Roads harm rainforest species

James Cook University, Science Alert 26 Oct 09;

Infrastructure such as roads, canals, power lines and gas lines could be the biggest threat for the world’s tropical rainforests, according to scientists at James Cook University and the Smithsonian Institution.

“Clearing wide paths in any forest has a strong effect on the ecosystem, but these impacts are particularly acute in tropical rainforests,” said Professor William Laurance, a biologist at the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute in Panama and recently appointed as a Distinguished Professor at James Cook University.

Professor Laurance coauthored a paper on the impact of roads in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution with Dr Susan Laurance and Dr Miriam Goosem.

Dr Laurance is also a biologist from the Smithsonian and a Senior Lecturer in JCU’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology. Dr Goosem is Principal Research fellow in JCU’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Dr Goosem said the team used dozens of existing studies done in the Amazon, Australasia and Central Africa to emphasize that roads are the number one threat to the world’s tropical rainforests.

“We believe that maintaining large areas of intact forests without roads should be highest priority of conservationists worldwide,” she said.

Biologically, rainforests are characterized by a complex architecture and a uniquely humid, dark stable climate. They sustain many species that are incredibly specialized for the forest’s interior and understory conditions.

“Some species strongly avoid forest edges and are unable to traverse even narrow forest clearings,” Dr Goosem said. “Other tropical species are susceptible to hunting, increased predation, invasive species and being killed by vehicles.”

She said that limiting the width of roads, reducing vehicle speeds and maintaining a continuous forest canopy above roads were ways to reduce the impact on tropical rainforests.

“Bridges over watercourses that include a corridor of unflooded vegetation and natural streambed are especially effective for maintaining connectivity, both for terrestrial and aquatic fauna,” Dr Goosem said.

“Culverts and underpasses can provide effective avenues for movements of many animals, and can be designed to enhance their attractiveness to wildlife and efficacy in reducing road kill.”

However, not building roads in the first place was the best option, the scientists suggest.

“Actively limiting frontier roads is by far the most realistic, cost-effective approach to promote the conservation of tropical nature and its crucial ecosystem services,” said Professor Laurance. “As Pandora quickly learned, it is far harder to thrust the evils of the world back into the box than to simply keep it closed in the first place.”

Tropical rainforests mainly occur in developing nations, many of which are experiencing continued population growth, rapid economic development and intense natural resource exploitation.

“In many of these areas, industrial logging, oil and gas development large-scale agriculture and mining provide an economic impetus for the expansion of road and infrastructure developments, Professor Laurance said.

“The roads and paved highways that this creates play a key role in opening forested regions to exploitation from hunters and miners—exacerbated by often weak enforcement of environmental laws in remote frontier areas.

“New logging roads make forests greatly more accessible to exploitation by hunters, miners and settlers and disease and invasive species generally follow the influx of humans.”

In their paper, the scientists said that easy access for people was not the only effect roads and linear clearings have on tropical rainforests. These areas often act as barriers, greatly affecting water drainage, erosion and fire-maintained tropical woodlands.

Dr Susan Laurance said that animals too see roads as barriers.

“A striking feature of tropical forests is the high proportion of species that tend to avoid even narrow clearings or forest edges. Many species - such as those that are completely arboreal, adapted to flying in dense forests, or depend on specialized food resources - are halted by linear clearings,” she said.

There are those species, however, that do not avoid roads or other such clearings, resulting in what the scientists call “road-related mortality.”

The most obvious form is often vehicle road kill. Anteaters with poor eyesight, slow-moving sloths, and the Australian echidna—whose reaction is to freeze in the path of oncoming vehicles—are some of the many rainforest species that are particularly vulnerable to being struck by a vehicle.

The scientists also found levels of chemical and nutrient pollution to be elevated in areas where roads have been built. Effects of chemical pollution and nutrient runoff are especially serious for streams and wetlands near roads.

The mitigation research in Australia’s wet tropics undertaken by Dr Goosem and Professor Steve Turton has been funded by the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, the former Rainforest CRC and more recently by the Australian Government's Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility.

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Illegal logging responsible for loss of 10 million hectares in Indonesia

Kathy Marks, The Independent 26 Oct 09;

Lush tropical rainforest once covered almost all of Indonesia's 17,000 islands between the Indian and Pacific oceans. And just half a century ago, 80 per cent remained. But since then, rampant logging and burning has destroyed nearly half that cover, and made the country the world's third largest emitter of greenhouses gases after the US and China.

Indonesia still has one-tenth of the world's remaining rainforests, a treasure trove of rare plant and animal species, including critically endangered tigers, elephants and orang-utans. However, it is destroying its forests faster than any other country, according to the Guinness Book of Records, with an average two million hectares disappearing every year, double the annual loss in the 1980s.

