California's coastal waters a dump for fishing gear

Shanta Barley, New Scientist 22 Oct 09;

For the first time, scientists have used a submersible to investigate the debris piling up in deep-water canyons off the coast of California. To their surprise, they found that recreational fishing gear accounted for 93 per cent of the underwater trash.

"Sometimes we had to change the path of the submersible to avoid becoming entangled with recreational fishing lines and nets," says Diana Watters of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz, California.

"This is a really surprising result," says Anthony Jensen, who studies fisheries and artificial reefs at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton, UK, and was not involved in the survey. "Who would have thought that recreational fishers would account for more rubbish in a deep-sea ecosystem than the commercial fishing industry?"
Trash density

Watters believes that previous attempts to quantify underwater garbage by trawling with nets have underestimated the true scale of the problem because that method doesn't pick up all of what's down there and so cannot provide good information about the density of the debris. Nor can nets be dragged over rocky sea floors as they can snag on pinnacles.

To estimate the extent of underwater debris more accurately, Watters' team spent over 400 hours in a submersible called Delta, surveying the sea floor off California. They examined 22 sites, mainly within nature reserves. They noted the density of trash, its likely source and whether or not it had been colonised by fish or corals.

Watters and her colleagues estimate that there are 7000 pieces of trash for every square kilometre of sea floor along the central California coastline. These estimates are up to 3500 times higher than those made by trawler-based studies in other parts of the US, says Watters.
Net loss

The study also found a number of commercial fishing nets snagged over rocky outcrops. "This is worrying, as fishing nets continue to catch and kill fish for years and years after they've been lost in the sea," says Tom Blasdale, a marine fisheries advisor at the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

"In fact, there's often a cycle: floating nets catch fish, sink to the sea floor, attract predators that eat the trapped fish, and then [the nets] bob back to the surface again," says Blasdale.

Abandoned fishing nets pose such a threat to wildlife that one study estimates that lost gill nets can persist for seven years in the Pacific Northwest's Columbia River, where they annually kill a third of all the white sturgeon that could otherwise be commercially harvested.
Eggs on the line

On the positive side, some of the underwater debris seems to be providing valuable housing and shelter for sea creatures, says survey team member Mary Yoklavich, who is also based at the NOAA Fisheries Service.

"To our surprise, we witnessed egg cases that had been 'hung out' like laundry by sharks along abandoned reams of monofilament fishing line," says Yoklavich. "Sharks are very selective about where they hang their eggs, so the debris may actually be helping them to breed."

Jensen is sceptical about the supposed benefits of trash: "Don't throw your coke cans in the sea just because you think it might become habitat for a sea animal."

Journal reference: Marine Pollution bulletin, DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2009.08.019

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Kimberley whale breeding ground of 'global significance'

Perth Now 22 Oct 09;

NEW research on humpback whales highlights the global significance of the Kimberley coast for rare and threatened marine species, conservationists say.

Aerial and sea-based surveys co-ordinated by researchers and Broome whale experts Richard Costin and Annabelle Sandes have led to renewed calls for a network of marine protection areas along the Kimberley coast.

"The new results reveal that the entire coast, from Broome all the way up the Dampier Peninsula and across to Camden Sound, is crucial calving, mating, feeding and resting habitat for humpback whales, and important for a range of other species such as dugong, sea turtles, and Australia’s unique snubfin dolphin,'' Mr Costin said.

“It is now becoming clear that the area between Broome and the Lacepede Islands, which includes James Price Point, is as important to whales as the Premier’s proposed marine park at Camden Sound.

“The results of this research call into serious question the proposal to build a massive industrial gas hub at James Price Point, and contradict claims made by Premier (Colin) Barnett that an industrial hub would have no impact on whales.

“The survey recorded very high concentrations of whales in the area between Willie Creek and James Price Point, the site of a proposed industrial gas hub, with 18 whales recorded per hour of sighting effort. In comparison, the highest concentration of whales in Camden Sound, the area recently proposed as a marine park by the WA Government, had 10 whales per hour of sighting effort.”

