Destruction of seagrass on a par with loss of rainforests and coral reefs

Vital marine habitat under threat
Daniel Cressey, Nature 29 Jun 09;

While the world has focused on the destruction mankind has brought to coral reefs, the massive loss of an equally important ecosystem has been widely ignored.

Now the first comprehensive assessment of the state of seagrass meadows around the world has revealed the damage that human activities have wrought on these economically and biologically essential areas.

A synthesis of quantitative data from 215 sites suggests that the world has lost more than a quarter of its meadows in the past 130 years, since records began, and that the rate of that decline has grown from less than 1% per year before 1940 to 7% per year since 1990.

"Seagrass loss rates are comparable to those reported for mangroves, coral reefs and tropical rainforests, and place seagrass meadows among the most threatened ecosystems on earth," write the authors of the synthesis, which is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. "Our report of mounting seagrass losses reveals a major global environmental crisis in coastal ecosystems, for which seagrasses are sentinels of change."

As well as supporting unique wildlife such as green turtles (Chelonia mydas) and dugong (Dugong dugon), seagrass meadows also serve as a vital nursery for fish, supporting populations for coral reefs and commercial fisheries. They also serve to stabilize sediment and provide coastal protection, as well as trapping carbon and helping in nutrient transportation.

Suffering sentinels

For the global survey, the researchers compiled a database of all data on changes in the extent of seagrass cover spanning at least two years. They included published studies, online databases and unpublished but audited research.

Their synthesis shows that since 1980 seagrasses have been destroyed at the rate of 110 square kilometres per year. While 25% of sites increased in size and 17% showed no detectable change, 58% declined.

Overall, the measured area of loss between 1879 and 2006 was 3,370 square kilometres from the total of 11,592 for which suitable records were available — a loss of 29%. Extrapolating this to a global scale suggests 51,000 square kilometres of seagrass meadows have been lost since records began.

Study author Frederick Short, a researcher at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, admits that there is "not that much data" available on seagrass, so the total loss is difficult to pin down exactly.

Still, he says, "It is looking quite bleak for many parts … we are abusing our coastal systems."

The vast majority of this decline, say Short and other experts, is attributable to human activity. Nutrient and sediment pollution from nearby human activities and the introduction of invasive species are both contributing to their decline.

Seagrasses — flowering plants that evolved from terrestrial plants — are also likely to be affected by climate change, the authors note. And while the world focuses on photogenic coral, seagrass loss is just as worrying, perhaps more so as they are more widely distributed.

"The seagrass ecosystem in general is quite unacknowledged," says Short.

Uncertain fate

Giuseppe DiCarlo, marine climate change manager at Conservation International and a member of the steering committee of the World Seagrass Association, told Nature News that even where seagrass meadows have been lost there is the opportunity for recovery if protection via the designation of Marine Protected Areas can be brought in.

"It's nice to finally have some global numbers that can be used when advocating for the protection of seagrass," he says. "If you look at a regional scale, like in the Caribbean, we're going to lose the seagrass beds altogether [if something isn't done]."

Susanne Livingstone, programme officer on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Marine Species Assessment, says experts wouldn't be surprised to hear a 30% figure for losses, but despite these losses seagrass rarely makes it into the public consciousness. "It's probably because they're not as sexy [as corals], they're not as attractive," she says. "They're just as ecologically important if not more so."

Livingstone has been working on the forthcoming assessment of seagrass from the IUCN's Red List of the world's most threatened species. While the results of this are not yet available, she confirms that it will take the newly published research into account.

References
1. Waycott, M. et al. Proc. Acad. Natl Sci. USA advance online publication doi:10.1073/pnas.0905620106 (2009).

Loss Of Coastal Seagrass Habitat Accelerating Globally
ScienceDaily 29 Jun 09;

An international team of scientists warns that accelerating losses of seagrasses across the globe threaten the immediate health and long-term sustainability of coastal ecosystems. The team has compiled and analyzed the first comprehensive global assessment of seagrass observations and found that 58 percent of world's seagrass meadows are currently declining.

The assessment, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows an acceleration of annual seagrass loss from less than 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990. Based on more than 215 studies and 1,800 observations dating back to 1879, the assessment shows that seagrasses are disappearing at rates similar to coral reefs and tropical rainforests.

The team estimates that seagrasses have been disappearing at the rate of 110 square-kilometers (42.4 square-miles) per year since 1980 and cites two primary causes for the decline: direct impacts from coastal development and dredging activities, and indirect impacts of declining water quality.

"A recurring case of 'coastal syndrome' is causing the loss of seagrasses worldwide," said co-author Dr. William Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "The combination of growing urban centers, artificially hardened shorelines and declining natural resources has pushed coastal ecosystems out of balance. Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes."

"While the loss of seagrasses in coastal ecosystems is daunting, the rate of this loss is even more so," said co-author Dr. Robert Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of the College of William and Mary. "With the loss of each meadow, we also lose the ecosystem services they provide to the fish and shellfish relying on these areas for nursery habitat. The consequences of continuing losses also extend far beyond the areas where seagrasses grow, as they export energy in the form of biomass and animals to other ecosystems including marshes and coral reefs."

"With 45 percent of the world's population living on the 5 percent of land adjacent to the coast, pressures on remaining coastal seagrass meadows are extremely intense," said co-author Dr. Tim Carruthers of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "As more and more people move to coastal areas, conditions only get tougher for seagrass meadows that remain."

Seagrasses profoundly influence the physical, chemical and biological environments of coastal waters. A unique group of submerged flowering plants, seagrasses provide critical habitat for aquatic life, alter water flow and can help mitigate the impact of nutrient and sediment pollution.

The article "Accelerating loss of seagrasses across the globe threatens coastal ecosystems," appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition on June 29. The article was authors by 14 scientists from the United States, Australia and Spain, including Drs. Michelle Waycott (lead author), Carlos Duarte, Tim Carruthers, Bob Orth, Bill Dennison, Suzanne Olyarnik, Ainsley Calladine, Jim Fourqurean, Ken Heck, Randall Hughes, Gary Kendrick, Jud Kenworthy, Fred Short, and Susan Williams.

The assessment was conducted as a part of the Global Seagrass Trajectories Working Group, supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California, through the National Science Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Study: Coastal seagrass increasingly being lost
Yahoo News 29 Jun 09;

WASHINGTON – Coastal development and declining water quality are threatening seagrasses worldwide, researchers report. A study of coastal grasses around the world shows that 58 percent of the seagrass meadows are in decline, according to a report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seagrass provides habitat for coastal life and helps reduce the impact of sediment and nutrient pollution.

"The combination of growing urban centers, artificially hardened shorelines and declining natural resources has pushed coastal ecosystems out of balance. Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes," co-author William Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science said in a statement.

"With the loss of each meadow, we also lose the ecosystem services they provide to the fish and shellfish relying on these areas for nursery habitat. The consequences of continuing losses also extend far beyond the areas where seagrasses grow, as they export energy in the form of biomass and animals to other ecosystems including marshes and coral reefs," Robert Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of the College of William and Mary added.

The researchers said that since 1990 there has been about a 7 percent loss of seagrass per year, with the major impacts coming from coastal development and dredging and reductions in water quality.

