Bad Back May Stop Australia's Cane Toad Invasion

Michael Perry, PlanetArk 3 Dec 08;

SYDNEY - It seems a bad back might be the only thing that can stop the relentless spread of Australia's poisonous cane toads, which are killing native animals as they hop across the nation, researchers say.

Australia's army couldn't stop the cane toads, which number around 200 million. Residents swinging golf clubs failed and so did a campaign to freeze them to death in refrigerators.

But now an Australian scientist says evolution has seen the biggest and fastest cane toads interbreed, resulting in arthritis and bad backs which could slow them down.

"Cane toads moving across Australia are the fastest amphibians on Earth after their rapid evolution from slow-moving homebodies into road warriors over the past 70 years," Rick Shine at Sydney University said in a statement received on Tuesday.

Thousands of cane toads moving in a front across tropical eastern Queensland state can travel 10 metres (30 feet) overnight, researchers say.

Those at the front of the invasion near the Western Australian state border can cover one km on a wet night -- 10 times the distance.

"Toads that run at the front of the pack are becoming bigger and faster. They have different personalities, different shapes and are developing different physiologies," said Shine.

The bigger, faster toads produce babies with bigger front legs and longer backs and consequently suffer arthritis.

"We are seeing toads in the Northern Territory with spinal arthritis -- big, bony lumps on their spine," said Shine.

Cane toads are one of Australia's worst environmental mistakes, ranking alongside the catastrophic introduction of rabbits.

The toads, introduced in a batch of 101 from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed bid to control native cane beetles, have spread 3,000 km (1,900 miles) from northeast Queensland to Darwin in Australia's tropical north.

The spread of the toads, whose skin is poisonous, has led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls, a cat-sized marsupial.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Paul Tait)

Read more!

Brazil's Amazon Plan Sounds Bold, But Doubts Abound

Raymond Colitt and Stuart Grudgings, Yahoo News 3 Dec 08;

BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO - With its bold pledge to halve the rate of Amazon deforestation, Brazil wants to boost its international environmental credentials. But it may lack the conviction and resources to reach its goal.

The plan, announced Monday ahead of a major United Nations climate conference in Poland, is the first time Brazil has adopted a target for deforestation after years of putting the onus on rich nations to help stop global warming.

Environmentalists stress that is an important step forward from a few years ago when Brazil would barely discuss Amazon deforestation with other countries.

But while the target of halving the current rate of destruction by 2018 looks good on paper, critics say the plan lacks details and contains ambiguous language that gives the government leeway to miss the targets.

As well as strong commitment from a government that has often been reluctant to take on farming and development interests, success appears to depend on continued foreign donations to a fund that far has only received pledges from Norway.

"It's important that they have an actual goal, but it's going to come down as always to whether there's sustained political will," said Tom Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Heinz Center for science and the environment in Washington.

It is unclear whether President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union leader often more concerned with jobs than trees, will put up the political capital the plan needs as he faces growing fallout from the global financial crisis.

Under the plan, which calls for a reduction in deforestation to an annual 2,260 square miles by 2018, Lula is not obliged to make any deforestation cuts in his two remaining years in office.

"They are setting targets for the next government. I'm not sure how convinced Lula is of this," said Rubens Born, executive director with Vitae Civilis, a group defending the environment and peace.

"SCHIZOPHRENIC"

Environmentalists are increasingly worried about a "tipping point" that could have a drastic impact on the regional climate and agriculture. It refers to a time when the forest's own destruction disrupts the cycle of rainfall and triggers irreversible desertification.

"Ten years is a long time out there and a lot of deforestation will have occurred by then and I really do worry about thresholds being passed," Lovejoy said.

Alarmed by a spike in deforestation last year, Brazil has made some progress in cracking down on illegal loggers, launching several high-profile operations this year to confiscate timber, beef and soy from illegally cleared areas.

It also cut credits to proprietors without proper land titles, increasingly uses satellite surveillance technology and plans to create a 3,000-strong environmental police force.

Still, the vastness of the Amazon means that enforcement is only part of the solution. Environmentalists say the only long-term option is to change the economics of deforestation by encouraging sustainable industries such as latex and nuts.

The government's plan calls for a massive increase in planting sugarcane and other biofuel crops, which critics say push farmers and ranchers deeper into the Amazon.

It also calls for more hydroelectric plants, which have attracted settlers and land speculators.

"The Brazilian government is schizophrenic. It wants conservation but then promotes such projects," said Claudio Maretti, head of regional conservation programs at WWF-Brasil.

The plan's financing is also uncertain, depending on the "availability" of domestic and international funds, according to the official document.

