Sun 05 Dec 2010 - Sungei Buloh Anniversary Walk: registration open from Habitatnews
Travels: Ubin
from Trek through Paradise
Back to Pasir Ris shore
from wonderful creation
Mangroves at Pasir Ris with high tide surprises
from wild shores of singapore
Families enjoying an outing to Chek Jawa
from Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs
Tanimbar Corella feeding on unripe papaya fruits
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Monday Morgue: 29th November 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales
Dwi Lusiana Jakarta Globe 28 Nov 10;
Cangar, East Java. More Javan langurs have been spotted inhabiting East Java’s Raden Soerjo National Park, an animal conservation group said on Saturday, adding that it was an encouraging sign of the area’s commitment to preserving its biodiversity.
In a survey conducted between July and November by ProFauna and the park’s conservation officials, 80 Javan langurs, called lutung Jawa locally, were found scattered in the forest area, 30 more than the 50 counted in the last survey in 2000.
Javan langurs are a protected long-tailed monkey species. They inhabit tropical forests and are often hunted for meat.
According to Radius Nursidi, a spokesman for ProFauna, Javan langurs usually live on Juglandaceae and ficus trees that are still abundant in the protected forest.
“The biodiversity found in the forest is a sign that the tropical forest there is well preserved. The type of Javan langurs that were found there are a rare type, the kind with orange coats,” Radius said, adding that the langurs, which usually have a black coat, preferred to live in forests with a wide variety of trees.
Other trees that were found in the area were trema excels, ficus variegata, mycura javabica, ficus racemosa, casuarina junghuniana and quercus lintaca.
The recent survey found the animals living in various trees in 11 separate groups. The largest group was found around Coban Watuondo and Coban Teyeng, inside the protected forest.
However, the langurs were noticeably absent from areas around nearby Mount Anjasmoro. In other areas in East Java, such as Banyuwangi, Situbondo, Bondowoso and Jember, the animal’s population had declined due to continued hunting.
“It can be sold for Rp 200,000 to Rp 500,000 [$22 to $55] per animal,” Radius said. “The meat is cooked and made into bakso [meatballs].”
The protected forest covers 27,868 hectares and is also a critical breeding ground for the protected Javan eagle. It also has 163 springs that supply water to nearby villages.
Raden Soerja was declared a national park in 1992, spanning across into the nearby Arjuno Lalijowo forest.
Aside from the Raden Soerjo National Park, Pro Fauna also monitors other areas where the animal is native, such as Banyuwangi, Jember, Bondowoso, Situbondo and Ngawi.
“We would search the local market first. If we found the animal being sold there it’s an indication that there’s a population of the long-tailed monkey living in the nearby forest,” Radius said.
Yahoo News 28 Nov 10;
JAKARTA (AFP) – Five rare Sumatran elephants found dead in Indonesia were likely poisoned for damaging crops, according to an official.
The elephants, aged two to four years old, were found dead in an oil-palm plantation in a village in Riau province on Sumatra island on Friday, conservation agency official Edi Susanto said.
"Preliminary medical checks indicated that the elephants could have died from sulphur poisoning. We're still investigating," he said.
"We suspect villagers killed them using poison for wild boars as the elephants had damaged their crops. We're chasing the perpetrators," he added.
Human-animal conflicts are a rising problem as people encroach on wildlife habitats in Indonesia, an archipelago with some of the world's largest remaining tropical forests.
There are up to 3,350 Sumatran elephants remaining in the wild, according to the environmental group WWF.
Five Sumatran elephants poisoned to death in Riau
Antara 29 Nov 10;
Pekanbaru, Riau province (ANTARA News) - Five Sumatran Elephants (Elephas Maximus Sumatranus) were found dead last Friday (Nov 26) in Indragiri Hulu, Riau province, an official said.
The poor elephants were allegedly killed by irresponsible people by poisoning them in the working site of a mining company, PT Citra Sumber Sejahtera.
"Early investigations reveal that the deaths of five elephants may be caused by acts of poisoning," Chief of Division I of Riau Natural Conservation center Edi Susanto said here on Sunday.
He said there was an indication that the killing of the five elephants might be related to the conflict between locals and the ill-fated animals.