The research was supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California, through the National Science Foundation.

PNAS: http://www.pnas.org

Loss of seagrasses 'accelerating'
Anna Salleh, ABC 30 Jun 09;

Nearly 30% of global seagrass beds have been lost since records began, and the rate of loss is accelerating, according to a new study.

Marine biologist Professor Gary Kendrick, of the University of Western Australia in Perth, and colleagues report their findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The losses have been quite substantial," says Kendrick. "Every year we're losing about 110 square kilometres of seagrasses globally."

He and colleagues found that since 1980, 29% of seagrass has disappeared and the overall rate of loss has accelerated from 0.9% a year, before 1940, to 7% a year, since 1990.

In the largest study of its kind, Kendrick and colleagues analysed 215 studies of seagrass beds in shallow coastal waters from around the world.

They found seagrass is being lost from east and west North America, the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Europe, parts of East Asia, Southeast Asia, as well as tropical and temperate Australasia.
Nutrient culprit

Nutrients in sewage and run-off from agriculture and industry are the major cause of seagrass death, says Kendrick.

These nutrients trigger the growth of algae, plants and animals that grow above or on seagrass, and stop it from getting the sunlight it needs.

"In Western Australia, in Cockburn Sound, we've lost 80% of our seagrasses. Over 1200 hectares of seagrasses have been lost in the last four decades," says Kendrick.

"The loss of seagrass there can be tied directly to nutrient input in the form of nitrogen."
Lungs of the ocean

Kendrick says the rate of seagrass loss is comparable to the loss of tropical rainforest.

He says studies have found seagrass fixes as much carbon dioxide as tropical forests, and is also a crucial part of the ocean food chain.

About 75% of seagrass feeds bacteria, which are the bottom of the ocean food chain, says Kendrick: "They actually feed the whole food web."

He says the other 25% of seagrass is eaten directly by animals such as dugongs, green turtles, fish, snails and crustaceans, as well as birds like geese and swans.

Seagrass meadows are also crucial to the survival of fish that live in coral reefs, says Kendrick: "So there's a very close connection between reef systems and seagrass systems in the tropics."
Impacts

The loss of seagrass negatively affects fisheries and human health through degradation of the ecosystem, says Kendrick.

He says seagrass buffers coastal areas from damaging waves, expected to increase with rising seas, and also acts as a filter for toxic materials released into the ocean from industry.

While seagrass beds off undeveloped parts of Australia, such as much of Queensland, remain healthy, most of the seagrass elsewhere in Australia is suffering, says Kendrick.

"Australia wide, seagrass has a problem anywhere there are port developments, harbours and urban development," he says.

But, there are some good news stories.

Kendrick says seagrass between the port of Fremantle and the port of Cockburn in Western Australia has recovered.

"Basically we cleaned up our activities south of Fremantle harbour in the late 1970s," says Kendrick, wondering if it might be a model for future seagrass recovery.

"Can we replicate what's happening there?"

Seagrass losses reveal global coastal crisis
Michael Perry, Reuters 29 Jun 09;

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mounting loss of seagrass in the world's oceans, vital for the survival of endangered marine life, commercial fisheries and the fight against climate change, reveals a major crisis in coastal ecosystems, a report says.

A global study of seagrass, which can absorb large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide, found that 29 percent of the world's known seagrass had disappeared since 1879 and the losses were accelerating.

Seagrasses are flowering plants found in shallow waters. They were vanishing at the rate of about 110 sq km (42 sq miles) a year since 1980, said the study to be published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study by Australian and American scientists found seagrass meadows were "among the most threatened ecosystems on earth" due to population growth, development, climate change and ecological degradation.

It said there were only about 177,000 sq km left globally.

"Seagrass meadows are negatively affected by impacts accruing from the billion or more people who live within 50 km (30 miles) of them," said the report received by Reuters on Tuesday.

The study said the loss of seagrass was comparable to losses in coral reefs, tropical rainforests and mangroves.

"Seagrasses are sentinels of change" and the loss of seagrass was an indicator of a deteriorating global marine ecosystem. "Mounting seagrass loss reveals a major global environmental crisis in coastal ecosystems," it said.

ECONOMIC LOSSES

It is estimated that 70 percent of all marine life in the ocean is directly dependent upon seagrass, according to U.S.-based Seagrass Recovery (www.seagrassrecovery.com).

Seagrasses are the only flowering plants that can live entirely in water. They are most closely related to lilies and are very different to seaweeds, which are algae.

Seagrass meadows provide important ecosystem services, said the study, citing an estimated US$1.9 trillion a year in nutrient cycling, enhancement of coral reef fish productivity, habitats for thousands of fish, bird and invertebrate species and a major food source for endangered dugong and turtles.

Seagrass beds are believed to rival rice paddies in their photosynthetic productivity or the ability to extract greenhouse gas CO2 and convert it into oxygen and stored carbon matter.

One acre of seagrass can lock away nearly 8 metric tonnes of carbon per year, which equals the CO2 emissions from a car traveling more than 3,500 miles, says Seagrass Recovery.

The study said more than 51,000 sq km (19,700 sq miles) of grass had been lost in the past 127 years, with largest losses (35 percent) occurring after 1980.

"Seagrass losses decrease primary production, carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling in the coastal zone. If the current rate of seagrass loss is sustained or continues to accelerate, the ecological losses will also increase, causing even greater ill-afforded economic losses," said the study.

Vanishing Seagrass: as Important as Coral Reefs (But Way Less Sexy)
Discover Magazine 30 Jun 09;

Human beings are increasingly making their homes on the coasts of continents, but this demographic shift is taking a toll on a sensitive coastal ecosystem that is often overlooked: seagrass meadows. A new analysis of seagrass abundance around the world found that 27 percent of these meadows have disappeared since 1879, and the rate of loss is accelerating. The study’s authors write: “Seagrass loss rates are comparable to those reported for mangroves, coral reefs and tropical rainforests, and place seagrass meadows among the most threatened ecosystems on earth….. Our report of mounting seagrass losses reveals a major global environmental crisis in coastal ecosystems, for which seagrasses are sentinels of change” [Nature News].

Endangered species expert Susanne Livingstone notes that despite these losses seagrass rarely makes it into the public consciousness. “It’s probably because they’re not as sexy [as corals], they’re not as attractive,” she says. “They’re just as ecologically important if not more so” [Nature News]. Seagrass meadows provide grazing for a variety of marine animals, including the green turtle and the manatee-like dugong. The coastal areas also serve as nurseries for fish; both coral reefs and commercial fisheries would feel the impact if seagrass meadows vanish.

In the study, which will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say that nutrients in sewage and run-off from agriculture and industry are the major cause of seagrass death…. These nutrients trigger the growth of algae, plants and animals that grow above or on seagrass, and stop it from getting the sunlight it needs [Australian Broadcasting Corporation].

Seagrasses, which evolved from terrestrial plants, are the only flowering plants that can live entirely in water. They are most closely related to lilies and are very different to seaweeds, which are algae…. Seagrass beds are believed to rival rice paddies in their photosynthetic productivity or the ability to extract greenhouse gas CO2 and convert it into oxygen and stored carbon matter [Reuters]. If seagrass meadows continue to shrink in shallow coastal waters around the world, it will accelerate the pace of global warming, researchers say.