Norway this year pledged $1 billion over seven years to a new Amazon Fund aimed at improving conservation and alternative economic activities, provided Brazil reduces deforestation.

"It is absurd. Brazil should be interested in reducing deforestation with or without external funds," said Maretti.

(Editing by Todd Benson and Cynthia Osterman)

Brazil falls short with forest emission reduction ambitions
WWF 3 Dec 08;

Brasilia, Brail: Brazil's revised National Climate Change Plan, which for the first time defines goals for reducing massive emissions from deforestation in the Amazon, is commendable but still short on ambition and detail, WWF-Brazil said today.

The revised plan was released to coincide with the Conference of Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Poznan, Poland which is to put key processes in place to achieve an international climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol by the next COP meeting in Copenhagen in December next year.

Under the revised plan, the Brazilian government establishes a goal of reducing the annual rate of deforestation by 40 per cent from average 1996-2005 levels during 2006-09, with reductions of a further 30 per cent in each of the subsequent four-year periods. The aim is to achieve a total decrease of over 70% by 2014-2017.

Achieving these goals would avoid 4.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions during 2006-2017, a figure greater than the annual emissions of the European Union.

“This goal is reasonably ambitious,” says Carlos Alberto de Mattos Scaramuzza, Conservation Director at WWF-Brazil. “To achieve it, next year deforestation will have to drop 23% in relation to this year.”

In Brazil, land use and land use change represent 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority originating from deforestation in the Amazon region. Hence reducing deforestation in the Amazon is a critical component of any strategy aimed at lowering Brazil´s greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the scenario defined in the plan, the average area of Amazon forest cleared each year would be 5,742 km2 by 2014-17.

“That´s bigger than the US state of Rhode Island,” says Scaramuzza. “The CO2 released from clearing this area of Amazon forest would be roughly equivalent to the current annual emissions of Canada.”

Together with eight other environmental NGOs, WWF-Brazil has proposed zero deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2015. According to Scaramuzza: “This goal is achievable if key actors—ranging from indigenous peoples to ranchers—are compensated for conserving the forest and thereby avoiding deforestation.”

In August the government of Norway pledged US$1 billion toward a newly established Amazon Fund. This voluntary contribution complements the ongoing climate negotiations, which are contemplating payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Yet environmental NGOs such as WWF-Brazil have expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the Amazon Fund.

“This fund appears to be geared primarily to supporting government command-and-control programmes,” says WWF-Brazil’s CEO Denise Hamú. “To achieve more ambitious reductions in deforestation, it will be effective mechanisms to compensate the key actors on the ground who determine the fate of the forest.”

As part of its long-term conservation strategy for the Amazon, WWF-Brazil supports a wide range of initiatives aimed at protecting natural ecosystems and managing natural resources.

WWF-Brazil assists the Brazilian government´s ambitious Amazon Protected Area (ARPA) programme, which aims to consolidate a total of 600,000 km2 in new and existing protected areas in the region by 2012. A recent study found that the protected areas established or planned for establishment in 2008 under the program would result in a total reduction of 5.1 gigatons of CO2 emissions by 2050, which is roughly equivalent to 14% of global CO2e emissions per year, or 70% of the emissions targeted for reduction under the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

Read more!

REDD may harm forest people, alleges report

Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com 2 Dec 08;

A new report finds that the World Bank is not doing enough to protect indigenous rights under its mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).

The report — titled "Cutting Corners: World Bank's forest and carbon fund fails forests and peoples" — was issued by the Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN) and the Forest Peoples Program (FPP) at the start of UN climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland.

"Cutting Corners" alleges that the Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) — which provides seed funding for REDD projects — has rushed its review process and is failing to follow its own rules set to protect indigenous people and forest communities. Such groups fear that without a proper framework, REDD could be used by governments and carbon traders to force forest people off their lands.

"In this flawed process forest communities have not been properly consulted. As a result, donors could be complicit in a new global drive reinforcing old top-down policies that will only lead to more forest destruction," said Saskia Ozinga, Coordinator of FERN. "We have seen from the EU's FLEGT process, which aims to control illegal logging, that a proper consultation process will take years, but trying to shortcut consultations will just lead to long-term failure."

"If measures to respect the rights of forest peoples are at the heart of efforts to combat deforestation, then forest and climate policies could do some good," added Tom Griffiths, Coordinator of the Forest Peoples Program's Responsible Finance Program. "It is alarming that the early government plans, approved by the World Bank, are simply business as usual. None of these REDD plans deal with the critical issues of governance, human rights, land tenure reforms and Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

"To attain sustainable forest and climate initiatives, forest peoples must be fully consulted about their design. International donors must also ensure that human rights and forest sector reforms are guaranteed before any international funding is released to developing countries for their national actions on forest and climate issues."