Around the elephants` death site, there were bush land and locals` rubber and palm plantations, he said.
According to a team whose members consisted of WWF activists and vets, the elephants were dead because of poisoning. However the type of poison and motive behind the cruel action were being investigated.
Last year, four elephants were also found dead in Peranap subdistrict, Riau province, in an acacia plantation owned by PT Rimba Peranap Indah (RPI).
RPI spokesman Subroto was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying that the elephants were found by field officers checking plants in two separate locations 50 meters apart. (*)
5 rare Sumatran elephants found dead in Indonesia
AP Yahoo News 28 Nov 10;
JAKARTA, Indonesia – Five endangered Sumatran elephants have been found dead in Indonesia, and conservationists said Sunday that they suspect farmers poisoned the animals to stop them from damaging crops.
The elephants — four females and one male all under the age of 5 — were found dead late Friday in Riau province on Sumatra island, said Edi Susanto, a government conservationist.
Susanto suspects that owners of nearby palm oil plantations used cyanide to poison the animals, which are known for damaging crops. He said an investigation is under way and samples from the dead elephants have been sent for analysis.
"We have told the district heads in Riau province to ban farmers from tending crops in the woods where the elephants search for food," Susanto said.
Only 3,000 Sumatran elephants are believed to remain in the wild, a number that dwindles each year with poaching and killing by farmers angry over crop losses. The animals are prized by poachers for their ivory tusks.
Aubrey Belford The New York Times 28 Nov 10;
JAKARTA — For environmental campaigners and scientists discouraged by slow progress in the fight against climate change, Indonesia, with its vast forests and history of breakneck land clearing, has been a rare point of hope.
The archipelago nation has been a key testing ground of U.N.-backed efforts to use international funding to pay developing countries to curb forest destruction, which accounts for nearly 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The approach, known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, is widely seen as one the rare global environmental successes since the collapse of talks in Copenhagen last year.
But as a fresh round of climate negotiations begins in the Mexican resort of Cancún on Monday, some environmentalists say that Indonesia’s experiment with forest conservation is also under threat.
A report by Greenpeace last week accused Indonesian government ministries of planning for massive land clearance, despite signing a $1 billion REDD agreement with Norway earlier this year. The agreement, which includes a two-year moratorium on clearing natural forests and carbon-rich peatlands, is aimed at helping Indonesia, which by some counts is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, reach a target of cutting emissions by at least 26 percent by 2020.
Greenpeace said that government documents show plans to bring 63 million hectares, or nearly 156 million acres, of land into production by 2030, including 80 percent of its peatland and half its forested orangutan habitat, to support expansion of industries including pulp, paper and palm oil.
At the same time, the group said, a push is on to rebrand the clearing of forests for plantations (which results in a net release of carbon into the atmosphere) as the replacement of degraded land with new trees (which takes carbon out of the atmosphere). This, they say, could effectively mean international funds would be subsidizing forest destruction.
For environmentalists, the accusations point to a broader risk: that in a country as sprawling and corrupt as Indonesia, and on an issue as complex as carbon accounting, REDD is open to being watered down. With about 20 early REDD projects already under way, including with funding from Germany and Australia, that possibility is causing concern.
“If REDD money for forest protection is interpreted in the wrong way by industry and the government, that can be a danger for the projects and it can support deforestation activities on the ground,” said Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace’s Indonesia forest campaigner.
One problem is Indonesia’s confusing system of land classification, in which, for example, some land officially designated as “degraded” is in reality covered in forests. Bureaucratic confusion between the central government, provinces and districts also means coming up with, and enforcing, an overall plan that would save more carbon than is lost through deforestation — which is a fraught process.
The Indonesian government denies the Greenpeace allegations and says it is ironing out the problems.
Agus Purnomo, the head of Indonesia’s National Climate Change Council, said the group’s accusation that the government is planning to expand land clearing is merely “attention grabbing” based on fudged numbers. “Greenpeace has done some rather problematic ways of putting the facts because they are mixing information that has been scientifically written, written in black and white, with hearsay that was in the newspaper,” Mr. Purnomo said.
Resolving the confusion between degraded land and forest is something that will happen “in the next few months,” Mr. Purnomo said.