Environs Kimberley director Martin Pritchard said the survey showed the potential for a world-class whale-watching industry off Broome.

''The whales are much more valuable to the local community in the long term than oil and gas, so it is critical that their habitat is protected,” he said.

Conservation Council of WA director Piers Verstegen said Australia had an international obligation to protect whales and their habitat.

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Fishermen contest plans for California ocean reserves

John Antczak, Associated Press Yahoo News 22 Oct 09;

LONG BEACH, Calif. – There's nothing pacific about the ocean off Southern California these days. A battle over how to establish marine reserves along the coast has roiled the waters with the competing interests of environmentalists, fishermen and seaside businesses.

The fight was coming slowly to a head Thursday as a panel elicited final information before making a recommendation to the California Fish and Game Commission on one of three hotly debated plans for a Marine Protected Area in the Southern California Bight.

Stretching from Point Conception northwest of Los Angeles to the Mexican border, the 250-mile-long arc of alternately scenic and heavily urbanized coast embraces islands and reefs in waters prized for fishing, recreation, conservation and research.

Panel chairwoman Catherine Reheis-Boyd said it would be a tough decision.

"We know what the law says but we also understand the human side of this," she said.

Environmentalists put forward the most restrictive plan while the fishing industry reluctantly backed a proposal it viewed as moderating economic impacts. A third plan was considered middle-of-the-road.

Hundreds of people with a stake in the decision packed lengthy meetings leading up to the decision, which is likely to be substantially affirmed when it goes to the commission in December.

Some feared extensive bans on fishing with serious financial consequences for commercial and sport fishing operators, harbor businesses and even tourism.

Environmentalists pushed for stringent protections to prevent the decline of hard-pressed species and argued that the concept of Marine Protected Areas has been successful elsewhere in the world, ultimately benefiting fishing.

Discussions elicited by the panel were highly detailed: Comments on the size and shape of protection areas on just one small stretch of coast elicited concerns about kelp, abalone, bass, a company's water intake pipe and Native American heritage sites.

Differences in the plans outwardly appeared small, but a fishing industry representative said in an interview that some locations are so significant that putting them off limits would have a huge impact.

"What most people don't stop to think is that fish don't live and spread themselves evenly in the ocean, they congregate in choice areas," said Vern Goehring, manager of the California Fisheries Coalition, an association of 27 commercial and recreational fishing organizations.

Kaitlin Gaffney, Pacific ecosystem protection director for Ocean Conservancy, said in an interview that the environmentalists' proposal was "efficient," protecting exactly the habitat that needs to be protected while leaving open areas for consumptive uses.

"It's a slam dunk on the science," she said.

The controversy stems from the state's 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, which found that existing protected areas had been established on a piecemeal basis and without sound scientific guidelines.

California's 1,100-mile coast was divided into five regions for re-evaluation and new Marine Protected Areas have so far been established in two of them, the central and north-central coasts.

For Southern California, three work groups created plans for a checkerboard of locations in state waters — three miles out but including islands — to protect marine life and habitat with a range of restrictions on use. Individual sites will receive various types of designation such as state marine reserve or marine conservation area.

The California Fisheries Coalition, which claims its members have a $5.5 billion impact on the state's economy, objected to the process as focusing too much on fishing and not on other things that impact the ocean, such as coastal development, water pollution and shipping.

"The way this process is being implemented the last five years is it only considers one variable affecting the ocean, and that's fishing," Goehring said.

"What we've been arguing is that the enhanced protections or regulations need to be allocated according to the degree of threat and the degree of impact," he said.

Goehring said all the proposals would have huge direct impact on fishing operators that would spread to shore-based businesses.

The coalition, however, backed one that sought "to make it so that no one fish, no one fishery, no one community or no one business takes an overwhelming hit."

Gaffney said the Marine Life Protection Act is a broad ecosystem protection law.