"Cutting Corners" comes shortly after Friends of the Earth International (FOE), an environmental activist group, announced its opposition to REDD via a report titled "REDD Myths". At the UNFCCC talks in Poznan, FOE says it will oppose attempts to include forests in carbon markets.

"During the climate talks, we will be demanding that forests are kept out of carbon markets, that plantations are entirely excluded and land rights are enforced as the basis of any forest policy," said Joseph Zacune, Climate and Energy Coordinator with FOE. "If governments are serious about tackling climate change, deforestation must be stopped once and for all. To do this we need to tackle the consumption of agrofuels, meat and timber products which is driving deforestation and support good governance of forest resources."

Other analysts say REDD — in a form that recognizes rural peoples' rights — offers the best hope for preserving forests in the future while simultaneously fighting global warming.

"REDD can benefit biodiversity conservation as well as indigenous and rural peoples," wrote Daniel Nepstad, Stephan Schwartzman, and Paulo Moutinho in a report published last year. "To succeed, national REDD programs must be consistent with UNFCCC and other UN principles, be transparent and have the active involvement of indigenous peoples and forest communities."

"Rejecting REDD will not defend indigenous rights. Substituting official aid from developed countries for carbon market funding will not be a better, less risky alternative for reducing deforestation. Indigenous rights abuses, often caused by the same activities that drive deforestation, must be addressed directly."

Read more!

Canadian oil sands industry threatens millions of birds: study

Yahoo News 3 Dec 08;

OTTAWA (AFP) – Extraction and refining of heavy oil from Canada's oil sands threatens to kill as many as 166 million migratory birds over the next 30 to 50 years, according to a report released Tuesday.

"The public needs to understand the real and long-term ecological costs of this development and determine if this is acceptable," said lead author Jeff Wells of the Boreal Songbird Initiative.

The Boreal forest in Canada's Alberta province, part of which is being mined or considered for future development, is a "globally important destination" for millions of birds as a nesting area and breeding habitat, especially for an array of wetland-dependent birds, the report said.

Each year an estimated 22-170 million birds breed in the area of the forest being mined or pegged for development

Such activity causes significant habitat loss and fragmentation, said the report. Toxic tailing ponds already result in 8,000 to 100,000 oiled and drowned birds annually.

The mortality numbers are also elevated with the decrease in air and water quality from tar sands development, as contaminants and toxins are released through the refining process.

"The loss of as many as 166 million birds is a wholly unacceptable price to pay for America's addiction to oil," commented Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Birds tell us so much about what is going on in the environment around us. This report makes it very clear that they are telling us it is time for a change in American energy policy," she said.

"There are better energy options available in North America that do not foul our air, poison our waters, or kill our backyard birds."

Canada Oil Sands Threaten Millions Of Birds - Study
Scott Haggett, PlanetArk 3 Dec 08;

CALGARY - A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada's oil sands region threatens to kill as many as 166 million birds over the next five decades and is calling for a moratorium on new projects in the region.

The coalition's groups, which include the Natural Resources Defence Council, the Boreal Songbirds Initiative and the Pembina Institute, say petroleum-extraction projects in the oil-rich region of northern Alberta are a threat to migratory birds and the boreal forest they rely on.

Their study concluded that development of the oil sands, would be fatal for 6 million to 166 million birds because of habitat loss, shrinking wetlands, accumulation of toxins and other causes.

The solution, the groups say, is to halt new projects in the oil sands and to clean up existing facilities. They are also calling for strengthened regulations to protect Canada's vast boreal, or northern, forest and for Alberta, whose government has backed oil sands developments, to prove the resource can be exploited without serious environmental harm.

"People need to take a hard look at whether this can be mitigated or if tar sands development is just incompatible with conservation of bird habitat," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defence Council.

The report estimates about half of North America's migratory birds nest in the boreal forest and between 22 million and 170 million birds breed in areas that could be subject to oil sands development.

The oil sands contain the biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East but the crude is expensive and difficult to extract. Mining projects strip large areas of land to access the oil-laden soils below the surface.

While the report has not yet been made public, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents the country's big oil firms, said the oil sands industry complies with environmental regulations and dismissed calls for a moratorium.

"We need a balanced conversation, supported like a stool with three legs, environment, economy and energy," David Collyer, the association's president, said in a statement. "Calls for a moratorium that consider only one leg of the stool, in a vacuum, are not constructive."

Developments in the region have been criticized for pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, using too much water and being harmful to wildlife.

Indeed, the death of about 500 ducks earlier this year after they landed on a toxic tailings pond operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd, the biggest oil sands producer, brought international attention to the region.

