other developed countries.
In a speech to the delegates, Dai reiterated China's stance that developed nations should take the lead in emission cuts and help developing countries deal with the impact of climate change.
Despite urging China to show more flexibility, Figueres called the country's efficiency goal an "impressive target" and praised Beijing for its "extraordinary leadership" in volunteering to host the Tianjin gathering.
"We are very appreciative of their efforts and we take it as a very symbolic act from China in support of the intergovernmental process," she said.
Little progress in the climate change negotiations has been made since world leaders failed to broker a binding deal in Copenhagen last year.
After being blamed by many in the developed world for derailing the Copenhagen talks, China insisted it wanted to foster a spirit of cooperation at this week's conference.
"As the host country, China is hoping that we can contribute positively to advancing the climate change negotiation process," Xie said.
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