Loss of world's seagrass beds seen accelerating
Jim Loney, Reuters 2 Jul 09;

MIAMI (Reuters) - The world's seagrass meadows, a critical habitat for marine life and profit-maker for the fishing industry, are in decline due to coastal development and the losses are accelerating, according to a new study.

Billed as the first comprehensive global assessment of seagrass losses, the study found 58 percent of seagrass meadows are declining and the rate of annual loss has accelerated from about 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990.

Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study, based on more than 200 surveys and 1,800 observations dating back to 1879, found that seagrasses are disappearing at rates similar to coral reefs and tropical rainforests.

"Seagrasses are disappearing because they live in the same kind of environments that attract people," James Fourqurean, a professor at Florida International University and a co-author of the study, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

"They live in shallow areas protected from large storm waves, and they are especially prevalent in bays and around river mouths."

Scientists say seagrass processes waste dumped into the sea, helps stabilize ocean-bottom sediments in coastal areas to reduce erosion, provide nurseries for fish and shellfish and feeding grounds for larger marine creatures, including those that live in coral reefs.

But the grasses can be damaged by polluted water from coastal development, decreasing water clarity, and by dredging and filling of meadows.

The scientists also said global climate change "is predicted to have deleterious effects on seagrasses." Many scientists believe greenhouse gases are causing the world to warm, leading to a host of environmental effects including warming and rising oceans.

'ECONOMICALLY AND ECOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT'

Seagrass meadows are important food fisheries and host gamefish like tarpon, permit and bonefish.

A recent study estimated the annual economic value of seagrass at $3,500 per hectare (2.5 acres), Fourqurean said.

"Seagrass beds are at least as economically and ecologically important as tropical forests or coral reefs," he said.

The study, by a team of scientists from the United States, Australia and Spain, found that 29 percent of known seagrass meadows have disappeared since 1879. Over the entire 130-year period, seagrass was lost at a rate of 1.5 percent per year.

An estimated 19,690 square miles (51,000 square km) of seagrass has been lost since 1879 of a total estimated area of 68,350 square miles (177,000 square km), the researchers said.

"Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes," said co-author William Dennison of the University of Maryland.

The scientists said 45 percent of the world's population lives on 5 percent of its land adjacent to the coast.

In the early 20th century, heavy seagrass losses were noted in North America and Europe, where the industrial revolution led to rapid coastal development.

Today, population growth in the regions bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans are likely leading to the heaviest losses of seagrass, but those regions lack the scientific infrastructure to assess the loss, Fourqurean said.

He said mitigation efforts have had some success in saving and restoring seagrass. For example, in Florida, where treated sewage water is often dumped in the ocean, water managers in Tampa changed their method of treating wastewater and failing seagrasses rebounded.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Meadows of the sea in 'shocking' decline
MacGregor Campbell, New Scientist 3 Jul 09;

Seagrass meadows are disappearing at an accelerating pace, according to a new report, which is the first to look at the problem on a global scale.

Seagrass meadows, along with coral reefs, mangrove forests, and salt-marshes, provide valuable ecosystem services like nutrient cycling. They also protect edible crustaceans, like shrimps and crabs, and juvenile fish such as salmon. In addition, seagrass meadows provide habitats for endangered species like dugongs, manatees, and sea turtles.

While marine ecologists have been measuring localized seagrass loss for decades, they had never before pooled their information to get a global perspective. So a team led by

Michelle Waycott of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia pooled data from 215 regional studies, from 1879 to 2006.

They found that the total area of known seagrass meadow had decreased by 29 per cent over the 127 years. They also found that the rate of loss had accelerated, from less than 1 per cent per year in the 1940s to 7 per cent per year since the 1990s.
Sediment dump

"We put tremendous pressure on sea grass beds, but we get a lot of benefits from them," says Susan Williams of the Bodega Marine Laboratory, one of the report's co-authors.

The study points to sediment dumping from coastal development projects, pollution, and agricultural nutrient runoff as major causes of the decline. All three can decrease water quality, starving the plants of the sunlight they need to grow.

Natural disruptions like hurricanes accounted for a small proportion of losses.

According to Williams, the numbers translate to losing a football pitch's worth of seagrass every thirty minutes.
Shocking loss

Overall, the rate of loss is comparable to that for tropical rainforests and coral reefs.

However, seagrass meadows exist in both tropical and temperate zones, and are more widespread than either rainforests or reefs. Their loss has the potential to affect coastal communities all over the world.

"Those numbers are pretty shocking," says Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Although not involved with this study, Halpern and colleagues released a map last yearMovie Camera of human impacts on marine habitats.

"Marine ecosystems have a lot more opportunity to bounce back than ecosystems on land," he says. "We do need to act quickly, but there is real hope that our actions can be effective."
Watershed moment

Not all areas of the globe decreased. Of the 51 sites that showed increases, 11 were attributable to improved water quality and restored habitat, showing that human efforts can bring the grasses back.

The report notes that transplantation efforts have generally failed, but watershed management and habitat remediation are effective.

One notable example is Tampa Bay, Florida, US, where efforts to reduce nutrient runoff have resulted in 50 per cent clearer water, and a recovery of 27 square kilometres of seagrass beds in the last 25 years.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905620106

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Hybrid "Superpredator" Invading California Ponds

Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News 29 Jun 09;

Mating between the rare California tiger salamander and the introduced barred tiger salamander has created a monster—at least for animals that dwell in the ponds of California's Salinas River Valley. (See a map of the region.)

The new hybrid "superpredator" grows larger than either of its parent species, and its bigger mouth enables it to suck up a wide variety of amphibian prey, said lead study author Maureen Ryan, of the Center for Population Biology at the University of California, Davis.

Mostly on the menu are smaller pond species, such as the Pacific chorus frog and the California newt—both of which have had their populations "dramatically reduced" by the hybrid.

"[The hybrids] seem to be more voracious and a little more aggressive," Ryan said. "Just watching their behavior, they'll go after each other and the other prey."
A "supersize" hybrid salamander is gulping down smaller amphibians—such as Pacific chorus frogs (F, the frog in its larval stage) and California newts (E, the newt in its larval stage)—in ponds throughout California's Salinas Valley, a June 2009 study found. The voracious hybrid (D, the largest variety, and C, the smallest) is a blend of the native California tiger salamander (A, the largest variety, and B, the smallest) and the invasive barred tiger salamander (not pictured). Photograph courtesy Brian MacElvaine

Cannibal Ambush

Barred tiger salamanders were introduced to California in the 1940s and '50s from Texas. Hybrids of the invaders and native salamanders now occupy about 20 percent of the indigenous amphibian's range in the Salinas Valley.

The native California species is listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

(Related: "Interspecies Sex: Evolution's Hidden Secret?")

To find out how the hybrid is impacting local ponds, Ryan collected tadpoles and eggs from various sites within the valley and observed them in the lab.

She and her team found that the hybrid tadpoles not only ate other amphibians, they also preyed on the native species' larvae.

The hybrid tadpoles even deployed an ambush strategy different than other salamander young: When something swam by, the creatures would attack and "jump and suck at the same time," Ryan explained.