The environmental groups' forecast is based on a big expansion of oil production from the region. The oil sands currently produce more than 1 million barrels a day, but the report is based on an eventual output of 5 million barrels a day, in line with industry forecasts of production in two decades or more.

(Reporting by Scott Haggett; editing by Rob Wilson)

Read more!

$15-Million Marine Energy Prize Launched in Scotland

James Owen, National Geographic News 2 Dec 08;

The race is officially on for a U.S. $15-million-dollar (10-million-Euro) prize for harnessing the power of the oceans.

The winning marine renewable-energy innovation would provide a serious energy alternative to burning fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.

Details of the Saltire Prize Challenge were announced Tuesday in Edinburgh by Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond.

The award will go to the team that "successfully demonstrates—in Scottish waters—the best commercially viable wave or tidal technology capable of providing electricity to thousands of homes."

The winning team must supply this electricity using only the power of the sea for a continuous two-year period.

(Related: "$20-Million Prize for Renewable Ocean Energy Announced" [April 2, 2008].)

"It is Scotland's energy challenge to the world—a challenge to the brightest and best minds worldwide to unleash their talents and push the frontiers of innovation in green marine energy," Salmond said.

"The Saltire Prize has the potential to unlock Scotland's vast marine energy wealth, putting our nation at the very forefront of the battle against climate change."

The prize, named after the cross of St. Andrew on the Scottish national flag, was inspired by other innovation competitions such as the U.S. $10-million-dollar Ansari X Prize.

That contest led to the first private spacecraft launch in 2004.

"Saudi Arabia of Marine Energy"

Scotland boasts a quarter of Europe's tidal power potential, according to Salmond.

He described the Pentland Firth, a region between Scotland's north coast and the Orkney Islands, as the "Saudi Arabia of renewable marine energy."

Scotland aims to meet 50 percent of its electricity demand from renewable resources by 2020.

There's also huge potential for ocean energy globally, said prize committee member Terry Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs for the National Geographic Society. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

"It's not going to be the sole solution to our energy needs," Garcia said, but "this will be one of the important pieces of the puzzle."

The main purpose of the competition is to act as a catalyst for innovation, Garcia added.

"It's both about making marine energy economically viable and being able to produce it in a sustained way on a large scale," he said.

Wave and Tidal Power

The two major types of marine power are wave and tidal power.

Wave power technology involves floating modules with internal generators, which produce electricity as they twist about on the sea surface.

Tidal power harnesses tidal currents with arrays of underwater turbines similar to those that propel wind farms.

Tidal ranks among the most reliable renewable energies because tides are highly predictable, said AbuBakr Bahaj, head of the University of Southampton's Sustainable Energy Research Group in the U.K.

"But wave energy is driven by wind, which is notoriously difficult to predict," he said.

Even so, wave power may have the higher electricity-generating potential.

In Britain, for instance, it's estimated that wave power could potentially provide 20 percent of the country's total electricity supply, against 5 to 10 percent for tidal power, Bahaj said.

The scientist says the main technical challenge is to create reliable power installations that can operate in difficult marine environments for five to ten years without maintenance.

"You also need to have multiple devices working together at each site," he said.

Scotland Offers 10 Mln Pound Marine Energy Prize
Ian MacKenzie, PlanetArk 3 Dec 08;

EDINBURGH - The Scottish government announced a 10 million pound (US$14.94 million) prize for new wave or tidal power technologies on Tuesday as part of the country's renewable energy drive.

First Minister Alex Salmond announced details of the international "Saltire Prize" at a ceremony in Edinburgh castle.

The prize is intended "to push the frontiers of innovation in clean, green marine renewable energy," he said ahead of the ceremony.

Salmond said Scotland could enjoy a quarter of Europe's total marine power potential and described the turbulent waters off the northern Scottish mainland as "our Saudi Arabia of renewable marine energy."

The prize will be awarded to the team that can demonstrate the best commercially viable wave or tidal energy technology in Scottish waters that produces at least 100 gigawatt hours (GWh) over a two-year period using only the power of the sea.

Scotland's chief scientific adviser and head of the prize committee, Anne Glover, said the competition would open in the summer of 2009 and close by June 2013.

Scotland hopes to get half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

(Editing by Daniel Fineren)

Read more!

The Energy Debates: Small Wind Power

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 1 Dec 08;

The Facts

The picture that wind power often brings to mind is that of giant turbines on wind farms, which produce megawatts of electricity using rotors up to hundreds of feet in diameter. Small wind power systems, on the other hand, use comparatively petite turbines to support individual homes.

A typical residential wind energy system might be 1 to 10 kilowatts in capacity, with a 10- to 25-foot diameter (3 to 8 meter) rotor mounted on an 80-foot (24-meter) tower, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Turbines as small as 400 watts with rotors just 46 inches (117 cm) in diameter can help power water pumps or run lights and appliances.