"I don't think it's really sort of a site-by-site trade-off — a fish here for a business. It's a much broader question about how do you do the best job of conservation for Southern California," she said.

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Sabah – paradise and a paradox

The Star 23 Oct 09;

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is a paradox – it is a land blessed with many resources yet remains poor.

That is how Prof W. Chan Kim, co-author of the best-selling Blue Ocean Strategy, sums up the state.

“When you have so much natural resources you are comfortable to sell what you have (but) what you have will one day disappear,” he said.

The professor, who co-authored the Blue Ocean Strategy with Renee Mauborgne, said there was a need to exploit the state’s resources in areas which are untapped.

Noting that Sabah was home to the third largest rainforest in the world, he said it was important that the state made itself known to the world as Asia’s rainforest tourism destination.

The main areas of economic growth in the world are pharmaceuticals, bio-science and telecommunications, he said, noting that the rainforest provided 25% of the ingredients for modern pharmaceutical use.

“I see Sabah as a powerful state especially compared to a place like Dubai which had nothing apart from a desert, goats and some oil and gas and today is a big tourist spot.

“You have incredible resources. Sabah can become better than Dubai but you must do more to attract the world,” he told reporters at a Yaysan Sabah-organised Blue Ocean Strategy conference opened by Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman.

The Blue Ocean Strategy is about finding new market space that offers low cost, in-demand solutions.

Prof Kim said his advice to Sabah was to conserve its resources and attract people from around the world to come and multiply its resources to improve its economy and eradicate poverty.

He said the state should look at the future and adopt new ways to handle its resources.

“You have to put the pieces of the jigsaw together to get the full picture,” he said.

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Advanced biofuels will stoke global warming: study

Gerard Wynn and Timothy Gardner, Reuters 22 Oct 09;

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new generation of biofuels, meant to be a low-carbon alternative, will on average emit more carbon dioxide than burning gasoline over the next few decades, a study published in Science found on Thursday.

Governments and companies are pouring billions of research dollars into advanced fuels made from wood and grass, meant to cut carbon emissions compared with gasoline, and not compete with food as corn-based biofuels do now.

But such advanced, "cellulosic" biofuels will actually lead to higher carbon emissions than gasoline per unit of energy, averaged over the 2000-2030 time period, the study found.

That is because the land required to plant fast-growing poplar trees and tropical grasses would displace food crops, and so drive deforestation to create more farmland, a powerful source of carbon emissions.

Biofuel crops also require nitrogen fertilizers, a source of two greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2) and the more powerful nitrous oxide.

"In the near-term I think, irrespective of how you go about the cellulosic biofuels program, you're going to have greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating the climate change problem," said lead author, Jerry Melillo, from the U.S. Marine Biological Laboratory.

U.S. ethanol industry group the Renewable Fuels Association said biofuels are by definition emissions neutral because their tailpipe carbon output is absorbed by growing plants.

Without steps to protect forests and cut fertilizer use, gasoline out-performs biofuels from 2000-2050 as well.

The paper did not mean cellulosic biofuels had no place.

"It is not an obvious and easy win without thinking very carefully about the problem," said Melillo. "We have to think very carefully about both short and long-term consequences."

A related study, also published in the journal Science on Thursday, said the United Nations had exaggerated carbon savings from biofuels and biomass, in a mistake copied by the European Union in its cap and trade law, by ignoring deforestation and other land use changes.

The mistake was carried into U.S. climate legislation as well, and would worsen as governments put a price on carbon, driving more biofuel use, it said.

FOOD

"There will be increasing pressure to convert the biomass of the world into an energy source," said Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at green group the Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of the second Science paper.

"Then it competes with agriculture, water protection, biodiversity, a whole host of things, and that doesn't provide benefits to the atmosphere," he told Reuters.

It was also important to take account of how the land had been managed before it was grown with biofuels, said Hamburg. A previous farming practice may have been better for the planet, he said, underlining the complexity of calculating benefits.