Performance-based mechanisms — which would see four-fifths of Norway’s $1 billion paid out only after results are delivered — also mean the kind of grand swindle envisioned by the Greenpeace report would be impossible to pull off, he said.
But in wrangling over technicalities, observers say, there are still risks. In the Norway deal, details have still not been finalized over whether the moratorium would apply only to virgin forest or be more broadly defined.
Similarly, there is debate over whether to make the moratorium apply to existing, undeveloped, concessions owned by companies or merely block the granting of concessions.
Mr. Purnomo said Indonesia is aiming to define as broadly as possible the type of forest land to be protected. However, at the same time, broadening the moratorium to include existing concessions is “off the table.”
If this is true, then Indonesia’s REDD experiment could be severely compromised, said Louis Verchot, the chief climate scientist of the Center for International Forestry Research, an international research institute headquartered in Indonesia.
“I don’t understand how emissions reductions could be achieved if it’s only a moratorium on new concessions because there are enough existing concessions out there that will continue to create emissions,” Mr. Verchot said, adding that without a clearing up of Indonesia’s land classifications, the Norway deal “is dead.”
However, Mr. Verchot did agree that Greenpeace’s numbers appeared to overstate government expansion plans, and that mechanisms built into REDD meant abuse of the type alleged in the group’s report simply could not happen. Overall, Indonesia has rapidly progressed, he said.
“We’re not where we need to be for everything to be in place and everything to be fine and perfect, but we’re moving in that direction,” he said. “We’re well aware of the technical issues, and we’re well aware of the need for third-party verification.”
And progress on REDD, he said, is key to building broader consensus for a global climate-change deal. “I think there’s much more danger if this thing falls apart than if this thing goes forward.”
Redd scheme designed to prevent deforestation but critics call it 'privatisation' of natural resources
John Vidal guardian.co.uk 28 Nov 10;
Some of the world's largest oil, mining, car and gas corporations will make hundreds of millions of dollars from a UN-backed forest protection scheme, according to a new report from the Friends of the Earth International.
The group's new report – launched on the first day of the global climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, where 193 countries hope to thrash out a new agreement – is the first major assessment of the several hundred, large-scale Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) pilot schemes. It shows that banks, airlines, charitable foundations, carbon traders, conservation groups, gas companies and palm plantation companies have also scrambled into forestry protection.
While forestry is billed as one issue where significant progress could be made at the talks, over the weekend David Cameron, Chris Huhne, the climate change secretary, and the government's chief scientists all played down the prospect of a global deal to cut carbon emissions.
"British ministers are going to Mexico this week with an approach that is both realistic and optimistic," the prime minister wrote in the Observer . "Realistic, because we don't expect a global deal to be struck in Cancun, but optimistic too, because we are viewing this as a stepping stone to future agreement."
Huhne, who will attend the second week of the talks, was more blunt: "No one expects a binding deal on climate change in Cancun." But he said deforestation and longer-term climate finance were areas where progress could be made.
The Redd scheme is central to slowing, or halting, deforestation, which causes huge releases of carbon dioxide. But critics say that the scheme amounts to privatisation of natural resources.
FoE's report shows, for example that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell has linked with Russian gas giant Gazprom and the Clinton Foundation to invest in the Rimba Rey project, 100,000ha of peat swamp in Indonesia. The project is expecting to prevent 75m tonnes of carbon being emitted over 30 years, which could earn the three groups $750m at a modest carbon price of $10 a tonne.
It also says that an investment of little more than $10m by the bank Merrill Lynch, the conservation group Flora and Fauna International and an Australian carbon trading company could generate more than $430m, over 30 years, from a project to protect 750,000ha of forest in Aceh province, Indonesia.
The "Redd rush" is limited to voluntary carbon offsets for now but is expected to become a stampede if the 193 countries meeting this week reach an outline forestry protection agreement that would allow governments to offset national emissions against forest conservation. It could result in eventual cash flows of $30bn a year from rich countries – who need to offset emissions – to poor countries, where most of the world's endangered forests are.
But the report's authors say great social risks attached to the schemes must be addressed. "There are significant risks that Redd will lead to the privatisation of the world's forests, transferring them out of the hands of indigenous peoples and local communities and into the hands of bankers and carbon traders," they say.