Pros

Wind power is free, endless and 100 percent free of pollution and greenhouse gases. The American Wind Energy Association estimates that a small residential wind turbine can offset 1.2 tons of air pollutants over the course of its up-to-20-year life that your utility company would have otherwise generated, as well as 200 tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

For people completely off utility grids, "you have to have wind power," said wind energy expert Paul Gipe in Tehachapi, Calif., who has authored several books on the field. "A hybrid system with both wind and solar power will always be more cost effective and reliable than either wind or solar alone, and will always be cheaper than flying in diesel."

Cons

Most, if not all, rooftop wind turbines "simply don't work," Gipe said. "There is no stupider idea than attempting to harness wind energy by putting a turbine on a rooftop. There's too much turbulence over rooftops for turbines, and the trees and buildings that are often around houses obstruct the wind. A turbine has to be well above a rooftop to do any good, which means mounting it on a very tall tower, and if you're going to have a tower, you might as well have a tower that's mounted on the ground."

A number of small wind turbines are promoted as running at low wind speeds. While this may be true, the American Wind Energy Association's Web site explained, there is very little energy to be harvested at wind speeds less than 9 mph (14 kph).

"There are also claims by some that their wind turbines are silent," Gipe said. "I have seen many silent rooftop wind turbines, and they are silent because they don't work. There are many people who want to participate in renewable energy, and so they may be prey to hustlers overstating fraudulent claims."

Small wind turbines do make some noise, although the American Wind Energy Association contends a typical residential wind system makes less noise than the average washing machine. It also noted the turbines do kill some birds that run into them, although it added that statistically, a single housecat, windowpane or automobile is a much greater threat than a wind turbine.

"There are no panaceas when it comes to renewable energy, no cheap or easy solutions regardless of whether it's wind or solar or something else," Gipe said.


Editor's Note: "The Energy Debates" is a LiveScience series about the pros, cons, policy debates, myths and facts related to various alternative energy ideas. We invite you to join the debate by commenting directly on each article.

Read more!

Europe's biggest wind farm switches on

Portugal reinforces its reputation as a renewables champion with 120 new windmills
Giles Tremlett, guardian.co.uk 2 Dec 08;

Europe's biggest onshore wind farm plugged itself into the grid today to provide enough electricity for up to a million people in northern Portugal.

A total of 120 windmills are dotted across the highlands of the Upper Minho region of Portugal as one of western Europe's poorer nations continues to forge its reputation as a renewables champion.

"Europe's largest onshore wind farm is now fully operational," a spokeswoman for France's EDF Energies Nouvelles, which co-owns the farm, announced this morning.

The two megawatt turbines on each windmill deliver electricity to a single connection point with the electricity grid and should supply around 1% of Portugal's total energy needs.

A second, smaller wind farm is already functioning nearby, giving a combined output of 650 gigawatt hours per year. "That is above 1% of national consumption," said Nuno Ribeiro da Silva, head of the VentoMinho company that runs the farm.

That would provide enough energy for 300,000 homes, or most of the northern city of Viana do Castelo and its surrounding districts, he told the Publico newspaper.

Portugal's mixture of government enthusiasm, subsidies and special tariffs has turned it into one of the focal points of renewables development in Europe over the past five years.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm is being built near the southern town of Moura. The Moura solar farm, which will include a research centre, should be twice the size of any other in the world when it is fully up and running in two years time.

Portugal also recently inaugurated the world's first commercial wave power plant in the Atlantic Ocean off Aguçadoura, using technology developed in Scotland.

The country is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels and has set a target of obtaining 31% of energy needs from renewables by the year 2020. That is more than twice the UK target. It also uses its subsidies policy to insist that manufacturers of turbines and solar panels set up production plants.

"By 2010 we will have 5,000MW of wind energy installed, meaning we will have increased it tenfold in just five years," economy minister Manuel Pinho said. "This is another step towards putting our country in the vanguard of what is being done with renewable energy."

Portugal, which claims to be one of the world's top five renewable energy countries, provides subsidies of up to 40% for new projects.

The world's largest onshore wind farms are in the United States, with the Horse Hollow farm in Texas providing more than 700MW.

These will soon be dwarfed by proposed offshore wind farms of up to 5,000MW each.

Read more!

Climate Change Hits Pacific Region Food Security - FAO

PlanetArk 3 Dec 08;

MILAN - Ocean warming, frequent tropical cyclones, floods and droughts are likely to have a devastating impact on food security in Pacific island countries, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Tuesday.