Advocates hope that forthcoming talks to agree a new global climate deal in Copenhagen in December will protect forests, by rewarding land owners to store carbon in their trees.

The first paper did not explicitly consider the food production impact of ramping up advanced biofuels. The U.N.'s food agency says that global food output will have to increase 70 percent by 2050 to feed a growing, more affluent population.

The world's forests, rather than farmland, would have to make way for biofuels which would consume by 2100 more land than all food crops now, the first study found.

"We think there is space on earth for both food crops and the biofuels but there are consequences of using that space," in lost forest, Melillo said. "You've got to lose something."

(Writing by Gerard Wynn; Editing by Anthony Barker)

Biofuels could increase greenhouse gases: US studies
Yahoo News 22 Oct 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US experts warn that rules governing biofuel production encourage deforestation and mean the technology is therefore a "false" method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In a study to be published Friday in the US journal Science, a group of 13 scientists called for the rules, which contain a loophole exempting carbon dioxide emitted by bioenergy regardless of its source, to be overturned.

"The error is serious, but readily fixable," said lead researcher Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University.

The study called for the issue to be addressed in the climate treaty that nations around the world are hoping to sign at the Copenhagen summit in December to supercede the Kyoto Treaty.

Researchers said numerous analyses -- including one released by the US Department of Energy -- have found that this loophole "could lead to the loss of most of the world's natural forests as carbon caps tighten."

The rules were found in the Kyoto Protocol, which was framed in 1997 and put into force in 2005, legally binding 37 industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas output, noted researcher Daniel Kammen.

The European Union's Emissions Trading System and this year's climate bill passed by US House members also enable the same loophole, said Kammen, from the University of California in Berkeley.

The study said it meant that "bioenergy from any source, even that generated by clearing the world's forests, a potentially cheap, yet false, way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Research released by the World Wildlife Fund on Thursday found that 13 million hectares (32.1 million acres) of forests are destroyed around the world each year -- equivalent to 36 football fields per minute.

Deforestation generates almost 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, said the environmental group.

"Halting forest loss has been identified as one of the most cost-effective ways to keep the world out of the danger zone of runaway climate change," the group said.

Those that benefit most from the loophole are oil companies, power plants and other energy industry firms producing biofuels who engage in deforestation in response to tighter limits on pollution.

Kammen said nations approaching climate treaty negotiations needed to recognize the "vital" importance of properly evaluating technologies proposed as solutions to global warming.

In another study on the subject published in Science Express on Thursday, researchers noted how no major countries involved in climate negotiations take into account carbon emissions arising from land-use changes for harvesting biofuels.

Not only is there little oversight to how biofuel is developed, said the study, led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) scientist Jerry Melillo, the economic incentives for biofuels to be developed on land reclaimed from forests "add to the climate-change problem rather than helping to solve it."

The study, Melillo added, "shows that direct and indirect land-use changes associated with an aggressive global biofuels program have the potential to release large quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere."

Burning bioenergy and fossil energy release comparable quantities of carbon dioxide.

But in a key difference, bioenergy has been seen as preferable for combating climate change because overall emissions are -- in theory -- reduced, because biomass results from additional plant growth.

"This is because plants grown specifically for bioenergy absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and this offsets the emissions from the eventual burning of the biomass for energy," said the study, adding that in contrast, burning forests releases stored carbon in the same way as burning oil.

However, both the studies note, the positive effect of biofuels on carbon emissions would necessarily be negated if land used to produce them had been cleared of forests to do so.

Melillo's study also predicts the increased use of fertilizer in biofuels production will cause nitrous oxide emissions to become even more important than carbon losses in terms of potential for warming by the end of the century.

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Calculating Emissions Is Problematic: implications for forests

Sindya N. Bhanoo, The New York Times 22 Oct 09;

An accounting problem in the way some greenhouse gas emissions are calculated could critically hobble efforts to reduce them in coming years as nations move to combat global warming, scientists warn in a new report.