It is that frenzied rate of deforestation that has propelled Indonesia, home to 237 million people, into its top-three spot in the global league table of climate change villains. According to a government report released last month, the destruction of forests and carbon-rich peatlands accounts for 80 per cent of the 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted in the country annually.

The situation is partly a legacy of the 32-year rule of the dictator Suharto, during which Indonesia's forests were regarded purely as a source of revenue to be exploited for economic gain. Suharto, who stepped down in 1998, handed out logging concessions covering more than half the total forest area, many of them to his relatives and political allies.

Although the current Indonesian government, under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is committed to reducing deforestation and CO2 emissions, not much has changed on the ground. Poor land management is compounded by lawlessness and corruption, and illegal logging is widespread. According to one official estimate, the latter is responsible for the loss of 10 million hectares of forest.

Legal logging, too, is conducted at unsustainable levels, thanks to soaring demand from a rapidly expanding pulp and paper industry, in a country struggling with high levels of poverty.

The recent government report forecast that carbon emissions, which have risen from 1.6 billion tons in 1990, will increase to 3.6 billion by 2030, a leap of 57 per cent from today's level. The main reason is logging and clearing of forests for agriculture and industrial plantations, including oil palms. The government granted permission last year for two million hectares of peatland to be cleared for oil palms.

The rapid spread of oil palm plantations, particularly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, is threatening the orang-utan's forest habitat and hastening its extinction, according to conservationists.

Clearing land releases into the atmosphere the carbon stored in trees and below ground, either during burning or when the timber decomposes. Forest fires – regarded as a cheap and easy way of clearing forest – are deliberately lit by farmers as well as timber and oil palm plantation owners, and occur regularly on Sumatra and Borneo during the dry season.

Indonesia supports the UN's Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) initiative, welcoming the idea of being paid to conserve its forests. However, some observers question whether the carbon credits it would receive will be priced high enough to make the scheme worthwhile.

At present, Indonesia accounts for 8 per cent of global carbon emissions, although the archipelago represents barely 1 per cent of the world's landmass. It still has the third largest tracts of tropical rainforest, after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite losing one-quarter of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005.

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WWF: Climate deal must include strong deforestation target

WWF 25 Oct 09;

Buenos Aires, Argentina – Global leaders must support a clear and effective deforestation target at climate talks in Copenhagen in December, or they risk crippling the world’s ability to control climate change.

As the XIIIth World Forestry Congress came to an end on Friday, WWF called for an ambitious and bold climate deal at COP 15 to give clear guidance and incentives for the forestry sector to do its part in stopping catastrophic climate change and adapt to predicted changes.

To this end, WWF during the Congress proposed a global target of zero net deforestation by 2020 to avoid runaway climate change and stop the current catastrophic trend of species loss.

In particular, negotiators must agree to strong financial and emissions reduction commitments to craft a climate deal that enables developing countries to halt forest loss.

“Setting immediate deforestation targets is a key component of any climate change agreement,” said Rodney Taylor, Director of WWF International’s Forest program. “If the global deal on climate change ignores the dangers of unchecked deforestation, it will set the world on an accelerated path to savage climate change.”

Despite conservation efforts, global deforestation continues at an alarming rate – 13 million hectares per year, or 36 football fields a minute. It generates almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 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.

“A zero net deforestation by 2020 target will set the scale and urgency needed to gather the political will to stop forest loss,” Taylor said.

WWF will continue to advocate for a strong deforestation target to be included in relevant international treaties and agreements, including in the Convention on Biological Diversity and COP 15.

“WWF received strong feedback at the Congress from various sectors, including governments, other NGOs, and the private sector to support our target on deforestation,” said Gerald Steindlegger, WWF International’s Forest Manager on Global Policy.

Many developing countries already are adopting major deforestation policies that mirror WWF’s call for zero net deforestation by 2020.

On Wednesday, government representatives from Argentina and Paraguay pledged during a special ceremony co-hosted by WWF and its partner organization Fundacion Vida Silvestre at the Congress to work towards zero net deforestation in the Atlantic Forest, and to implement a package of measures that include national legislation to enforce those commitments.

The Atlantic Forest initially spanned 500,000 square kms, shared between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. However, only 7.4 percent of the forest is left today – or about 35,000 square kilometers, making it one of the most threatened and fragmented subtropical forests in the world.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government already has established a zero deforestation target by 2010 for the Atlantic Forest. Brazil also has pledged to establish protected areas covering at least 10 percent of the forest.

This year, the World Forestry Congress brought together more than 4,000 participants in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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Forest birds vanishing fast in Victoria, Australia

Monash University, Science Alert 26 Oct 09;

A 15-year study across northern and central Victoria has shown that about two-thirds of bird species - including lorikeets, pardalotes, thornbills and honeyeaters - have declined dramatically in distribution and numbers.

A team of researchers, including ecologists from the Australian Centre for Biodiversity at Monash University, systematically monitored woodland bird populations at 560 sites in a 30 000 square km region from St Arnaud to Chiltern, mostly in box and ironbark forests.