FAO's report on climate change and food security in the Pacific islands region comes as delegates from 187 countries meet in Poland for UN talks aiming to move closer to a deal on new climate treaty in 2009 to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

"Climate projections for the Pacific island countries are bleak and indicate reduced food security, especially for households," Alexander Mueller, FAO's assistant director-general said in a statement accompanying the report.

FAO's joint report with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the University of the South Pacific is published on its Web site www.fao.org.

Warning about possible "enormous" economic damage to the region's agriculture, fisheries and forestry, Mueller urged the countries to move quickly to adapt these sectors to future climate-related disasters.

"There is a need to act urgently," he said.

A devastating mixture of droughts and floods would bring water stress, more pests and weeds, erosion and loss of soil fertility to the region's agriculture which depends heavily on summer rains, the statement said.

Expected increases in sea water temperature, coastal inundation, salinisation and erosion of soil would cut the size of productive agricultural land and hit fishery, threatening local food security, FAO said.

Fish consumption in Pacific island countries is very high, with an average of 70 kilogram per person per year, and fish exports account for as much as 70 percent of total exports in some countries, the report said.

Pacific island countries which have been relying too heavily on external resources in dealing with climate change should work out their national policies with programmes and budgets for sustainable development, the report said.

It urged nations which have pushed for monoculture crop production for foreign markets to diversify their agriculture.

(Reporting by Svetlana Kovalyova)

Read more!

Prepare for disasters despite downturn: UN

Yahoo News 2 Dec 08;

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – UN officials meeting in the Malaysian capital Tuesday warned Asian countries not to cut funding for disaster preparations, despite the global economic downturn.

Philippine senator Loren Legarda, the UN's newly-appointed "champion" for disaster risk reduction said countries in the region must spend to reduce risks in a natural disaster.

"We are hoping (budgets) will not be affected because disasters will continue to happen, just like 22 typhoons come to the Philippines every year... whether there is a global crisis or not," she told reporters on the sidelines of a two-day UN conference on disaster risk reduction.

"We must make (governments) aware that we are cutting losses by being prepared," she said.

Asia is already home to most of the world's natural disasters -- 75 percent of all people killed last year from calamities attributed to rising sea levels including floods and storms lived in the continent, global charity World Vision said in September.

In May, Cyclone Nargis left about 138,000 people dead or missing when it hit Myanmar, while an earthquake in southwestern China in the same month killed more than 87,000.

An earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2004 killed 168,000 people in Indonesia alone, with tens of thousands more dead in other nations.

Malaysia's deputy premier Najib Razak said his country would set up a regional disaster relief centre in a tie-up with the UN World Food Programme to coordinate humanitarian relief operations in Asia.

The centre will be built in Subang, in central Selangor state north of the capital Kuala Lumpur next year, and will serve as an operations centre to distribute food aid and relief work in disaster-struck nations in the region.

Read more!

Top scientist dismayed at spending imbalance on climate, poverty

Richard Ingham PlanetArk 2 Dec 08;

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – The head of the world's top climate scientists says he is stunned at the trillion-dollar cheques that have been signed to ease the banking crisis when funding for poverty and global warming is scrutinised or denied.

In an interview on the sidelines of the UN climate talks here, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he was both astonished and dismayed at the imbalance.

"It seems very strange, what has happened in the past two or three months," he told AFP.

"It defies any kind of logic, if you look at the type of money that the world has spent on these bailouts, 2.7 trillion dollars (2.13 trillion euros) is the estimate, and it's been done so quickly and without questioning."

Pachauri recalled that when the Millennium Development Goals for attacking poverty and sickness were being drawn up, a panel chaired by Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico, suggested "a fairly modest estimate" of 50 billion dollars a year in help for poor countries.

"But everyone scoffed at it. Nobody did a damn thing," Pachauri said in the interview on Monday.

"(Yet) here, you've got agencies, you've got organisations that are not only responsible for their own failure but the failure of the entire economic system, and they get cheques worth 2.7 trillion dollars. I find this amazing... What can you say, what can you do?"

Pachauri suggested that this two-sided story illustrated a "distortion" in the economic system.

Carbon emissions -- the fossil-fuel pollution that stokes climate change -- were another example, whereby the true cost of using or abusing natural resources was not factored in to calculations, he said.

"Once the dust settles and we know the direction the world is going to move in, I think there will be a very deep and major reappraisal of the way we've been growing economically," said Pachauri.

"I think we will have a major spring cleaning of the economic system.... I believe that you will get a shift towards much more efficient use of natural resources, much more efficient use of energy, and certainly doing away with a lot of waste."

The December 1-12 talks in Poznan, taking place under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are intended to serve as a springboard to an ambitious new treaty to slash emissions of greenhouse gases beyond 2012.