The accounting irregularity even gives the impression that clearing the world’s forests, which absorb and thereby diminish heat-trapping carbon dioxide, is good for the climate, the scientists write in an article published Friday in the journal Science.

The problem boils down to this: In emission calculations, all fuel derived from plants and other organic sources — including ethanol — is generally treated as if it has no effect on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even though though biofuels do emit carbon dioxide when burned.

This might make sense if the source of the fuel were, say, a crop of corn grown on barren land specifically for use as fuel, because the crop would have absorbed carbon dioxide as it grew, offsetting what it emits when ultimately burned.

But if an existing stand of forest land is cleared for fuel, its ability to absorb carbon dioxide is lost, and the net balance of the gas in the atmosphere goes up.

An energy and climate bill passed in June by the House of Representatives, the Kyoto Protocol, drafted in 1997, and the European Union’s cap-and-trade law, in which companies trade emissions allowances, all exempt emissions from biofuels, without taking the source of the fuel into account, said Timothy D. Searchinger, the study’s lead author and a research fellow at Princeton University.

"It literally means you can chip up the world’s forests and burn them” for fuel without noting the effect on the world’s greenhouse gases, Mr. Searchinger said.

The article traces the problem back to the 1990s, when international organizations worked to create a framework for emissions monitoring. In the mid-1990s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognized that when forests were cleared or when plants were harvested for bioenergy, the resulting release of carbon dioxide should be counted either as land-use emissions or energy emissions, but not both.

To create an international standard and avoid double-counting, the I.P.C.C. chose to classify these emissions in the land-use category.

Mr. Searchinger said the problem arose in 1997, when nations hammered out the Kyoto Protocol, which was eventually ratified by 184 countries. (The United States refused to ratify the agreement.)

The protocol imposes no limits on land-use emissions in developing countries. So if a forest is cleared in Indonesia and ends up as biofuel in Europe, Asia does not count the land-use emissions and Europe does not report the tailpipe emissions.

The end result is that the carbon release from bioenergy use is not counted at all.

The Science paper is one of several recently published articles calling attention to the error. Dr. James A. Edmonds, a chief scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, arrived at similar findings in a paper published in Science several months ago.

His study found that under current accounting methods, a commonly cited global target of limiting carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million in the atmosphere could result in a vast expansion of bioenergy crops, displacing nearly all of the world’s natural forests by 2065.

"The basic point is that if humans set up systems that don’t share nature’s value system, we’re setting up the wrong incentives," Dr. Edmonds said.

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Orangutans struggle to survive as palm oil booms

Beh Lih Yi, AFP Google news 22 Oct 09;

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — Cinta, a baby orangutan found lost and alone in a vast Borneo palm oil plantation, now clings to a tree at a sanctuary for the great apes, staring intently at dozens of tourists.

She is one of the casualties of the boom in palm oil -- used extensively for biofuel and processed food like margarine -- which has seen swathes of jungle felled in Borneo, an island split between Malaysia and Indonesia.

There are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia's Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.

A 2007 assessment by the United Nations Environment Program warned the charismatic red-haired apes will be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if current deforestation trends continue.

Stung by criticism of its environmental record, Malaysian palm oil industry officials pledged at a conference earlier this month to fund the establishment of wildlife corridors that experts say could help save the species.

"The major issue we face with orangutans today is what we called the fragmented population," said Marc Ancrenaz from the environmental group Hutan.

"True enough there are 11,000 orangutans in (Sabah) but they are split up in many small populations, and many of these populations are not connected any more," he told the conference near Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah.

An aerial survey carried out by Hutan and wildlife authorities in eastern Sabah last year revealed some 1,000 orangutan treetop "nests" located in 100 small patches of forest completely surrounded by palm oil plantations.

Isolated from each other, the tiny communities are at risk of inbreeding and also of simply becoming lost in the vastness of the plantations -- just like three-year-old Cinta and the five other young apes at the Tuaran sanctuary.

After becoming separated from their mothers, they were rescued from certain death and sent to the forested reserve, situated near a string of luxury beachside resorts north of Kota Kinabalu.