Many of the world's greatest stretches of forests are the traditional home of indigenous peoples, and millions of others may be dependent on access to forests, say the authors, who urge that ownership of land and carbon rights must be resolved. "Many Redd-related disputes are now unfolding. Respect for indigenous peoples' rights seems to be a missing element," says the report. "A Redd race is under way. Redd is emerging as a mechanism that has the potential to exacerbate inequality, reaping huge rewards for corporate investors whilst bringing considerably fewer benefits or even serious disadvantages to forest dependent communities. It could become a dangerous distraction from the business of implementing real climate change cuts."
One major concern is that the weak legal definitions of "forest" and "degraded land" would let the powerful logging and palm companies carry on business as usual by persuading governments to redefine what constitutes a forests.
Greenpeace claimed last week that Indonesia planned to class large areas of its remaining natural forests as "degraded land" in order to cut them down and receive $1bn of climate aid for replanting them with palm trees and biofuel crops.
However some observers, including Lord Stern, say the Redd schemes offer the best opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They say thatmore technologically sophisticated options, such as carbon capture and storage, could take several years to come into large-scale operation, and they are more expensive.
A spokesperson for Shell said the company could not yet comment on the Friends of the Earth report.
ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies
Science Alert 29 Nov 10;
New research highlighting coastal locations where coral can better withstand rising sea temperatures, a leading cause of stress to coral reefs, may guide efforts to conserve the largest living structures on Earth.
The findings hold promise for an estimated 100 million people living along the coasts of tropical developing countries whose livelihoods and welfare depend directly on coral reefs, but are currently under threat from climate change.
In a report published in an online edition of Ecology Letters today, scientists from Australia, the UK, Mexico and the US, mapped coral stress across the Bahamas in the Caribbean and found that sea temperatures, which strongly influence coral health, caused less stress to reefs in certain areas.
This discovery was borne out in the second half of the study, during which the researchers designed marine reserves best-suited to four possible scenarios of how coral would respond to further sea temperature rises. In each hypothetical scenario, 15 per cent of the locations in the Bahamas were consistently selected.
While the study’s lead author, Professor Peter J. Mumby, from the Global Change Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies says the research complicates current understanding of marine reserve design, the findings can help make the best use of the limited resources available for coral reef conservation.
“Designing marine reserves for the long-term is more difficult than we thought”, Prof. Mumby says. “The responses of coral to the impacts of climate change are relatively unknown at this stage. Yet the good news is that some geographic locations were consistently selected in the generated scenarios, regardless of how corals might adapt to warmer temperatures.
“These areas are great contenders for early conservation no matter what the future holds”. Prof Mumby adds that, “The research found good locations for protecting corals and we are providing this information to conservation partners in the Bahamas to help them in their efforts to work with local communities and establish new reserves.”
Prof. Mumby says the response of coral to climate change is an ongoing focus for scientists and conservation advice will be updated regularly to reflect new research findings.
Prof. Mumby says the world’s oceans are becoming warmer due to the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. A rise in sea temperature by as little as 1°C causes stress to corals and can lead to coral bleaching, where corals lose their internal symbiotic algae that help them grow, and may result in vast areas of dead coral.
Scientists expect that warming sea temperatures could cause coral to die in large numbers. The destruction of coral reef ecosystems will expose people in coastal areas of developing countries to flooding, coastal erosion and the loss of food and income from reef-based fisheries and tourism.
The project was funded by the Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management (CRTR) Program, Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, National Environment Research Council, European Space Agency and the EU Seventh Framework Programme.
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press Yahoo News 29 Nov 10;
CANCUN, Mexico – Facing another year without a global deal to curb climate change, the world's nations will spend the next two weeks debating how to mobilize money to cope with what's coming — as temperatures climb, ice melts, seas rise and the climate that nurtured man shifts in unpredictable ways.
Beginning Monday, 15,000 government delegates, environmentalists, business leaders, journalists and others will gather in the meeting halls of this steamy Caribbean resort for the annual conference of the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty.
They meet late in a year that may end tied for the hottest globally in 131 years of record-keeping.