The hybrids have another strange adaptation, she added: Tadpoles will sometimes develop extra rows of teeth and become cannibals, something not seen in the native species.

Also at Risk

Other amphibian species are in danger if the hybrid's range continues to spread throughout the valley.

For instance, the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander, also listed as endangered in the U.S., lives in a very small range in Monterey County.

If hybrids moved into this area, they "could put a serious dent into the whole global population of the [long-toed] salamander," Ryan said.

Karen Lips, an amphibian biologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, said in an email that "the results of the paper show that the hybrids are having a significant impact on the other amphibians in these ponds."

And there are other examples in which salamanders have become top predators, added Lips, who was not involved in the research. In woodland ponds, for example, the amphibians dictate the populations of insects and other invertebrates.

Ethical Quandaries

Getting rid of the hybrid poses "ethical quandaries," study leader Ryan said.

"From a conservation perspective, there [are] a lot of deep questions about what to do with this," she said.

After all, the hybrid is part endangered species, so "do we protect [them] because they're part native?"

Overall, Ryan said, her "real concern" is for the survival of California's native salamander, which has shown to be no match for the half-Texan interloper.

The hybrid's more aggressive predation "benefits the hybrid and harms the native, speeding up the process of converting populations into more hybrids."

Research appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Earning their stripes: trade in wild tigers

Debbie Banks, BBC Green Room 29 Jun 09;

Next week in Geneva, a prime issue for a UN endangered species committee called Cites will be illegal trade in wild tigers. In this week's Green Room, Debbie Banks argues that a handful of businessmen want to reduce the tigers to nothing more than a luxury commodity.

"Bagh Bachao, Jungle Bachao, Bharat Bachao" is the rallying cry of NGOs and activists across India, and they're right: Save the Tiger, Save the Forest, Save India.

The future of the tiger and its jungle home are inextricably linked to the survival of all of us, not just the people who live in tiger country.

The forests that are protected in the name of the tiger are vital to mitigate climate change and to secure water resources.

The tiger is an indicator of the health of the ecosystem and thus a symbol of good governance and political commitment to an equitable and sustainable future.

It is also a cultural and religious icon, venerated, feared and revered by communities across Asia and the world.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has been investigating and exposing the illegal trade in tigers and other Asian big cats for over 10 years. We have documented the changes in the markets and the increasing role of organised criminal networks.

We have campaigned for more effective enforcement initiatives to disrupt their operations, and know there is so much more that governments could do if they wanted to.

Hijacked conservation

Looking to the future, it is essential to plug some of the gaps in conservation strategies.

Many people living alongside tigers have yet to benefit from the millions of tourist dollars that the "world's favourite animal" generates; but in India, home to the largest remaining population of wild tigers, investment, policy and practice are at least moving in the right direction.

The same cannot be said for other countries, where business interests are hijacking the tiger conservation agenda, calling for the relaxation of trade bans so they can flood the market with farmed tiger parts.

The logic behind such a move is that since tigers breed well in captivity, farming them is an economical solution to satisfying demand whilst alleviating pressure on wild populations.

It's a simplistic logic that rests on critical assumptions about the complex nature and dynamics of the illegal trade in tigers and other Asian big cats.

Assumptions about the motivations of those involved in the trade, the costs of the trade, the scale and type of consumer demand: all plugged in to economic models and squirted out the other side as gospel.

What the followers of this faith have failed to acknowledge is that their version of events does not hold true in the real world. The risk of proceeding with this as an experiment is enormous, and the stake is no less than the extinction of the wild tiger.

So who are these disciples and what is their motivation? There are tiger farms in Thailand but by far the biggest ones are in China, where there are reportedly around 5,000 animals in captivity.

Despite a 1993 ban prohibiting the sale and use of tigers in China, business interests have continued to breed them, speculating that the ban would one day be lifted and that they would be sitting on a valuable stockpile of body parts.

'Conflict of interest'

Some argue that they want to sell tiger bone to save lives. Yet the Chinese medicinal community has long since promoted alternatives to tiger bone, which was never considered a life-saving ingredient in the first place.

Others just want to sell tiger bone wine. In fact, some businessmen are so keen they have already been found in breach of Chinese law, illegally selling the wine in tiger-shaped bottles and in one case, selling tiger meat.

EIA and others have found tiger bone wine being marketed as a general tonic and packaged as the gift that wins promotions and seals deals. Call it a conflict of interest, but there has been no meaningful enforcement action by the relevant authorities to stop this trade.

The very existence of these farms, and the persistent lobbying of the business community, is a distraction which deflates and undermines real tiger conservation efforts.

We're being asked to believe that those who have already dabbled in illegal trade have a real interest in limiting their market, and that the enforcement authorities who have failed to stop them so far will be able to regulate a legal trade to prevent the laundering of poached tiger parts.

In June 2007, the international community spoke with one voice; it declared that tigers should not be bred for any trade in their parts and derivatives.

Delegates at the 14th meeting of the Conference of Parties to Cites voted by consensus on a decision to phase out commercial tiger farms.

The move was championed by the governments of tiger range states such as India, Nepal, Russia and Bhutan, all desperately appealing to the international community to remove the farm threat once and for all.

Two years on however, those countries with tiger farms have failed to provide any evidence of progress.

In fact, China's response to a notification from Cites seeking information on what steps they have taken to fulfil the agreed decision was met with a curt and derisive response that told us nothing. All eyes will be on China once again during the Cites meeting in Geneva next week.

EIA firmly believes that if China is truly committed to saving the wild tiger, it should close down the tiger farms and invest in more effective and meaningful enforcement co-operation with range states.

Changes in attitudes and markets show that consumers are responsive to targeted education and outreach, and indeed several markets in China have declined dramatically in the last few years.

Now is not the time to abandon efforts but to reinvest, financially and politically, in their continued success.

In so doing, we bring far greater benefits - not just to the survival of the wild tiger, but also to other endangered species, to the fight against corruption and organised crime and to a better world for all of us. Who doesn't want that?

Debbie Banks is a senior tiger investigator with the EIA.

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website.

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Map of elephant DNA reveals trail of ivory smugglers

Robin McKie, The Observer 28 Jun 09;

Scientists have used a revolutionary genetic technique to pinpoint the area of Africa where smugglers are slaughtering elephants to feed the worldwide illegal ivory trade.

Using a DNA map of Africa's elephants, they have found that most recent seizures of tusks can be traced to animals that had grazed in the Selous and Niassa game reserves on the Tanzania and Mozambique borders.

The discovery suggests that only a handful of cartels are responsible for most of the world's booming trade in illegal ivory and for the annual slaughter of tens of thousands of elephants. The extent of this trade is revealed through recent seizures of thousands of tusks in separate raids on docks in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan. These were aimed at satisfying the far east's growing appetite for ivory, a new status symbol for the middle classes of the region's swelling industrialised economies.

As a result, ivory prices have soared from $200 a kilogram in 2004 to more than $6,000. At the same time, scientists estimate that between 8% and 10% of Africa's elephants are now being slaughtered each year to meet demand.