The deal is scheduled to be completed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Pachauri, who also made a speech to the conference, pointed to the latest scientific evidence on climate change, put forward last year in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report -- a landmark document that helped earn the panel the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore.

Only seven years are left, warned Pachauri, for global emissions of greenhouse gases to peak and then start declining, in order to stem warming to around two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

Tackling the problem would cost less than three percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030, a fleabite when compared to the bill that would come from drought, flood, rising sea levels and storms, he said.

Pachauri added that he was pressing for a meeting with US President-elect Barack Obama to drive home his message.

"If I can get 10 minutes with him, that's all I'll need," he said.

Read more!

Climate talks seen on track as South Africa leads call for concessions

Yahoo News 2 Dec 08;

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – Negotiators at the UN climate talks in Poznan got down to work on Tuesday as South Africa headed demands for rich nations to agree to tough targets in a new pact for defeating global warming.

"We're out of the starting gate," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), organising the 12-day conference that began here on Monday.

"We're off, and the work is progressing... my sense is that governments are keen to move things forward."

The meeting's key task is to whittle down a document, the size of a small phonebook, for action to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and step up financial help beyond 2012.

The hope is that the document can be sculpted into a blueprint leading to a deal in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The serious haggling will be left to a string of meetings throughout 2009 but already the Poznan talks have outlined the likely areas of battle.

On the table are widely varying proposals as to who should do what to cut their carbon pollution and by what year, and how to deliver financial aid and clean technology to poor, vulnerable countries.

Delegates on Monday set up a roster of working groups, grouped according to theme, to try to cut through the negotiation undergrowth.

Among rich countries, the European Union (EU) has set down the most ambitious plan, saying developed economies should cut their emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels.

It has already promised to unilaterally reduce its own contribution of greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, but this plan has been darkened by objections within its own ranks, with Poland and Italy fearing it will inflict too high an economic price.

The EU also says global emissions should peak within 10-15 years and be reduced to "well below half" of 2000 levels by mid-century.

Other rich countries, though, have been vague or silent about their positions and have looked to developing giants -- the big polluters of tomorrow -- to show their own hand first.

South Africa on Tuesday led the charge for rich nations to bear the burden of concessions in the post-2012 treaty.

Environment and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said "all developed countries" should commit to domestic emission cuts of 80-95 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

They should also make an "unambiguous commitment" to cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below the 1990 benchmark by 2020, he said in a press statement released by the South African delegation.

In exchange, developing countries could pledge to make a "substantial deviation" below the expected upward trend of their pollution, said van Schalkwyk.

Van Schalkwyk did not spell out in figures as to what this concession on so-called baseline emissions would be. The United States, under President George W. Bush, has demanded that emerging giant economies, such as China and India, commit to targeted emissions curbs of the kind that bind rich countries in the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol.

The minister said "some regions" could agree to below-trend curbs by 2020 and all regions would follow by 2050, although developed countries would also have to help transfer clean technology and provide financial support to help them meet these goals.

Separately, Greenpeace activists scaled a 150-metre (487-feet) -high smokestack at a power plant in Konin, central Poland to urge the Polish government to back the EU's climate package.

The package comes up for debate at a summit in Brussels on December 11-12 that coincides with the climax at ministerial level of the Poznan conference.

Developing Nations Seek Cash In UN Warming Fight
Alister Doyle and Gabriela Baczynska, PlanetArk 3 Dec 08;

POZNAN - Developing nations urged rich nations at UN climate talks on Tuesday to raise aid despite the financial crisis to help the poor cope with global warming and safeguard tropical forests.

The UN's top climate official said the Dec. 1-12 meeting of 10,700 delegates had started well as the half-way point in negotiations to agree a new climate treaty by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.

"I'm happy with where we are," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said of the meeting which will test governments' willingness to work on climate change amid a global economic slowdown.

"I think it's really important, especially in the context of the financial crisis, to see how we can craft a Copenhagen agreement that makes it clear how financial resources will be generated."

Developing nations say they will need billions of dollars to help them combat warming and adapt to changes such as droughts, floods, more powerful cyclones and rising seas. Rich nations say they will help, but have made few pledges.

"It's imperative that the level of financing is up to the challenge, that's the basic starting point," Andre Odenbreit Carvalho, a Brazilian Foreign Ministry official, told delegates.

Several nations, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Suriname and Papua New Guinea, said rich nations had to help them safeguard tropical forests.

Trees soak up greenhouse gases as they grow, and burning forests to clear land for farming accounts for about 20 percent of warming from human activities. Governments want measures to slow deforestation as part of the 2009 deal.