As the world warms, the long-running U.N. negotiations have bogged down, unable to find consensus on a legally binding agreement requiring richer countries — and perhaps some poorer — to rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming.
The Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and a recent historic shift in emissions — developing countries now produce more greenhouse gases than the old industrial world — all but guarantee the standoff will drag on, at least for another year or two.
"The world is waiting for fruitful negotiations," Mexico's environment secretary, Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, told The Associated Press.
U.N. officials hope for "incremental progress" on side issues, not an overarching deal, in two weeks of negotiation ending with three days of high-level bargaining among the world's environment ministers.
"Governments need to prove the intergovernmental process can deliver and come to an agreement," U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres told reporters outside the beachside Moon Palace Hotel.
Mexican naval vessels offshore joined a giant security cordon ringing this sprawling resort area in a country plagued by drug wars, kidnappings and other crime.
Hoping to revive momentum in the talks, delegates look for decisions leading to better terms for developing nations to obtain patented "green" technology from advanced countries, and toward a system for compensating poorer nations for protecting their forests.
In particular, the developing world wants a significant deal on finance, a decision to establish a green fund to handle billions in aid dollars pledged by developed nations to help poorer countries adapt to a changing climate by, for example, building shoreline protection and upgrading water systems to deal with drought, and to install clean energy sources.
In a nonbinding Copenhagen Accord reached by world leaders at last year's climate summit in the Danish capital, richer nations set a goal of $100 billion annually in such climate finance by 2020.
The fund's operational and leadership details would likely be left for post-Cancun negotiation, as would the key question of how it would be financed. A U.N. panel of international political and financial leaders has presented a menu of revenue-raising options, including levies on international flights and on foreign-exchange transactions.
More immediately, less-developed nations will raise concerns about short-term aid, "fast-start finance" promised in the Copenhagen Accord.
"There's been too little for small island developing states. It's a trickle," said Grenada's U.N. ambassador, Dessima Williams, chair of an alliance of island states.
At Copenhagen, industrial nations as a group pledged $30 billion in quick financing over 2010-2012. Independent analysts find that governments individually since have promised $28 billion for the three years.
Poorer nations complain much of the money may not be new, but funds simply reshuffled from other development programs. At Cancun, they're expected to demand a clearer accounting of fast-start finance.
That "would build confidence in the overall funding process," Robert Orr, a U.N. assistant secretary-general, told reporters in New York. "We need new and additional money to address the problem, not repackaged money."
On the flip side, the developed north will seek a better accounting from China, India and other emerging economies of the south on what they're doing to slow the galloping growth of their greenhouse gas emissions.
Nations north and south pledged under the 2009 accord to voluntarily lower emissions by specific amounts or, in the case of emerging economies, to slow emissions growth. Developing countries also agreed to some international scrutiny of the steps they take, but the U.S. complains China has backtracked on that.
At Cancun, India will submit a compromise monitoring plan it hopes will help satisfy the north on the south's emissions actions, while the south obtains a better accounting on climate finance.
Monitoring is "the crux of all issues at Cancun," India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, told the AP in New Delhi.
The Copenhagen emissions pledges, even if all were met, would take the world only 60 percent of the way toward preventing serious climate change, the U.N. Environment Program reported last week.
Scientists say emissions overall should be cut 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent a dangerous temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. Temperatures already rose 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) in the 20th century.
The Copenhagen pledges would together reduce emissions by only 18 percent, independent analysis shows. In the U.S. case, emissions would be cut by only 3 percent below 1990 levels.
For 13 years the U.S. has refused to join the rest of the industrialized world in the U.N. climate treaty's Kyoto Protocol, a binding pact to curb fossil-fuel emissions by modest amounts.
The rise of Republicans in Washington, many of whom dismiss powerful scientific evidence of global warming, seems to rule out for now U.S. legislation to cap emissions, essential for drawing others into a binding global deal to succeed Kyoto, expiring in 2012.
American negotiators say Washington will never submit to a new Kyoto-style deal on emissions unless China, India and others take on commitments under a legally binding treaty. The Chinese and Indians counter that they're still too poor to risk stifling economic growth, and the historic responsibility for industrial emissions lies with the north.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, seeks limited emissions reductions via executive action. But the rest of the world, from Europe to island states facing rising seas, is skeptical of the American will to take demanding long-term action.