"In the past, law enforcement agencies - including Interpol - thought these shipments of ivory had been put together by traders cherry-picking small stockpiles across Africa," said Professor Sam Wasser, director of the University of Washington's Centre for Conservation Biology, where the DNA elephant map was developed.

"Our work shows that isn't true. The vast majority of poaching is being carried out by a few big organisations - possibly one or two major syndicates - that are targeting one area and then hammering its elephants. It is grim, but it also suggests we can target our anti-poaching efforts very specifically by focussing efforts on these regions."

At present, Tanzania is at the centre of the world's ivory slaughter. However, other work by Wasser and his team indicates that different areas, including parts of Zambia and Malawi, have been targeted in the recent past.

Ivory poaching was halted by an international campaign in the 1990s after it reached a peak between 1979 and 1989, when more than 700,000 elephants were killed for their tusks. However, aid that helps African nations fight poachers has dried up and the illegal ivory trade has returned to its previous high levels.

Killing for tusks is a particularly gruesome trade. Elephants are highly intelligent animals whose sophisticated social ties are exploited by poachers. They will often shoot young elephants to draw in a grieving parent, which is then killed for its tusks. "Our estimates suggest that more than 38,000 elephants were killed using techniques such as this in 2006 and that the annual death rate is even higher today," said Wasser.

His team's technique - outlined in the current issue of Scientific American - involves two separate sets of analyses. First, volunteers and researchers across Africa collected samples of elephant dung. Each contains plentiful amounts of DNA from cells, sloughed from the intestines of individual animals. These provide material for DNA fingerprints, which have since been mapped for the whole of Africa. Animals from one area have very similar DNA fingerprints, the researchers have found.

As part of the second analysis, a section of tusk seized from smugglers is ground up and its DNA is carefully extracted. Again a DNA fingerprint is made and compared with those on the dung map, in order to pinpoint the origin of the elephant.

In this way, Wasser and his colleagues analysed ivory seized when more than 11 tonnes of tusks were found in containers in raids on Taiwan and Hong Kong docks in July and August 2006. About 1,500 tusks were discovered and all were traced to elephants from the Selous game reserve, a Unesco heritage site in Tanzania, and the nearby Niassa game reserve in Mozambique. However, Japanese authorities - who had made another seizure of ivory that summer in Osaka - refused to co-operate and have since burnt the 260 tusks they found before their origins could be established. "You can draw your own conclusions," said Wasser.

Since then, major seizures of ivory have been made in Vietnam and the Philippines, both this year, and Wasser and his team are now preparing to use their DNA map to trace its origins.

"Ivory is now traded globally in the same illegal manner as drugs and weapons," said Wasser. "It is shameful that this has happened and we need to press the countries whose elephants are being targeted this way and get them to halt this trade."

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World Heritage in Danger - IUCN

IUCN 29 Jun 09;

The Danger List of World Heritage Sites needs radical change if is to remain an effective conservation tool, according to a report released today by IUCN.

Under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, the World Heritage Committee can inscribe sites under serious threat on the List of World Heritage in Danger. It is intended to be a constructive conservation tool, which mobilizes the international community to support national efforts.

But according to the IUCN report, World Heritage in Danger, putting a site on the danger list is often seen by Governments as criticism resulting in frequent opposition to its use. According to IUCN, the List of World Heritage in Danger needs to be re-established as a way to ensure and maintain credible standards for protecting the world’s natural and cultural treasures

“The World Heritage List in Danger is not working as it was intended, and it needs an overhaul,” says Tim Badman, IUCN’s Special Advisor on World Heritage. “There are good examples of how the List has led to positive conservation action, but more often than not its use is resisted. We want to change the way the Danger List is used, so that it turns international concern into real conservation results.”

Earlier this week, at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Seville, two natural sites, Los Katios National Park and the Belize Barrier Reef were added to the Danger List, but a third threatened site was not included.

The Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra was not added to the List of World Heritage in Danger, despite IUCN’s recommendation. Over the past four years, IUCN has conducted three monitoring missions and has recommended the site to be included on the danger list since 2004, the year of its inscription on the World Heritage List. The reports from the monitoring missions show that Indonesia’s last remaining intact forest wilderness needs an emergency restoration plan. Road construction, illegal logging, poaching, uncontrolled tourism, as well as insufficient support from the government, are among the threats facing the site.

“The new listings are a positive move for conservation, but it is a missed opportunity that the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra has not been added to the list of World Heritage in Danger,” says IUCN’s Tilman Jaeger. “The situation fundamentally threatens the survival of key species, such as the Sumatran tiger, rhino, orangutan and elephant. We need to restore the idea that the danger list is not a black mark for countries, but a way of drawing attention and providing support to the sites that need it the most.”

To read the full report, please click here: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/whc09_33com_9e_iucnfin__.pdf

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Grasshoppers vs. Locusts: What Makes a Swarm?

Robert Roy Britt, livescience.com Yahoo News 29 Jun 09;

Grasshoppers are in the news again. Or are they locusts?

Last week we learned locusts were swarming in Ethiopia, wiping out crops vital to the survival of local people.

Now we hear grasshoppers are invading Tooele County, Utah, near Salt Lake City. They're all over the ground, with people crunching them underfoot. The infestation is "worse than anyone can remember," AP reports.

What's the difference between the two bugs?

Green grasshoppers and brown locusts are close cousins, both in the grasshopper family. But while grasshoppers hop like mad and can be abundant and pesky, locusts can fly. More significant, locusts have the unusual ability to be total loners or to enter what scientists euphemistically call "a gregarious state" - this is the flying and swarming stage, the stuff of Biblical proportions.

Desert locusts affect 20 percent of the world's land surface, scientists say. Vast swarms containing billions of bugs periodically devastated parts of the United States back when the West was being settled. They continue to be a big problem in parts of Africa and China. Last November, swarms nearly 4 miles long (6 km) plagued Australia.

What makes them so, um, gregarious?

An increase in the chemical serotonin (which boosts moods in humans) in certain parts of a locust's nervous system initiates the swarming behavior, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Science.

It's nature's way of giving wing to a starved creature.

Desert locusts live in barren regions that see rain only rarely. They eke out an existence alone when times are tough. When the rains come, they breed like crazy. Then things dry up, and hoards of locusts are forced to gather around dwindling patches of vegetation.

"The gregarious phase is a strategy born of desperation and driven by hunger, and swarming is a response to find pastures new," said study team member Steve Rogers of Cambridge University.

Rogers and his colleagues found that in the lab, solitary locusts could be made gregarious within 2 hours simply by tickling their hind legs to simulate the jostling they experience in the wild. Serotonin levels spiked three-fold.

Once on the move, the epic swarms are all but inevitable. Here's how that works:

Scientists discovered a few years back that at low densities, the insects were unorganized and went their separate ways. But when the group's density increased, the bugs fell into an orderly line and began to follow the same direction.

Such "collective motion," which spells doom for a crop, is common also among ants, birds and fish.

The grasshoppers now invading Utah are born in cycles that run 7 to 10 years, scientists say, and the outbreak is nothing unusual for the natural world. What's really new is that there are more suburbanites to complain about them now.