"Most worrying is that species thought to be secure, the red wattlebird, striated pardalote, grey shrike-thrush and musk lorikeet, have declined as much as or more than species already of conservation concern - those listed as threatened, vulnerable or endangered, such as the crested bellbird, black-chinned honeyeater and crested shrike-tit," Professor Mac Nally said.

"Many species were encountered 60 per cent less often in surveys, and their abundances were down by at least 40 per cent."

Professor Mac Nally said climate change and the provision of food such as nectar, insects and seeds had compounded the already serious effects of broad-scale habitat loss and fragmentation in the region since the 19th century.

"The region has been largely cleared and the remaining woodlands poorly managed over many decades, so that the system was vulnerable to effects of climate change and the severe drying we have seen since 1996," Professor Mac Nally said.

"There also seems to be much less breeding and lower breeding success in the past few years in remnant vegetation. We think that the recent plunge in numbers reflects a longer period of breeding failure, so that when adults die, there are few young to replace them," Professor Mac Nally said.

However, the research team reported some positives.

They found more breeding in relatively young replanted sites, especially on more fertile soils, suggesting that widespread replanting may be part of the solution to reversing the decline.

The results of the study, which also involved scientists from Deakin and Melbourne Universities, were published in the July issue of the international journal Diversity and Distributions.

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From ecological Soviet-era ruin, a sea is reborn

Peter Leonard, Associated Press Yahoo News 26 Oct 09;

AKESPE, Kazakhstan – Standing on the shore under the relentless Central Asian sun, Badarkhan Prikeyev drew on a cigarette and squinted into the distance as one fishing boat after another returned with the day's catch.

Until recently, this spot where the fish merchant was standing, in a man-made desert at the edge of nowhere, represented one of the world's worst environmental calamities.

Now fresh water was lapping at his boots, proclaiming an environmental miracle — the return of the Aral Sea.

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth-largest body of fresh water, covering an area the size of Ireland. But then the nations around it became part of the Soviet Union. With their passion for planned economics and giant, nature-reversing projects, the communists diverted the rivers that fed the inland sea and used them to irrigate vast cotton fields. The result: The Aral shrank by 90 percent to a string of isolated stretches of water.

The catastrophe "is unprecedented in modern times," says Philip Micklin, a geography professor at Western Michigan University who has studied the Aral Sea for years.

And even now, nearly two decades after the Soviet Union broke up, the damage is far from reversed. Satellite images taken earlier this year show that one section of the sea has shrunk by 80 percent in the last three years alone. Uzbekistan, which controls three-quarters of the Aral Sea, has given up trying. The rescue has happened on Kazakhstan's portion, and it is striking.

Aralsk is a port that ended up 100 kilometers (60 miles) inland. But now, a dam built by the World Bank and Kazakh government is slowly resurrecting a small part of the sea, reviving the fishing industry and bringing hope to an area that some expected would simply dry up and blow away in the fierce, salty winds.

The returning water has crept to within 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of Aralsk, also known as Aral, and the World Bank reckons it could reach the port in about six years.

Kazakhs can hardly wait. "Good News — The Sea is Coming Back," declares a sign at the entrance to Aralsk.

In some areas, the water is already lapping at the derelict hulls of ships that were stranded deep inland, heightening the ghostly and surreal aura of the landscape.

"Finally, there is hope and a life to be made here." said Prikeyev, 49, waiting for his fishermen near the village of Akespe, 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Aralsk. "Work is available for anyone who wants it."

This summer his boats returned laden with heaving sacks of pike and carp.

The miracle is a small one compared with the damage that will probably never be undone. Uzbekistan has chosen to keep the lucrative cotton industry going, and to prospect for gas and oil under the exposed seabed.

But where the sea is being saved, the solution has proved elegantly simple.

The $88 million project launched in 2001 resulted in a dam to channel the precious waters of the Syr Darya river into the Kazakh section, rather than let them flow south and go to waste.

The five states of former Soviet Central Asia are in broad agreement about the need to coordinate use of the region's two life-giving rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In practice, however, little concrete collaboration has been achieved, meaning certain death for large part of the sea.

The centerpiece of the Aral salvation project is the concrete Kokaral dam. It's an unremarkable-looking structure that can be walked across in less than a minute, but its impact has been dramatic.

The rising water level has noticeably cooled the climate and lowered salinity sufficiently to sustain freshwater fish.

According to the World Bank, the catch of freshwater fish reached around 2,000 tons in 2007, up from just 52 tons in 2004.

For the first time in years, many Kazakhs living near the Aral Sea feel they have a future.

"My father grew up in a fishing village and catching fish is what he did all his life," said Prikeyev, who oversees a crew of more than 100 fishermen and others during high season in summer.