As well as destroying their jungle habitat, the expansion of palm oil, which now covers nearly one fifth of Sabah alone, poses other risks to the endangered species.

Orangutans that damage the palm oil fruits can be hunted down and killed, and it is quite common for young apes to be captured and kept as pets by villagers living alongside the plantations.

"They either go into the oil palm, and start eating the oil palm fruits, or get pushed into a smaller and smaller area," said Eric Meijaard from the Indonesia-based People and Nature Consulting International.

"What quite often happens is that the oil palm concession basically will ask for these orangutans to be shot so they get rid of the problem."

Malaysia is the world's second-largest exporter of palm oil after Indonesia, and the industry is the country's third largest export earner, raking in 65.2 billion ringgit (19 billion dollars) last year.

Elements in the industry have accused Western lobby groups of trying to smear palm oil in order to boost rival products from developed countries.

Bernard Dompok, the plantation industry and commodities minister, appeared at the conference to completely reject claims that palm oil is responsible for deforestation and the displacement of endangered species.

"I wish to stress that all these allegations are unjustified," he said, insisting Malaysia has taken a comprehensive approach to balance conservation with the development of palm oil.

Representatives from the top industry body, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), said they should not be held accountable for the dwindling orangutan population.

Its chief executive officer Yusof Basiron said that if the world stopped using palm oil, biodiversity would suffer further because substitutes like rapeseed and soyabean would require more land to be cleared.

"We can take some of the blame but not all of it," he said.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Laurentius Ambu said that wildlife corridors, which would enable orangutans to move across the landscape, are vital if the apes are to co-exist with palm oil.

"There is an urgent need to reconnect all forests through corridors... and to reconnect orangutan populations that are isolated by palm oil fields," he said.

The MPOC pledged to help to fund the corridors, but as there is no binding commitment, and no clarity on how the ambitious project would be funded overall, many environmentalists are sceptical.

Ancrenaz said there is no way to stop the spread of palm oil, which environmentalists say is found in one in 10 products on supermarket shelves, including bread, crisps and cereals as well as lipstick and soap.

"Oil palm is here to stay. There is no point in fighting against development, but we also want orangutans to stay," he said.

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36 football fields deforested each minute: WWF

Yahoo News 22 Oct 09;

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) – The equivalent of 36 football fields are being stripped from the world's forests each minute, the environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in a statement released here on Thursday.

The group, presenting its figures during a UN-organized World Forestry Congress held in the Argentine capital, called for "net deforestation of zero" by 2020.

Rodney Taylor, in charge of the WWF's forestry program, said the call underlined the "urgency" of confronting deforestation threats "to maintain the planet's health."

The appeal was not a call for deforestation to be stopped completely, but rather that the devastation of forests be compensated with forest renewal initiatives.

According to the WWF, the pace of deforestation "generates around 20 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases."

In Argentina, the menace was seen with massive eradication of forests in the central and north of the country to make way for lucrative soja crops.

The country has only 30 percent of its original forests, according to a document presented by five environmental groups including Greenpeace and Argentina's Forestry Life Foundation.

The World Forestry Congress is to run to Friday.

It gathers 3,500 delegates from 160 countries whose conclusions are to provide some groundwork for a UN climate change summit to be held in Copenhagen next month.

The summit is expected to see rich countries set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Taylor said he expected those goals would aim for a 40 percent reduction by 2020, and financing of 160 billion dollars to help developing countries cut their emissions by 30 percent.

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Large parts of North Korea hit by forest fires: NASA

Reuters 22 Oct 09;

SEOUL (Reuters) - Vast forest fires have hit a large part of central North Korea, sending plumes of smoke over most of the country's central and eastern regions, images provided by NASA show.

The fires could deal another blow to the North's broken economy after it was hit by fresh U.N. sanctions for a nuclear test in May and flooding a few months ago that wiped out farmland in a country that already faces chronic food shortages.