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Crops face toxic timebomb in warmer world: study

David Fogarty, Reuters 29 Jun 09;

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Staples such as cassava on which millions of people depend become more toxic and produce much smaller yields in a world with higher carbon dioxide levels and more drought, Australian scientists say.

The findings, presented on Monday at a conference in Glasgow, Scotland, underscored the need to develop climate-change-resistant cultivars to feed rapidly growing human populations, said Ros Gleadow of the Monash University in Melbourne.

Gleadow's team tested cassava and sorghum under a series of climate change scenarios, with particular focus on different CO2 levels, to study the effect on plant nutritional quality and yield.

Both species belong to a group of plants that produce chemicals called cyanogenic glycosides, which break down to release poisonous cyanide gas if the leaves are crushed or chewed.

Around 10 percent of all plants and 60 percent of crop species produce cyanogenic glycosides.

The team grew cassava and sorghum at three different levels of CO2; just below today's current levels at about 360 parts per million in the atmosphere, at about 550 ppm and about double at 710 pm.

Current levels in the air are just under 390 ppm, around the highest in at least 800,000 years and up by about a third since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

"What we found was the amount of cyanide relative to the amount of protein increases," Gleadow told Reuters from Glasgow, referring to cassava.

At double current CO2 levels, the level of toxin was much higher while protein levels fell.

The ability of people and herbivores, such as cattle, to break down the cyanide depends largely on eating sufficient protein.

Anyone largely reliant on cassava for food, particularly during drought, would be especially at risk of cyanide poisoning.

HARDY STAPLE

While it was possible to use processing techniques to reduce the level of toxin in the cassava leaves, it was the 50 percent or greater drop in the number of tubers that caused most concern, Gleadow said.

About 750 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin America rely on cassava as a staple. The starchy tubers are used to make flour and the plant is ideal in dry regions because of its hardy nature.

The good news was that the levels of toxin in the tuber didn't increase with CO2, unlike the edible leaves.

"The downside of that is that we found the plant didn't grow nearly as well," she said.

"There's been this common assumption that plants will always grow better in a high CO2 world. And we've now found that these plants grew much worse and had smaller tubers."

At the 550 ppm level, the problem was not as serious and this meant scientists had a bit of breathing space.

"We've got 20 to 30 years to develop cultivars, which is going to be absolutely essential because by then about 1 billion people will probably be reliant on cassava."

Gleadow's group looked at a type of sorghum commonly fed to cattle in Australia and Africa and found it became less toxic at the highest CO2 level. But under drought conditions, leaf toxin levels rose.

She said her team was looking at creating mutations to get rid of the toxin response to drought.

"If we're going to adapt in the future to a world with twice today's CO2 we need to understand how plants are working, how they are responding and what cultivars we need to develop."

Her team plans to carry out additional research in Mozambique and study other tropical crops such as taro.

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

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Rising sea level to submerge Louisiana coastline by 2100, study warns

Scientists say between 10,000 and 13,500 square kilometres of coastal land around New Orleans will go underwater due to rising sea levels and subsidence

Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk 29 Jun 09;

A vast swath of the coastal lands around New Orleans will be underwater by the dawn of the next century because the rate of sediment deposit in the Mississippi delta can not keep up with rising sea levels, according to a study published today.

Between 10,000 and 13,500 square kilometres of coastal lands will drown due to rising sea levels and subsidence by 2100, a far greater loss than previous estimates.

For New Orleans, and other low-lying areas of Louisiana whose vulnerability was exposed by hurricane Katrina, the findings could bring some hard choices about how to defend the coast against the future sea level rises that will be produced by climate change.

They also revive the debate about the long-term sustainability of New Orleans and other low-lying areas.

Scientists say New Orleans and the barrier islands to the south will be severely affected by climate change by the end of this century, with sea level rise and growing intensity of hurricanes. Much of the land mass of the barrier island chain sheltering New Orleans was lost in the 2005 storm.

But the extent of the land that will be lost is far greater than earlier forecasts suggest, said Dr Michael Blum and Prof Harry Roberts, the authors of the study. "When you look at the numbers you come to the conclusion that the resources are just not there to restore all the coast, and that is one of the major points of this paper," said Roberts, a professor emeritus of marine geology at Louisiana State University.

Blum, who was formerly at Louisiana State University, now works at Exxon. "I think every geologist that has worked on this problem realises the future does not look very bright unless we can come up with some innovative ways to get that sediment in the right spot," said Roberts. "For managers and people who are squarely in the restoration business, this is going to force them to make some very hard decisions about which areas to save and which areas you can't save."

Efforts to keep pace with the accelerated rate of sea level rise due to global warming are compromised by the Mississippi's declining ability to bear sediments downstream into the delta.

The authors used sediment data from the Mississippi flood plain to estimate the amount of sediment deposited on the river delta during the past 12,000 years. They then compared this with sediment deposition today.

In paper published in Nature Geoscience they calculate that due to dam and levee building on the Mississippi the sediment carried by the river has been reduced significantly. There are now about 8,000 dams on the Mississippi river system. Roberts said such constructions and the system of levees in Louisiana had cut in half the sediment carried down to the delta, inhibiting the river's ability to compensate for the land lost to rising seas.

Sustaining the existing delta size would require 18 to 24bn tonnes of sediment, which the authors say is significantly more than can be drawn from the river in its current state. "We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable," the authors wrote. "In the absence of sediment input, land surfaces that are now below 1m in elevation will be converted to open water or marsh."

Mississippi River Delta to "Drown" by 2100?
Rebecca Carroll National Geographic News 29 Jun 09;

The Mississippi River Delta is drowning, according to new research that predicts the surrounding coastline will be inevitably reshaped in coming decades.

"There's just not enough sediment to sustain the delta plain," said study author Michael Blum of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Deltas are coastal landmasses created from a river's sediment deposits as the water flows out to sea.

The Mississippi River's delta plain, for example, includes the lacy "toe" of southern Louisiana.

All deltas are degrading to some extent, as their sediment settles and sinks. But a delta can sustain itself or even grow if its parent river regularly deposits enough new material.

Today sediments collected along the Mississippi cover about 23,360 square miles (60,500 square kilometers) ranging in thickness from less than 33 feet (10 meters) upstream near Memphis, Tennessee, to about 328 feet (100 meters) in the delta at the tip of southern Louisiana.

The drainage basin of the roughly 2,350-mile-long (3,782-kilometer-long) river, however, includes about 40,000 dams and levees built over the past century.

These structures control flooding and improve navigation, but they also trap sediment or funnel it completely through to the sea.

Previous studies suggested that dams and reservoirs built since 1950 have trapped as much as 70 percent of the river's natural amount of sediment. With less material feeding it, the delta plain has been experiencing erosion.

But even without the dams and levees, the amount of sediment flowing downriver would no longer be enough to sustain the delta because of rising seas, the study authors say.

Tough Choices

The researchers base their conclusions on estimated delta levels over the past 12,000 years, which show significant changes more than 7,000 years ago, when meltwater from the last ice age quickly filled the oceans.

The Mississippi Delta plain retreated inland at that point, and it was only after sea level rise had slowed considerably that the delta again grew seaward.

Current sea level rise, however, may be three times faster than it was the last time the delta was able to grow. (Related: "New York, Boston 'Directly in Path' of Sea Level Rise.")