After the sea began to dry up in the 1960s, Aral villages withered as people migrated to the cities for jobs. The surrounding region became a searing dust bowl and fishing, one the few sources of steady employment, collapsed. Prikeyev tried running a chain of small shops, failed and went back to fishing, only to find the fish disappearing.

The land became a desert, baking in the day, freezing at night. Salt blown inland by the wind off the exposed seabed unleashed a scourge of respiratory diseases in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The drying-out has severely damaged plant and animal life and created huge salt and dust storms that can travel 500 kilometers (300 miles), Micklin said in an e-mail interview.

The payoff was a bonanza of cotton to supply the Soviet market as well as Cuba and the communist countries of Europe. The fishermen paid the price. By the mid-1970s, Aral catches were down by about three-quarters from the roughly 40,000 tons before the drying. Eventually fishing on an industrial level ceased altogether.

As dead freshwater fish washed ashore, desperate Soviet authorities introduced the salt-resistant flounder, a squat bottom-feeder, to save the local fishing industry.

Now it's the flounders that are dying in the returning waters, while Prikeyev is selling his catch in Russia, Ukraine and Georgia and has his eye on wealthy western European consumers.

"The western Europeans like the pike because it is so lean," Prikeyev said, as he waited for returning fishermen near the village of Akespe.

"We Kazakhs need fat ones, like that one," he laughed, pointing at a freshly caught carp shimmering on the beach.

"My dream is to improve things for the fishermen, so that they can live and work a little more easily," Prikeyev said.

Local fishing cooperatives have received $2 million in Japanese aid to house the fishermen in mobile homes with electricity and phone lines, Prikeyev said.

The fish have to be driven by jeep on a bumpy half-hour ride across a blinding white expanse to be loaded onto refrigerator vans. But Prikeyev hopes to eliminate those daily trips by building a $25,000 walk-in refrigerator in a nearby village.

On the northern side of the Kokaral dike, migratory birds and seagulls circle over the waters, screeching and scanning for prey. A few carp slide over the brim of the dam. All will die in one of the isolated pockets of the southern sea.

Between the Aral's old coastline and the current one, a new ecosystem has taken root. Salt-encrusted seabed has become scrubland full of gophers, lizards, spiders, warthogs and roaming herds of camels.

The fleet of stranded boats, hulls rusting, wheelhouses cobwebbed, is thinning out, plundered by scrap metal dealers.

And hope is returning with the waters. Alexander Danchenko, a retired shipyard worker, feels it in the weather.

"When there was no sea, it felt like we were in a frying pan here in the middle of the desert," he said. "Now it's returning, sometimes you can feel a pleasant, cool breeze coming in from the south."

At Aralsk's port, disused cranes loom over open space strewn with garbage. Murat Sydykov, 70, a musician who lives in the city, says his mournful music is inspired by the fate of the sea, but he is optimistic it will one day play a happy tune again.

"When the sea returns to Aralsk," he said, "I will write a symphony and get an orchestra to play it by the shore."

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Hawaii regulators approve first US tuna farm

Audrey Mcavoy, Associated Press Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

HONOLULU – Hawaii regulators have approved a Honolulu startup company's plan to build the nation's first tuna farm in waters off the Big Island.

Hawaii Oceanic Technology aims to create an environmentally friendly open ocean farm for bigeye tuna, a favorite source for sushi and sashimi that's overfished in the wild. The project would also be the world's first commercial bigeye farm.

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources voted 4-to-1 to give Hawaii Oceanic permission to install three large underwater cages for the tuna.

"I'm concerned on a global level and a local level that we have severe overfishing going on, and something needs to be done," said board member John Morgan, who voted in favor of the project.

Unlike many tuna farms around the world which capture immature tuna and fatten them until they're ready for harvest, Hawaii Oceanic expects to artificially hatch bigeye at a University of Hawaii lab in Hilo.

After the fry grow, the company will take the fish to giant ocean pens about three miles offshore where they will grow until they reach 100 pounds.

Hawaii Oceanic expects to avoid the disease problems that have plagued other fish farms because it's ocean pens will be large and its fish won't be as densely packed in the cages.

The ocean is 1,300 feet deep in the area where the cages will be. This will allow strong currents to sweep away fish waste and uneaten food, preventing the pollution of the ocean floor.

The farm is expected to produce 6,000 tons of bigeye a year once fully operational, serving Hawaii, the U.S. mainland, Japan and other parts of Asia. In 2007, fishermen caught 224,921 tons of wild bigeye in the Pacific.

Hawaii Oceanic projects it will generate $120 million in annual export revenues, more than six times the value of Hawaii's current aquaculture output.

Several critics told the board they're worried diseased farm fish would escape and contaminate wild stocks, and others said they're worried about where Hawaii Oceanic would obtain its fish feed.