As the debates drag on, heat-trapping carbon dioxide fills more of the atmosphere. From 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration stood at 386.8 ppm in 2009.
If too little is done, temperatures this century may rise by up to 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F), leading to severe climate disruption, say scientists of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The disruption may already have begun.
Researchers point to this summer's historic heat wave in Russia and nationwide floods in Pakistan as portents of things to come. In the Arctic Ocean, the summer melt of the ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions in recent years, and studies suggest the summer ocean may be ice-free as early as this decade.
Here in Mexico, research points to a drying out and shrinking of farm output in some regions, which might lead to a greater exodus of Mexican migrants to the U.S.
__
Associated Press writer Katy Daigle in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Battle lines drawn for Cancun climate conference
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 28 Nov 10;
CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) – Familiar battle lines emerged on Sunday on the eve of a conference to restore the credibility of the UN's talks on climate change after last year's near-disaster in Copenhagen.
Campaigners said the interests of the environment and poor countries would not be sacrificed to help boost the faltering process, while the European Union (EU) called on China, the United States and India to agree to "fair" curbs on their carbon emissions.
Nearly 200 countries will take part in the 12-day conference in the Mexican resort of Cancun.
It aims at healing the wounds of the December 2009 UN summit in Copenhagen, where more than 120 leaders failed spectacularly to deliver the promise of a post-2012 pact to roll back climate change.
Instead of grappling for an overarching treaty, negotiators are being asked to notch up progress on half a dozen issues to help revive faith in the UN climate arena.
The European Union's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, said there was "no guarantee" the talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would follow this new, pragmatic, incremental path.
"But what I can hear very clearly over the last weeks and months (is) that all parties want to make headway here in Cancun," he told a press conference.
"They want to show the world that this process can deliver, it can move the international climate agenda forward."
Runge-Metzger warned: "If we are not able to do that, then we would really have to reconsider if this process is a process that can address this very important question for humanity in this century."
The EU looked to China and the United States -- the world's No. 1 and 2 carbon emitters -- as well as India to make "firm commitments to do their fair share of reducing global emissions," he said.
Activists fighting for tough curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions warned they would fight against a sellout in Cancun, while Bolivia said it suspected a backdoor attempt to enshrine the troubled outcome of Copenhagen in negotiating texts.
It took aim at the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a face-saving compromise document assembled by a couple of dozen leaders in the final hours of last year's summit but never accepted by a UNFCCC plenary session.
"Cancun should not be the Copenhagen Accord, Part II," the Bolivian delegation said in a statement.
The deal sets a goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but does not identify the stepping stones to achieving this -- and the promises to curb greenhouse gases, the toughest issue of all, are only voluntary.
Issues where the Cancun talks could make progress include measures to avert deforestation in tropical countries, which accounts for between 12 and 25 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases.
Countries could also give the formal go-ahead to a so-called Green Fund serving as the main vehicle for providing up to 100 billion dollars a year in aid to poor countries by 2020.
That money is part of the Copenhagen Accord, along with 30 billion dollars earmarked as "fast-start" help in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Still unclear is how much "fast-start" money is being allotted to help reduce emissions and how much to help poor countries adapt to its impacts.
Poor countries are least to blame for the fossil-fuel pollution that causes global warming, yet are most exposed to the worsening drought, flood, storms and rising sea levels that will result.
"Only three billion dollars has been formally allocated for adaptation," said Saleemul Huq of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
"There is also a danger that some of this could come in the form of loans which would further in debt already poor nations and force them to pay to fix a problem that the developed nations created."
U.N. talks in Mexico to seek modest climate steps
* Cancun talks seek ways to slow global warming; no treaty
* Strains between U.S. and China likely to dominate
* Nations running out of time to replace Kyoto Protocol
Robert Campbell and Gerard Wynn Reuters AlertNet 28 Nov 10;
CANCUN, Mexico, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Almost 200 nations meet in Mexico beginning Monday to try to agree on modest steps to slow climate change, a gathering overshadowed by strains between the United States and China.
The meeting, in a sprawling "Moon Palace" resort by the Caribbean from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, will seek to get negotiations back on track after last year's acrimonious Copenhagen summit fell short of a binding U.N. treaty to slow global warming.