With the added threat of rapid sea-level rise, sustaining the current extent of the delta plain would require 18 to 24 billion tons of sediment—way more than the entire Mississippi River currently carries, the researchers say.

The team therefore estimates that as much as 5,200 square miles (13,500 square kilometers) of delta land could disappear by 2100—an area only slightly smaller than Connecticut.

For now the study authors don't have a solution, and they add that plans to save the delta plain—such as redirecting and possibly adding sediment—will almost certainly involve sacrifices.

"They can [divert sediment to areas] downstream from, say, New Orleans, but that means that areas [of the delta plain] farther upstream will be submerged," Blum said.

"Tough choices have to be made, and they need to be made fast."

Findings appear online this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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China recruits algae to combat climate change

Chinese firm behind ambitious plan to breed microalgae in greenhouse with the potential to absorb carbon emissions

Jonathan Watts The Guardian 29 Jun 09;

The garish gunk coursing through a greenhouse filled with transparent pipes appears to belong on the set of a particularly slimy episode of Star Trek. Multiplying rapidly as it flows through tubes, stacked 14 high in four long rows, the organism thickens and darkens like the bioweapon of a deranged scientist.

But this is not a science fiction horror story, it is one of humankind's most ambitious attempts to recruit algae in the fight against climate change.

Developed by a groundbreaking Chinese firm, ENN, the greenhouse is a bioreactor that breeds microalgae, one of the fastest growing organisms on the planet, with carbon captured from gasified coal.

China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, largely because it relies on coal for 70 per cent of its power. Almost none of the carbon dioxide is captured, partly because there is no profitable way of using it.

Algae may be the answer. The organism can absorb carbon far more quickly than trees, a quality that has long attracted international scientists seeking a natural method of capturing the most abundant greenhouse gas.

At ENN's research campus in Langfang, an hour's drive from Beijing, scientists are testing microalgae to clean up the back-end of a uniquely integrated process to extract and use coal more efficiently and cleanly than is possible today.

Coal is first gasified in a simulated underground environment. The carbon dioxide is extracted with the help of solar and wind power, then "fed" to algae, which can be then used to make biofuel, fertiliser or animal feed.

Foreign experts are enthusiastic. "Algae biofuels and sequestration are being tried in a bunch of places, but never with such an innovative energy mix," said Deborah Seligsohn, of the World Resources Institute, who visited ENN recently with a group of international energy executives. "It is really interesting and ambitious."

Researchers at the algae greenhouse plan to scale up the trial to a 100 hectare (247 acre) site over the next three years. If it proves commercially feasible, coal plants around the world could one day be flanked by carbon-cleaning algae greenhouses or ponds.

"Algae's promise is that its population can double every few hours. It makes far more efficient use of sunlight than plants," said Zhu Zhenqi, a senior advisor on the project. "The biology has been proven in the lab. The challenge now is an engineering one: We need to increase production and reduce cost. If we can solve this challenge, we can deal with carbon."

The algae must be harvested every day. Extracting the oily components and removing the water is expensive and energy intensive.

ENN is experimenting with different algae to find a hybrid that has an ideal balance of oil content and growth speed. It is testing cultivation techniques using varying temperatures and acidity levels.

Algae tests are also being carried out at the University of Ohio. In Japan, algae is farmed at sea where it absorbs carbon from the air. Elsewhere carbon is sprayed or bubbled into algae ponds. But ENN is focusing on a direct approach.

"Here we can control it, like in a reactor," said Gu Junjie, a senior advisor. "Theoretically we can absorb 100% of carbon dioxide emissions through a mix of microalgae and chemical fixing with hydrogen."

This might work on a large scale in the northern deserts of Inner Mongolia, where land is cheap, plentiful and in need of fertiliser. But elsewhere, application may be limited because of the large areas of land or water needed for cultivation.

"Algae is not likely to be the main solution for the carbon problem because of the amount of CO2 that needs to be consumed," said Ming Sung, Chief Representative for Asia Pacific of Clean Air Task Force. But, he said: "Algae is part of the solution and is closer to what nature intends. Being one of the simplest forms of life, all it takes is light and CO2 in salt water,"

The advanced algae, solar and coal gasification technology is the latest stage in the rise of ENN, which has been spectacular even by modern Chinese standards. Founded in 1989 as a small taxi company, it has branched successfully into the natural gas industry and now into the field of renewable energy. The private company now employs about 20,000 people, and owns a golf course and hotel near its headquarters in Hebei province, where a new research campus is under construction.

In the short term, ENN's advanced underground coal gasification technology is likely to prove more significant than its algae work. This technique enables extraction of fuel from small, difficult-to-access coal seams, and could double the world's current coal reserves. It also avoids the release of the pollutants sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The company is also one of only a small handful in the world capable of mass producing thin-film solar panels, which can be manufactured with less water and energy than conventional photovoltaic materials. Late last year, the World Bank's International Financing Corporation announced a US$136m loan for ENN's solar business.

ENN executives have talked to the US department of energy about joint research , a sign that the transfer of low-carbon technologies is no longer a one-way street from west to east.

The development of the algae technology trails the others, but Zhu says the results from the 10,000 litre algae greenhouse have been sufficiently encouraging to move ahead.

For the 100 hectare test facility, ENN is looking at sites near the company's 600,000 tonne-a-year coal mine in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, where the cold winters will require a heated greenhouse, and a location on Hainan Island, where the hot weather would allow the algae to be grown more cheaply in open ponds, but further away from China's main coal deposits.

With China building the equivalent of more than one new 500MW coal-fired plant every week and likely to be dependent on coal for at least two decades, the further studies planned by ENN could be crucial.

Recognising the continued role of the fossil fuel in China, the European Commission proposed a plan this week to co-finance a demonstration coal plant that aims to have near zero emissions through the use of carbon capture and storage technology.

If members states and the European parliament agree on the €50m plan, the facility would be operational by 2020.

Read more!

New generation biofuels seen in 2010 at earliest

Reuters 29 Jun 09;

HAMBURG (Reuters) - The first biofuels produced using new generations of biomass raw materials could be available in commercial volumes from 2010 at the earliest, German junior Environment Michael Mueller said on Monday.

But the exact time scale was still unclear, Mueller said at the European Biomass conference in Hamburg.

Germany is among the first European countries building test plants to produce commercial volumes of second generation biofuels from a wide range of biomass materials ranging from wood chips and other forest products to straw, hay, vegetable waste and low grade crops.

The first generation biofuels made from food crops such as grain, rapeseed oil and palm oil are used to produce biofuels to reduce use of fossil fuels and combat global warming. Commercial production dates for second generation fuels have been repeatedly postponed in Germany as new technology is developed. A production start as early as 2007 was hoped in the past.

"We do not believe this will take place before 2010," Mueller told a news conference at the start of the congress. "This was one reason why we cut our blending levels."

On June 18, Germany's parliament approved government proposals to cut the compulsory level of biofuels to be blended into fossil fuels this year to 5.25 percent from the 6.25 percent originally intended.

Germany's once-booming biodiesel industry, Europe's largest is working at about 60 percent of its 4.8 million ton annual capacity and has lobbied for the blending cut to be stopped.