DEFORESTATION

"We must understand how to develop predictable, sufficient and sustainable financial flows" to protect forests, said Kevin Conrad, head of the Papua New Guinea delegation.

De Boer said that rich nations had to take a lead with deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases. "There was a strong sentiment expressed that governments need to speed up the work and need to really shift gear," he said.

Aid group Oxfam proposed rich countries pay about $50 billion annually from 2013 for rights to emit greenhouse gases, raising cash to help the least developed nations.

"This is a way to get it done," said Heather Coleman, senior climate policy advisor at Oxfam America, adding Norway and the Netherlands supported the concept.

Early on Tuesday, 11 Greenpeace activists scaled a 150-metre (490-foot) smokestack at the Patnow power plant in Poland to hang a banner reading "Quit coal, save the climate".

De Boer said that he was not targeting agreement on a complete deal next year, but rather on principles and targets. He denied that he was toning down ambitions.

"I don't think I'm managing expectations, I'm dealing with realities," he said.

The existing Kyoto Protocol, binding rich nations to curb emissions, was agreed in 1997 but only entered into force eight years later after ratification by sufficient countries.

That process would now have to be squeezed into just three years, from agreement on the outlines of a deal in Copenhagen next year, to ratification of a final treaty by up to 190 nations before the end of the present round of Kyoto in 2012.

Environmentalists gave a "Fossil of the Day" -- a dinosaur statuette -- to the European Union, accusing it of failing to lead in cutting emissions. The EU is split on designing measures to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Read more!

Qatar looks to grow food in Kenya

The Gulf state has joined a growing list of rich countries that want to grow food in poor countries
Xan Rice, guardian.co.uk 2 Dec 08;

Qatar has asked Kenya to lease it 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops as part of a proposed package that would also see the Gulf state fund a new £2.4bn port on the popular tourist island of Lamu off the east African country.

The deal is the latest example of wealthy countries and companies trying to secure food supplies from the developing world.

Other Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have also been negotiating leases of large tracts of farmland in countries such as Sudan and Senegal since the global food shortages and price rises earlier this year.

The Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, returned from a visit to Qatar on Monday. His spokesman said the request for land in the Tana river delta, south of Lamu, in north-east Kenya was being seriously considered.

"Nothing comes for free," said Isaiah Kabira. "If you want people to invest in your country then you have to make concessions."

But the deal is likely to cause concern in Kenya where fertile land is unequally distributed. Several prominent political families own huge tracts of farmland, while millions of people live in densely packed slums.

The country is also experiencing a food crisis, with the government forced to introduce subsidies and price controls on maize this week after poor production and planning caused the price of the staple "ugali" flour to double in less than a year.

Kibaki said that Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani was keen to invest in a second port to complement Mombasa, which serves as a gateway for goods bound for Uganda and Rwanda and is struggling to cope with the large volumes of cargo.

By building docks in Lamu, Kenya hopes to open a new trade corridor that will give landlocked Ethiopia and the autonomous region of Southern Sudan access to the Indian Ocean. Kabira said that if the financing was agreed, construction of the port would begin in 2010.

Qatar, which has large oil and gas revenues, imports most of its food, as most of its land is barren desert and just 1% is suitable for arable farming. It has already reportedly struck deals this year to grow rice in Cambodia, maize and wheat in Sudan and vegetables in Vietnam.

Much of the produce will be exported to the Gulf. Qatar's foreign ministry in Doha did not return calls today, but Kabira said that its intention was to grow "vegetables and fruit" in Kenya.

The area proposed for the farming project is near the Tana river delta where the Kenyan government owns nearly 500,000 hectares (1.3m acres) of uncultivated land.

But a separate agreement to allow a local company to grow sugarcane and build a factory in the area has attracted fierce opposition from environmentalists who say a pristine ecosystem of mangrove swamps, savannah and forests will be destroyed.

Pastoralists, who regard the land as communal and rear up to 60,000 cattle to graze in the delta each dry season, are also opposed to the plan.

"We will have to ensure that this new project is properly explained to the people before it can go ahead," said Kabira.

The sudden rush by foreign governments and companies to secure food supplies in Africa has some experts worried. Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN's food and agricultural organisation (FAO), recently spoke of the risk of a "neo-colonial" agricultural system emerging.

The FAO said some of the first overseas projects by Gulf companies in Sudan, where more than 5 million people receive international food aid, showed limited local benefits, with much of the specialist labour and farming inputs imported.

A deal struck last month by Daewoo Logistics and Madagascar to grow crops on 1.3m hectares of land also attracted strong criticism. While the South Korean firm has promised to provide local jobs and will have to invest in building roads and farming infrastructure, it is paying no upfront fee and has a 99-year lease.

Read more!