The project won't be sustainable if it imports its feed and exports about 90 percent of its product, said Rob Parsons, a board member of the environmentalist group Maui Tomorrow. The venture looks like it will suffer from the same pollution and disease problems as cattle farms, he said.

"This is not a farm," Parsons said. "It's an industrial feed lot."

The company has vowed to only purchase feed made from sustainably harvested fish and has said it won't feed its tuna any antibiotics.

Board members noted Hawaii Oceanic conducted an environmental impact statement that said the farm wouldn't significantly affect the environment. No one has challenged the study in court, Department of Land and Natural Resources staff told the board.

Several board members said they were concerned that Hawaii Oceanic planned to use solar and ocean thermal energy to operate its giant ocean pens, something that hasn't been done before.

Given the untested technology and the large scale of the project, the board required the company to report on its progress and return for permission to deploy the remaining nine cages it aims to build.

___

On the Net:

Hawaii Oceanic Technology: http://www.hioceanictech.com/

Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources: http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/boards

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Asia's reliance on coal spells trouble

Michael Richardson, Straits Times 26 Oct 09;

ASIA'S rebound from the global economic slump is cheering the world. But the revival is bad news for the environment because it is largely driven by a production system addicted to fossil fuels.

This helps explain why it is proving so difficult for international climate change negotiators to bridge the gulf that divides developed and developing countries.

It also helps explain why China and India, despite tensions over territorial and water disputes, agreed last week to work together to resist binding cuts or caps to their greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that around 65 per cent of these emissions worldwide come from energy use or production.

The economic crisis has had a significant impact on the energy sector. The IEA reported earlier this month that investment in polluting technologies had been deferred and emissions of carbon dioxide could fall this year by as much as 3 per cent - steeper than at any time in the last 40 years.

'This gives us a chance to make real progress towards a clean-energy future,' said IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka. But, he added, 'only if the right policies are put in place promptly'.

Here's a snapshot of global energy use. Fossil fuels account for 80 per cent of demand: oil (34 per cent); coal (25 per cent); natural gas (21 per cent). The rest comes from wood, other biomass and waste (11 per cent); nuclear power (6.5 per cent); hydro-power (2.2 per cent). Less than 1 per cent of global energy demand is met by clean sources such as geothermal, solar and wind.

Shifting this energy production pattern towards a system that produces little greenhouse gas emissions is politically difficult and very costly, particularly in Asia.

Oxford University economist Dieter Helm - who has co-edited a new book, The Economics And Politics Of Climate Change - says climate change is really 'about the massive increase of coal burning internationally, especially the growth of China and India fuelled by coal-based energy - and America too, where the Obama plans are also small relative to the problem'.

What does he mean? Coal fuels heavy industries, like steel and cement. But electricity is the key. It powers so much of modern life, from cooling and heating to lighting, computers and the Internet.

Electricity production accounts for nearly one-third of global fossil fuel use. It is the source of about 40 per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, and about one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

Half of the electricity generated in the United States is from coal. In India, the figure is 70 per cent, and in China, 80 per cent. Why? Because coal is up to six times less expensive per unit of energy than oil or gas. It is also locally available in huge quantities.

Yet, despite some improvements, coal remains the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels. Modern US coal-fired plants still emit nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide at nine and 90 times the rate of new gas-fired plants respectively. And these plants emit carbon dioxide at more than twice the rate of new plants that generate electricity by burning natural gas.

In 2000, coal provided 28 per cent of the world's fossil fuel energy production, compared with 45 per cent for oil. By last year, coal's share had risen to 33 per cent. Coal use in China and India alone is not far short of consumption in the US and the rest of the world combined.

While coal use has started declining in many developed economies, China has in recent years been commissioning the equivalent of two 500MW coal-fired power plants per week, adding a capacity comparable to the entire power grid of Britain each year. A single such plant releases about 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually into the air.

India uses only about a fifth as much coal as China. But with a population similar to that of China, a rapidly expanding economy and rising demand for electricity, India may one day come to rival China in its coal use.

Demand for electricity is growing in South-east Asia too. If countries in the region were committed to cutting emissions, they would follow Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in switching from coal- and oil-burning plants to gas.

Instead, coal use is rising. Indonesia is in the midst of adding 10,000MW of coal-fired power to an existing capacity of 35,000MW, of which about 20 per cent burns coal. Indonesia became the world's largest exporter of thermal coal for power plants in 2007.

Vietnam plans to bring nearly 49,000MW of capacity online between 2006 and 2015. Over half the addition is to be fuelled by coal. Even Malaysia and Thailand are planning to increase coal use in their power plants to lower costs and diversify sources of fuel.

The World Bank's development report last month noted that 1.6 billion people - nearly a quarter of the world's population - have no electricity. These citizens of developing countries need massive expansions in energy, transport, urban systems and agricultural production.