Germany would focus future rises in its biofuel blending levels on progress in the production of second generation biofuels from biomass, Mueller said.

COMPLEX PROCESS

Production of new generations of biofuels based on biomass are not likely to be expanded rapidly as the first generation was introduced in past years, said Giovanni Federigo De Santi, director of the energy institute at the European Union Commission's Joint Research Center.

"We want to develop second generation biofuels which move away from competition from food and (animal) feed," he said. "But because of the complexity of the production processes we are not so optimistic we will get second generation biofuels ready in a very short while."

Cost and availability meant first generation biofuels were likely to retain the main role for some years to come in meeting pollution reduction goals and combating global warming, he said.

With so much technology still to be developed, Santi said he did not believe new generation biofuels will be fully deployed for another 10 years.

But low grade biomass could play a large part in heat production to help the European Union reach its goal of achieving a 20 percent share of renewables in its final energy consumption by 2020, said Fabrizio Barbaso, the EU Commission's deputy director general for energy and transport.

Between 10 to 20 percent of the 2020 renewables goal could be met by using biomass for heat production, Barbaso said.

Second generation biofuels were likely to be used for blending with fossil fuels rather than for sale individually to special biofuel vehicles, said Jos Delbeke, the EU Commission's deputy director general for the environment.

(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by James Jukwey)

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Climate war could kill nearly all of us, leaving survivors in the Stone Age: Lovelock

We need a climate change 'Churchill' to lead us away from planet-wide devastation, writes James Lovelock in the latest edition of Conservation magazine, part of the Guardian Environment Network

guardian.co.uk 29 Jun 09;

In a small way, the plight of the British in 1940 resembles the state of the civilized world now. At that time we had had nearly a decade of the well-intentioned but quite wrong belief that peace was all that mattered.

The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the environmentalist movements now; their intentions were more than good but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start. It is time to wake up and realize that Gaia, the Earth system, is no cozy mother that nurtures humans and can be propitiated by gestures such as carbon trading or sustainable development.

Gaia, even though we are a part of her, will always dictate the terms of peace. I am stirred by the thought that Gaia has existed for more than a quarter the age of the universe and that it has taken this long for a species to evolve that can think, communicate, and store its thoughts and experiences.

If we can keep civilization alive through this century perhaps there is a chance that our descendants will one day serve Gaia and assist her in the fine-tuned self-regulation of the climate and composition of our planet.

We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from a glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence. But in several places in the world, including the U.K., we have a chance of surviving and even of living well.

For that to be possible, we have to make our lifeboats seaworthy now. Back in May 1940, we in the UK awoke to find facing us across the Channel a wholly hostile continental force about to invade. We were alone without an effective ally but fortunate to have a new leader, Winston Churchill, whose moving words stirred the whole nation from its lethargy: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

We all need modern Churchills to lead us from the clinging, flabby, consensual thinking of the late twentieth century and to bind our nations with a single-minded effort to wage a difficult war.

• From Conservation magazine, part of the Guardian Environment Network

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Turn up the Heat in the Climate Battle

Michael Renner, World Watch Institute 29 Jun 09;

Are environmental groups still relevant as the world battles climate change?

On the face of it, this seems a farcical question. Environmentalists have worked tirelessly to alert the public and decision-makers alike to the dangers of climate change and to advocate a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels. And on June 26, many celebrated when the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill [PDF] - the first U.S. climate legislation ever.

But as the climate debate enters a decisive phase - with negotiations in full swing to hammer out an international agreement in Copenhagen this year - there is a darker side. With few exceptions, current national goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are weak and typically push action to the distant, rather than the near, future. Although part of the environmental community has responded critically, other groups claim that more stringent climate action is simply not politically feasible - and that asking for more risks the collapse of any climate deal.

The Obama administration's chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, has rejected calls for industrialized countries to cut their emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. He not only opposed such cuts as "not feasible" for the United States, but strikingly judged them as "unnecessary." ACES is muddying the waters by pegging reductions to 2005, rather than to the internationally recognized benchmark of 1990. The reason seems clear: given the strong growth of U.S. emissions in the interim, proposed reductions of 17 percent relative to 2005 look much better than the measly 4 percent relative to 1990.

Even some of the European governments that paraded themselves as climate champions while George Bush was in the White House are now backtracking on climate goals. Strong corporate pressure, reinforced by the jitters of the global financial crisis, has given them pause. Rich countries are evading their historical responsibility for the bulk of emissions. Instead of strong domestic action, "offsets" are being presented as the great savior - asking poorer nations to shoulder the burden that wealthy countries are not prepared to bear themselves. From a national perspective, offsets may be an option; from a global perspective, they amount to a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.
As far back as 1998, my Worldwatch colleague Christopher Flavin criticized international climate negotiations as a "black box - a process largely invisible and incomprehensible to the public." His article, "Last Tango in Buenos Aires" (the city where the negotiations of the day were being held), sounded a clarion call for decisive action. But the years and rounds of meetings since have mostly brought delays and excuses, steadily kicking the can down the road. The refrain has become predictable: "We didn't succeed in [place name], but we still have the upcoming meeting in [place name] to get it right."

Well, we are reaching the end of the road. In Worldwatch's State of the World 2009 report, climate scientist Bill Hare argues that fossil carbon dioxide emissions will need to come close to zero by 2050 - decades earlier than what most governments envision - and that deforestation needs to end well before 2030. The longer we delay serious action, the greater the danger of reaching destabilizing tipping points.

Segments of the environmental movement, especially grassroots-oriented groups, have been quite vocal in their criticism of current policies. But others have endorsed weak proposals, arguing that they can be improved upon later - without offering a strategy for doing so or a reason why the balance of forces should be expected to be more favorable later on. Their slogan of choice is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Catchy, but is it convincing?

The ultimate outcome of any process is the product of ideas and proposals put forward by different actors, as well as the relative power of these actors. Environmental groups that fail to turn up the pressure are effectively narrowing the scope of what is politically possible. It is like waving a white flag while the battle is still raging.

Some may honestly feel that there is no other way - that status quo forces in government and the corporate world are too powerful. But there's also an inconvenient truth. Not rocking the boat often equals respectability in mainstream opinion for environmental organizations. Having access to the corridors of power, whether in Washington, Brussels, or other world capitals, gives the appearance of influence and importance - and surely helps in securing future funding.

While compromise and horse-trading may be essential in politics, the Earth's climate is not swayed by it. In light of the disappointing trajectory of climate policymaking, environmentalists need to rediscover their roots. Rallying public opinion is critical to gain leverage in the titanic struggle over the Earth's fate.
Environmental groups need to hold fast to the demands of climate science, continue to offer credible alternatives, and criticize and expose inadequate policies. (For all the celebration following the House passage of ACES, this legislation is in great need of strengthening as the Active content removed by CSIT Senate considers it.) There is nothing wrong with continuing quiet lobbying and consultations. But that alone will not suffice.

What is needed now is smart and persistent public messaging and mobilizing constituents so as to put legislators and corporate executives on notice: politics as usual will not save the planet. It is time to turn up the heat in the fight against global warming. The livelihoods, and lives, of hundreds of millions of people are at stake.

Michael Renner is a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C.

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