The U.S. space agency said multiple fires had been burning in the state since mid-October, with several hot spots located in a mountainous region in the center of the country.

The fires and smoke appear to have affected areas that secretive North Korea uses for its missile launches and nuclear tests. The North shot off a barrage of short-range missiles this month in a show of military might that analysts said was aimed at boosting its bargaining leverage in international talks.

North Korea has not commented on the fires in its official media and the South's Unification Ministry said it was looking into the reports.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz, Editing by Dean Yates)

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Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation

Times Online 22 Oct 09;

“The last time I had a good harvest was 2003 — there has been nothing at all for the last three years,” said Mutindi Maithya, 36, a widow who lives with her six children on a four- acre plot of sun-baked land.

Sitting beneath a thorny acacia tree, she picks up ochre lumps of dried mud from the ground and crushes them to dust between her fingers. “It is hard to cope,” she said.

A four-year drought has pushed as many as 23 million people to the brink of starvation across East Africa, making it the worst in a decade or more. Close to four million of those at risk are in Kenya, where one person in ten survives on emergency rations.

Last week clouds gathered over much of the country, but the rains have come too late to bring much relief. Aid agencies have warned that with them will come flooding, cholera, malaria and hypothermia.

In the arid north, pastoralists have watched as their cattle collapsed from exhaustion and thirst, and those that survive now face floods. The people are scarcely holding on and the number of armed skirmishes over water and livestock is rising.

Even in usually greener regions the drought has taken its toll. Four consecutive harvests have failed in the southeast while the Rift Valley, Kenya’s breadbasket, is a wasteland of withered crops. There are fears that heavy rains will wash away the topsoil, taking with it precious maize seeds.

In Nairobi emaciated cattle led by desperate Masai herdsmen graze by the roadside. The economy is also threatened by plummeting tea and coffee production, while tourists who visit the country’s money-spinning safari parks return with tales of landscapes littered with carcasses.

Drought is nothing new to this part of Africa, but what is different is the frequency with which it hits. The cycle of drought used to come around every ten years but now it is almost constant. Many attribute the changing patterns to climate change.

Kenya’s fractious coalition Government, forced together last year after a violent election, has been accused of hindering rather than helping the situation by failing to safeguard the country’s strategic grain reserve.

Even as the current disaster loomed, thousands of sacks of maize went missing earlier this year. Some reappeared later in neighbouring Sudan. Dark accusations circulated that it was the work of certain politicians in cahoots with favoured traders.

In Mwingi people scrape a living from the land by farming small fields and keeping livestock. Harvest after harvest has failed, livestock has perished and wells have dried up.

“For the last four years these farmers have held on to hope, but each year been left with despair as the rains failed,” said Fergus Conmee, Africa humanitarian manager for the Catholic aid agency Cafod. “This humanitarian crisis has pushed them on to a tightrope of survival and many farming families have been left destitute.”

Mafuo David, 36, is one of 3,500 people in the area receiving emergency supplies of maize, beans and oil from Cafod. Most days she manages to feed herself and her family two meals, but the first of these is usually black tea with sugar and the second a bowl of maize.

She said that in a good year she used to harvest five bags of maize and three of beans but it had been a long time — “maybe ten years” — since such a bumper crop. Last year everything died, and the year before she harvested two bags of maize and beans; the year before that, nothing.

Her husband died of an Aids-related illness in 2001 so she tends the three-acre family plot with the help of her eldest son. The light drizzle this week made her smile: “The land has changed, we have soft soil to plant in and water to drink. Even our bodies are changing; our faces are shining.” Ms David has felt this optimism before, and been disappointed.

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Indonesian regions get help to plan mitigation, adaptation

The Jakarta Post 22 Oct 09;

Regional forecasts of the impact of global climate change from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) in Indonesia will allow regional leaders to start .

Planning mitigation and adaptation programs for their respective areas.