Delegates gathered on Sunday for talks that will seek agreement on lesser measures such as a "green fund" to channel aid to poor nations, new ways to share clean technologies and to protect tropical forests that soak up carbon as they grow.
"These are important steps but they are only marginal in relation to the problem the world is facing," said Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
"We can't celebrate what's happening," he said.
This year is on track to be one of the top two warmest years since records began in the 19th century. The U.N. panel of climate scientists says rising temperatures will mean more floods, droughts, sandstorms and rising sea levels.
The meeting, to be opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, will seek to end a deadlock in 2010 between the China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters.
Each insists that the other must do more to curb emissions from burning fossil fuels, a disagreement that has strained relations already hit by disputes over China's big trade surplus and exchange rate controls. And neither is in a position to sign up for binding emissions curbs.
KYOTO
The talks' main goal is to find a successor to the existing 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obliges all industrialized nations except the United States to cut emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Kyoto underpins carbon prices.
Tokyo said last week that it would be "meaningless and inappropriate" for Kyoto backers to extend the pact without more action by the top emitters. [ID:nTOE6AO01G] The European Union similarly wants wider action as the price for extending Kyoto.
Washington never signed up, saying Kyoto unfairly omitted binding 2012 targets for developing nations. Beijing and other emerging nations say rich nations have to agree to new goals for 2020 and allow the poor to use more energy to end poverty.
But Kyoto backers are fast running out of time to agree what to do after a first period ends on Dec. 31, 2012. The 2012 climate talks will be in South Africa.
"You can buy one more year to try to figure it out. But that's not a very robust strategy if it's conditional on getting real movement from the U.S. by South Africa," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
U.S. President Barack Obama will be unable to carry out a plan to cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels, roughly 3-4 percent below 1990, after gains by Republican during this month's midterm elections. Members of the party have been suspicious of the scientific claims behind global warming.
A binding global deal to slow climate change has proven far harder to obtain than hoped, involving an overhaul of the world's fossil-fuel-based industries to favor investments in alternatives such as wind, solar, hydro or nuclear power.
And the weak world economy, with euro zone bailouts of Greece and Ireland, has sapped attention from climate change.
Tom Burke, of the E3G think-tank in London, said the world needed to learn from decades of talks on freeing world trade or reducing arms. "What we are dealing with here is a much more complicated negotiation than either," he said.
"You don't want to be too quick to judge a failure, or be too quick to give up," he said.
(Writing by Alister Doyle, editing by Philip Barbara)
UN climate talks seek to avoid hype in Cancun
Reuters AlertNet 28 Nov 10;
Nov 28 (Reuters) - A U.N. climate meeting in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun is taking a low key approach to unblocking U.N. climate talks after last year's much hyped Copenhagen summit ended acrimoniously.
Following are a comparison of the numbers of delegates at the two meetings, and of the costs of the U.N. climate talks in 2010 and 2009. The Cancun gathering of nearly 200 countries runs from Nov. 29-Dec. 10.
The Copenhagen summit was billed as the world's best chance to agree a global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose present round ends in 2012, but ended with a non-binding agreement rejected by a clutch of countries on a bad-tempered final day.
The Cancun conference aims to agree on funds and approaches to preserve rainforests and prepare for a hotter world, and to formalise existing targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
DELEGATES AND OBSERVERS
* Cancun, 2010: Mexican authorities expect up to 22,000 people, including 9,000 official delegates plus journalists, environmentalists and others
* Copenhagen, 2009: more than 45,000 delegates and observers
COST
* The total cost of the U.N. climate talks, not including bills for many of the delegates, was about $238 million in 2009 and $82 million in 2010, or $320 million for the past two years combined.
* Cancun conference, 2010: cost about 841 million Mexican pesos ($67.33 million) to the Mexican government.
* Copenhagen summit, 2009: the Danish finance ministry said total costs were about 1.2 billion Danish Krone ($213.3 million)
* U.N. meetings: the United Nations climate change agency estimates that the cost of smaller meetings are about $5 million each. It organised five such meetings in 2009 and three in 2010. (Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Jackie Frank)
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