Clean or not, coal is likely to be a big part of their future energy needs.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Solar Power Gives Andean Villages New Lease On Life

Kylie Stott, PlanetArk 26 Oct 09;

MISA RUMI, Argentina - A pioneering solar energy project is using green technology to improve the lives of isolated villagers living beyond the reach of power lines on Argentina's windswept Andean plains.

Llama-herding communities have relied on firewood to cook and to heat their mud-brick homes for centuries in this remote corner of the vast South American country, causing deforestation and soil erosion.

Now residents of the village of Misa Rumi in Jujuy province are cooking their lunchtime soups and stews on solar-fired stoves and installing solar-heated showers as part of a project led by a local NGO, the EcoAndina Foundation.

"We use the solar stove every day and it works well. You can cook soup, or whatever you want. It's not bad at all, I think it gives good results," said Julian Martinez, who scrapes out a living as a gold panner, as he stirred a pot of soup balanced on the large, aluminum dish.

With the use of a built-in sundial, the solar stoves are tipped to face the strongest sun and can set light to a piece of paper within seconds. They have proved popular, saving villagers the work of gathering scarce firewood or buying pricey canisters of natural gas.

Elsewhere in Misa Rumi, the scorching Andean sun is used to heat a communal bakery and solar-powered water pumps that guarantees irrigation for the residents' vegetable patches.

Misa Rumi lies at some 3,750 meters (12,000 feet) above sea level, but a solar heating system at the village school takes the edge off plunging early morning temperatures in the winter by transmitting the sun's heat through black roof panels.

QUALITY OF LIFE

Many of the village's solar energy systems have been installed by the EcoAndina Foundation, which has been working since 1989 in Misa Rumi and 30 other villages in the La Puna area.

"The technology we implemented set out to improve people's quality of life and reduce firewood consumption, which produces a lot of desertification in the region," Silvia Rojo, president of the EcoAndina Foundation, told Reuters Television.

"It's caused a lot of interest in other Latin American countries and other parts of the world," she added.

Deforestation is threatening slow-growing regional plant species such as the yareta, which makes excellent fuel for fires but takes hundreds of years to grow.

Project leaders hope residents of this barren region will eventually be able to earn carbon credits for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide they produce by cutting down trees and burning firewood and natural gas.

"One solar cooker can save up to two metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year if a family uses it constantly and that's quite a lot if you think there are about 40,000 people in this region," EcoAndina Foundation engineer Christoph Muller said.

As well as making everyday life more comfortable in the bleak landscape of the high Andes, project leaders say green technologies are helping protect traditional ways of life.

"People need alternatives so we've tried to bring in the use of solar energy in this region," Muller said. "So the people can have better living conditions and energy access and they can stay here in the region, they don't have to go to the bigger cities."

(Additional reporting by Juan Bustamante; Editing by Helen Popper)

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Nuclear energy becomes pivotal in U.S. climate debate

H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Yahoo News 25 Oct 09;

WASHINGTON – Nuclear energy, once vilified by environmentalists and facing a dim future, has become a pivotal bargaining chip as Senate Democrats hunt for Republican votes to pass climate legislation.

The industry's long-standing campaign to rebrand itself as green is gaining footing as part of the effort to curtail greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power still faces daunting challenges, including the fate of highly radioactive reactor waste. Reactors remain a tempting target for terrorists, requiring ever vigilant security measures.

But 104 power reactors in 31 states provide one-fifth of the nation's electricity. They also are producing 70 percent of essentially carbon-free power and are devoid of greenhouse gas emissions.

It's something the nuclear industry has hammered away at in advertising and in lobbying on Capitol Hill for nearly a decade. Only recently, however, has the message begun to resonate among both industry supporters and skeptics.

"If you want to address climate change and produce electricity, nuclear has got to be a significant part of the equation," Marvin Fertel, president of Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, said in an interview.

Not unexpected from a top industry lobbyist. But the same is heard from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, from a growing number of environmentalists and from the White House, where nuclear power otherwise has received tepid support.

The Senate this week will kick off three committee hearings on legislation to cap greenhouse gases from m power plants and large industrial facilities. The goal is to cut them about 80 percent by 2050.

The House has already passed a bill. Its chances in the Senate could hinge in part on whether demands by a few GOP senators, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, that the legislation provide help to build new reactors.

"Nuclear power is pivotal to both a low carbon economy and to generate a bipartisan coalition to pass a carbon cap," says Jason Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group of experts created in seven years ago to advise government officials on energy matters.

He says all economic models on climate legislation "assume significant increases in nuclear power" — an expansion binge unseen since the 1970s, before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident brought new reactor orders to a halt.

A study by the industry-supported Electric Power Research Institute says 45 new reactors are needed by 2030. The Energy Information Administration puts the number at 70. An analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency assumes 180 new reactors by 2050 for an 80 percent decline in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has applications for 30 new reactors. Only a few probably would be built over the next decade, the earliest in 2016 — and then only with the government guaranteeing the private financing.