Erwin Eka Syahputra Makmur from the agency said Wednesday regions could now take advantage of climate change projections within a 20-kilometer horizontal resolution, providing a portrait of changes in rainfall patterns, temperature, local winds and humidity.

"With this data, regional leaders can design policies to match the specific needs of their respective areas. The projections are not the same for every region, it depends on the topography," he said

Speaking at a seminar in Jakarta on capacity development for adaptation to climate change in Asia, he said the agency would cooperate with regional administrations wishing to have the information.

Areas around West Sulawesi would get 50 percent more rainfall than the current level during wet seasons from 2075 to 2099, he said. Other regions will see a 20 percent increase in their rainfall figures.

Regions located around coastal areas, especially the north coast of Sumatran, the Kalimantan coast, Sulawesi's west coast and Papua's southern coast will have a rainfall increase of more than 20 percent.

"The increase in rainfall will have an impact on coastal erosion and areas will be prone to flooding," Erwin said.

He projected no significant increase in rainfall from 2015 to 2034.

During dry seasons, there would be a decrease of up to 20 percent in rainfall in almost all parts of Java and some areas of Sulawesi. "This means there will be a lack of water for agricultural needs. We must be aware of this, since Java is Indonesia's national rice bowl," Erwin said.

The climate change projection shows the country's temperature is likely to jump 3 degrees Celsius between now and the end of the century, he added.

"The most significant increase will occur over highland areas around the Bukit Barisan Mountains in Sumatra, West Sulawesi and the Jayawijaya Mountains in Papua," he said.

The projection also provides data of possible increases in extreme events, such as extreme temperatures.

"The projection of extreme events can be very useful to develop adaptation policies to decrease the impact of natural disasters," he said.

Syamsidar Thamrin, deputy director of climate change at the environment directorate at the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), said the government was preparing a road map to prioritize climate change issues in national development planning.

"The road map will serve as a detailed guidance for drafting the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) in the future," she said, adding the road map was being drafted for 2010 to 2030.

The government has carried out other climate-change-related activities, including creating a financing mechanism through the Indonesia Climate Change Trust Fund (ICCTF).

"The UK Department for International Development has allocated *10 million *US$16.5 million* for the ICCTF. Other countries, like Japan, Finland and Norway have expressed interest in contributing to the program," she said.

"Indonesia is one of the first developing countries to ever have a self-managed trust fund." (adh)

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Thai NGO pushes alternatives to nuclear

Efficiency and cutting demand help more
Bangkok Post 22 Oct 09;

The development of nuclear power plants by 2020 should be reconsidered, environmental activists urged the government.

The government should work on developing technology that improves energy consumption instead of building new power plants that could trigger another problem, said Chuenchom S. Greecen, an energy researcher from the Palang Thai Group, at a discussion on nuclear power plant development at Government House on Tuesday.

"There are a lot of things that can improve the country's energy consumption efficiency, such as the estimation of demand to reflect actual growth of demand. Also the redesign of electrical equipment for large buildings will help cut power consumption," she said.

"It may not be necessary to build nuclear and coal-fired power plants if policymakers try energy-saving programmes."

More aggressive promotions for renewable energy will also reduce power demand.

Chalotorn Kansuntisukmongkol, an economist from Thammasat University, said safety measures were crucial for nuclear power development regarding reactor leakage and radioactive waste management if a plant is built.

However, Chavalit Pichalai, deputy director-general of the Energy Policy and Planning Office, argued that improved energy efficiency is already a top priority for energy policymakers.

Leaders are trying to develop alternative and renewable fuel use through subsidies and incentives, Mr Chavalit said.

"We are promoting renewable energy, but we have to focus on how to cut carbon emissions by using nuclear energy because it is one of the cleanest and cheapest options," he said. "The production cost of wind turbines and solar cells remains high and cannot compete with mainstream fuels, so we decided to develop the nuclear power plant project."

Thailand is now conducting a feasibility study for nuclear power plants by Burns and Roe Asia Ltd. The final decision on whether the country will build a nuclear power plant will be made mid-2010.

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