Democratic sponsors of the climate bill are far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. They hope a compromises could bring along uncommitted centrist Democrats and some Republicans. Along with talk of opening more waters to oil drilling, support for nuclear energy is seen as the carrot that might attract Republicans.

The prospects of such a compromise appeared to brighten recently when Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., the climate bill's principle sponsor, and Graham collaborated on a new bid to build consensus.

"Nuclear power needs to be a core component of electricity generation if we are to meet our emission reduction targets," they wrote. They called for ending "cumbersome regulations that have stalled" new reactors, measures to help utilities secure financing and expanded research to resolve the waste problem.

They outlined a framework that other Republicans might follow. GOP senators such as McCain, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Conn., have shown an interest in climate legislation — if nuclear energy plays a greater part.

To many environmentalists, it remains a choice of dealing with one overriding environmental problem, while accepting another, to some degree.

"You can't dismiss nuclear power's potential as a climate solution," says Susan Vancko of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Yet, she says, with reactors costing upward to $10 billion apiece, "this is one of the most expensive options out there" to cut greenhouse gases.

Vancko cautions against providing "almost unlimited loan guarantees" for reactors that could go bust.

A group of 14 environmental and anti-nuclear groups expressed concern in a recent letter to senators that easing licensing requirements and rushing to build new plants "would fatally undermine public confidence in the safety of U.S. reactors."

Atop the nuclear industry's wish list — 26 items covering two single-line typewritten pages — is an expansion of loan guarantees for new reactors. But it also mentions eliminating some speed bumps in the road to reactor licensing, new efforts to deal with reactor waste and an array of other items.

Some are in the Senate bill; others are likely to be added.

The goals of those calling for aggressive action on climate change have become intertwined with those pushing for more nuclear energy.

"I don't think it gets you there alone," industry official Fertel says about nuclear's role in combating global warming. "But you can't get there without it."

___

On the Net:

NRC: http://www.nrc.gov

Nuclear Energy Institute: http://www.nei.org

Energy Information Administration: http://www.eia.doe.gov/

EPA: http://www.epa.gov

National Commission on Energy Policy: http://tinyurl.com/yzvh62d

Union of Concerned Scientists: http://tinyurl.com/nn6jlp

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Palms Grew In Ice-Free Arctic 50 Million Years Ago: study

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 26 Oct 09;

OSLO - Palms flourished in the Arctic during a brief sweltering period about 50 million years ago, according to a study on Sunday that hints at big gaps in scientific understanding of modern climate change.

The Arctic "would have looked very similar to the vegetation we now see in Florida," said Appy Sluijs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands who led an international study. Evidence of palms has never been found so far north before.

The scientists, sampling sediments on a ridge on the seabed that was about 500 km (300 miles) from the North Pole 53.5 million years ago, found pollens of ancient palms as well as of conifers, oaks, pecans and other trees.

"The presence of palm pollen implies that coldest month mean temperatures over the Arctic land masses were no less than 8 Celsius" (46.40F), the scientists, based in the Netherlands and Germany, wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That contradicts computer model simulations -- also used to predict future temperatures -- that suggest winter temperatures were below freezing even in the unexplained hothouse period that lasted between 50,000 and 200,000 years in the Eocene epoch.

Palms are quickly killed by frost.

Sluijs said that it was also striking that palms, which do not lose their leaves in winter, grew in an area where the sun does not shine for about five months. Experiments with modern palms indicate that they can survive prolonged darkness.

SURPRISES

The scientists said that presence of palms -- it was not clear if they were trees or plants -- hinted that the modern climate system could yield big surprises.

Temperatures are now rising because of man-made greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, according to the U.N. Climate Panel. Arctic ice shrank in 2007 to its smallest size since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.

One possibility for the ancient spike in temperatures was an abrupt rise in carbon dioxide levels, to far beyond concentrations now. That might have been caused by volcanic eruptions, or a melt of frozen methane trapped in the seabed.

"We cannot explain this with the current knowledge of the climate system," Sluijs said. One possibility was that new types of clouds formed in the Arctic as it warmed, acting as a blanket that trapped ever more heat and accelerated warming.

"If the ocean was very warm it's possible that these clouds form at a higher latitude than now," he said. Such effects caused by new cloud formation could be an unexpected tripwire in accelerating modern climate change.

More than 190 nations are due to meet in Copenhagen from December 7-18 to agree a new U.N. climate treaty to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.

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Climate change - enough science, now for the politics

Mike Hulme, Science Alert 26 Oct 09;

Climate change raises many questions about development goals and practices. These can only be resolved through widespread social deliberation and hard political negotiation. Simply more or 'better' science won't be enough.

The idea that humans are changing the global climate system was first developed, elaborated and demonstrated by natural scientists. The scientific evidence backing this basic idea is now overwhelming, even if scientific predictions of future climate changes are still shrouded in uncertainty.

But although science is very good at revealing how things are, and suggesting what physical manifestations might follow a particular course of action, it has limited relevance and reach when deciding what should be done in the face of complex dilemmas — such as climate change.

Politics must decide

Many voices are clamouring to be heard in the turbulent posturing and diplomacy ahead of this December's international climate negotiations in Copenhagen. One of the loudest says we must 'let the science speak for itself', that the science is clear, and that 'now is the time for action'.

But exactly what action is it that the science demands? And action by whom and by when? These are questions for politics to decide, not for science to dictate.

With human activities altering climates around the world, a new dimension has entered debates about international development. Climate properties, long thought to be fixed, or subject only to the whims of nature or judgements of the gods, are now revealed as partly under our own influence.

Science can suggest what some of the consequences of this human-shaped climate change might be — rising sea-levels, higher temperatures, more intense rainstorms — but climate predictions will never be precise enough to guide optimal planning and adaptation.

Uncertainty is always part of managing risk, and people's perceptions vary. So competing power interests and value judgements will always be at work. For example, decisions about which risks receive investment, and which do not, reflect political processes. And deciding what level of risk to invest against, for example the 1-in-100 or 1-in-1000 year flood, reflects value judgements.

Underlying ethics

The underlying reasons for human-induced climate change open up questions that are even more intractable to science. The idea of climate change has re-animated many long-standing debates around power, justice and development in a colonising and colonised world.

Anil Agrawal and Sunita Narain captured this vividly in their famous depiction of luxury versus survival emissions: those associated with non-essential lifestyle choices like international tourism or garden hot tubs versus those from essentials activities such as cooking, heating and lighting. Ethically-charged discussions about individual, political and historical responsibilities and about the nature of human well-being are now firmly embedded in climate change discourse.

The idea of climate change that science has so powerfully revealed is in turn unmasking the many reasons why we so often disagree in our crowded, troubled and divided world.

It may indeed be clear from the science that 'urgent action' is needed. But does this mean radical changes in consumption practices or radical decarbonisation of energy technologies? And who is to take this action: politicians, business leaders, entrepreneurs, the rich of the West or the rich of the world? And by when are such actions demanded? Through the haze of emission reductions goals for 2050 or through more prosaic and modest short-term goals for the next five years? These are the questions in dispute. Simply 'letting the science speak' is far from enough.

Better politics, not better science

As we enter another round of negotiations in Copenhagen it is vital that we understand the many valid reasons for disagreeing about climate change. We must recognise that they are rooted in different political, national, organisational, religious and intellectual cultures — in different ways of 'seeing the world'.

For example, different religious traditions have varying approaches to preserving, conserving or manipulating 'nature' — including climate. And different political cultures view the relationship between state, community and citizen in quite different ways.

We must not hide behind the dangerously-false premise that consensus science leads to consensus politics. The outcome of the Copenhagen meeting will be a messy, incomplete and often ambiguous compromise between competing interests, values and worldviews, not a deal driven by the science that will 'save humanity'.

R. K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently urged the media to focus on the "scientific rationale for action" rather than the political aspects of climate change (see How the media is creating a climate for change). I disagree. Science does not and cannot provide us with our values, our sense of ethical responsibility, or our vision of the future.

In the end, politics will always trump science. As we approach Copenhagen, making constructive use of the idea of climate change means that we need better politics, not better science.

Mike Hulme is professor of climate change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and was founding director of the UK-based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. His most recent book is called Why We Disagree About Climate Change.

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Japan pledges $400 million climate change loan to Indonesia

Reuters 25 Oct 09;

HUA HIN, Thailand (Reuters) - Japan, the world's fifth-biggest air polluter, offered a $400 million yen-denominated loan Sunday to Indonesia, the world's third-largest air polluter, to help tackle global warming, Japanese officials said.

The loan was part of the "Hatoyama Initiative" unveiled last month by Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, in which Tokyo will provide financial and technical assistance to developing countries to help address the problem of climate change.

Hatoyama offered the loan during a meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in the Thai beach town of Hua Hin.

The initiative was originally proposed by Hatoyama's predecessor and amended by his government as the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat wants developed nations to come up with at least $10 billion in initial funding.

Final details of Japan's new funding initiative may not be ready in time for the last formal U.N. negotiating session before the Copenhagen climate meeting in early November.

The loan offer to Indonesia came a day after Hatoyama urged his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to make an international commitment on climate change, saying it was vital for a U.N. deal due in Copenhagen in December.

Disputes over 2020 emissions cuts by developed nations and the amounts of cash to help developing nations combat global warming are among the main sticking points in sluggish U.N. talks meant to end in Denmark on December 18 with a new treaty.

Developing nations led by China and India say the rich need to make cuts averaging at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst of climate change.

(Reporting by Yoko Nishikawa; Writing by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by John Ruwitch)

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